[lug] Which Mobile Phone should I buy?

[Dhruva B. Reddy]

On Tue, 14 Feb 2006 at 14:25 -0700, Siegfried Heintze soliloquized thusly:
> Being a professional contract programmer, I have this fantasy that if I buy
> a new mobile phone, I will learn how to program it. Who knows, I might need
> to know how for my next gig.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

That maniacal laughter comes from experience.  I have two Palm Pilots and two
J2ME phones that I bought over the past six years with this intention--with
nary a line of code written (although I finally started playing around with
J2ME over the weekend).  Of course, you could be more determined than I
have been.

> 
> So what development platforms are available besides J2ME and Windows Visual
> Studio/CE? Are there any open source ones?

You can write applications for SymbianOS.  In fact, someone has ported
the Python runtime to it.

Don't know of any open source environments (unless you count Motorola's
Linux initiatives, but there was a recent article on Slashdot about how
they've put up lots of roadblocks).

> 
> Is Java considered open source since there is a gnu java compiler and sun
> releases its source code for their compiler and jvm?

I wouldn't say that.  Sun frowns (glares?) upon this, but since (I
believe) it's a clone and not an implementation of the JVM spec, they
can't do anything about it.

> 
> So how does mobile application development take place? I think you just
> download J2ME, write the application, test it on the simulator which is

Most vendors have their own development kits, which can be used in lieu
of Sun's SDK.  Unfortunately, these vendor-specific kits are usually
Windows only.  I can't speak to the whole process since I've only gotten
as far as testing it on the emulator.

> available for free with J2ME (or in the case of windows, available with
> Visual Studio) and then upload it to your phone. I thought that is how they
> described it for Windows CE and visual studio.
> 
> How does it work for C++?
> 

Never actually done it in C++, but I think it works pretty much the
same.  You compile it with a cross-compiler and run it in the emulator
(not necessarily in that order).

> But then someone else said you have to buy a $4000 prototyping system before
> you can upload your own custom app to your mobile phone.
> 

I can only speak to J2ME.  I'm with T-mobile for wireless service, and
they impose no restrictions on J2ME functionality.  All you have to do
is make your JAR and JAD files publicly available (i.e., throw 'em on
your web server), then point your phone's browser to the JAD file.

> So what model of mobile phone supports the greatest number of development
> platforms?
> 

Well, Nokia's high end phones run SymbianOS and have JVMs.
SonyEricssons have some sort of environment on top of SymbianOS as well
as a JVM.