phone programming?

[agent_x91]

I read a post on this forum earlier about using java to program a phone, and also noticed a download on sun java's website specifically for this. But how can a phone be connected to the computer, and how is phone programming different to programmin on PCs? can anyone tell me something about this?

thanks in advance

[ray326]

These phones run Java in the phone using a version of the JDK specifically designed for imbedded systems. It's funny that the world has finally caught up to this because imbedded systems is what Java was originally designed for. The difference in embedded systems versus PCs is two fold. The big one is the fact you're not programming FOR the computer you're programming ON. The second is the kind of system managed services that are available. E.g. you don't have a file system on a phone (today) unless it's emulated.

[agent_x91]

any ideas where i could find a decent tutorial for basic programming on phones? i wouldn't have a clue where to start making one for a phone, and it seems like an interesting thing to try...

[ray326]

I know there have been articles in JDJ about it and since IBM has an imbedded plugin for Eclipse, I bet you can find something on the Developerworks or Alphaworks sites but this (http://java.sun.com/j2me/index.jsp) is probably the best starting point.

[agent_x91]

Thanks, and good luck with your 1st-class microsoft hating.:D

[Khalid Ali]

Just saw this thread and here are my 2 cents...:D

Small Devices programming as of this moment is prety tricky (regardless of any claims whatsoever).Every, prety much, hand held device supports few proprietery standards,hence making it rather difficult to write some code to make it workable universally(its even worse then the browser war we had).

If you want to use Java (J2ME) as your language of choice for writing programs/games for hand held devices,you will need to down load specific sdk from a specific vendor(ie Motorolla (http://www.motocoder.com/motorola/pcsHome.jsp), Sony Ericsson (http://developer.sonyericsson.com/site/global/docstools/phonespecs/p_phonespecs.jsp), Nokia (http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/0,6566,033,00.html) etc). They allow you to write compliant code for some specific phone models. you can find most help + tutorials at the Java(Sun) Wireless site (http://java.sun.com/j2me/)
As ray mentioned above, Java works in a sand box environment in any hand held device,hence making it very popular amongst the small device vendors, however it may hcange in very near future. Java has added FileSystem api's in the most rescent jsr's for j2me.

[agent_x91]

hmmm... maybe I should get a bit better at java first. but universal programming isn't my concern, as I just thought it'd be a cool idea to try to make something nifty for my phone:)

oh well, back to the drawing board.

meanwhile, can anyone tell me how to ask a user for permission to use certain functions inside applets, eg. opening streams to files?

atm while i get better at java I'm only making small apps, just to test some of the useful fings i can do b4 i try to put it to use.