How can I write apps for the latest Sony Ericsson phones? - mobile

For me in particular it's about Sony Ericsson W715.
What languages can I use and what environment do I need?
A tutorial recommendation would also be nice.

Well, without more information as to what your applications are supposed to do, I would also recommend J2ME, especially given that SonyEricsson has additional useful proprietary APIs that are available to their partners.
You can also target the web browser on the phone by having a server send dynamic HTML and javascript code.
Flash Lite is also an option.
Recent SonyEricsson phones contain the capuchin technology: Write the GUI in Flash and the application engine in J2ME. That could be worth a look, depending on the skills of whoever is working on your applications.

They have a developer page..
http://developer.sonyericsson.com

Your only option would be J2ME. I recommend using Netbeans with the Mobility Pack for the task. Download the Java version, that includes Java ME.
Here is a tutorial on the net. I am sure you can find many more.

You should use J2ME (Java Micro Edition).

Related

J2me starts confusion

I have knowledge of core Java and Android. now I wish to learn J2ME.
What are the tools are needed for start with J2ME.
and I read some tutorial for starting like http://www.roseindia.net/j2me/java-platform-micro-edition.shtml In this tutorial I read that I need to download
sun_java_wireless_toolkit-2_5_1-windows (WTK) along with java.
But in Oracle site when I check for j2me section they are saying to download sun_java_me_sdk-3_0-win and start . so which is first point to start J2me. and what the diffrence in both of these two .Any good site link to refer will be very helpful.
Thanks in Advance
If you need to develop for real-world devices you will need to download the 2.5 version of the WTK, as there are only a few J2ME devices which support J2M2 3.0 (if any). You can download WTK 2.5 here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javasebusiness/downloads/java-archive-downloads-javame-419430.html#sun_java_wireless_toolkit-2.5.2_01b-oth-JPR
2.5 differs significantly from 3.0 and again: developing with 3.0 is of no use for existing devices.
Here's an overview of the feature of 2.5:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/download-135801.html
As fas as I can see, the tutorial you posted is a good starting point.
I would like to suggest you to read j2me complete reference ..as you know core java already it is very easy to learn J2ME...,J2ME SDK3 is just little different from J2ME WTK 2.5.2 ,
check the following url for learn more or start with Java Microedition :
http://www.daniweb.com/software-development/mobile-development/threads/302854/646446#post646446
To start developing you need a IDE ,is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. I suggest you Netbeans, which you can download from here : NetBeans IDE Download Bundles and select a bundle which support Java ME(So you no longer need to download Java ME SDK,you'll get it along with Netbeans).
The next thing you need is to install the wireless toolkit as you read in the tutorial. Which you can get from :Sun Java Wireless Toolkit 2.5.2_01 for CLDC
The toolkit includes the emulation environments, performance optimization and tuning features, documentation, and examples that developers need to bring efficient and successful wireless applications.
Now you are ready to start .
Here are some links that can help you to start with :
Wireless Development Tutorial Part I
J2ME Tutorial, Part 1: Creating MIDlets
Guide to getting started in J2ME for the Motorola A780 phone
Deploying Wireless Java Applications

Is silverlight the right choice of technology for enterprise applications after Microsoft's comments in PDC 2010

We were beginning to start on an enterprise application using silverlight.
However after reading this post we doubt whether it is the right choice going forward.
The post says that, according to
Microsoft's declaration in PDC 2010,
Microsoft has changed their strategy
regarding silverlight and they no
longer view it as their technology to
deliver cross platform applications.
Instead they are targeting silverlight
as their development platform for
Windows phone 7.
Is this correct? Should we still continue with silverlight or go back to ASP.NET WebForms\MVC?
The Scope of the application is basically intranet with Windows 2008 servers and Windows XP and Windows 7 clients. However a subset of functionality needs to be available to the external users over the internet. There we cannot have any restrictions on what OS users can use.
based on the info you gave, I can't conclude whether silverlight is the way to go. But what I do know is that a number of Microsofties wrote some blogposts about the things said about Silverlight on the pdc. For example John Papa, Bob Muglia and Scott Guthrie.
Update about the scope
I think you already gave the answer when you described the scope of the application. A part of the application will be available to external users and you cannot have any restriction about the OS they are running. With that requirement I think Silverlight is not the best way to go. Not because the rumours about its future but because of its platform indepency. What are the reasons not to go for a ASP.NET/web solution? Silverlight doesn't work on each OS whereas plain HTML will work everywhere. (ok you need a descent browser)
Although for a good advice I'd need more information about the application.
Basically the question you have to ask yourself is this: do you need your application to be used on every platform, i.e. Windows, Mac, Linux, misc. flavors of Unix, IPhone and other mobile platforms?
If that's the case, then a web based solution is the way to go.
If Windows, Mac and partially Linux is enough, then save yourself and your team a lot of pain and use Silverlight.
In my opinion support for mobile clients is the key factor in your decision.
For sure the right platform for Intranet, Enterprice applications Is Silverlight. It is
stable, performs extreamly well, the environment and the development time is huuge less than web application development, the end User Experience is much better and so on and so forth... Once you want to show part of the system out the the intranet - just create some specific target modules that will address the needed audince. You won't have the universal "Reachfull" solution, that will target everyhing, you'll always need mobile versions or other devices and so on. But once you've built your project the right way with Services (same services that the Silverlight app will consume), it'll be easy job to consume them with new UI.
Hope you will choose Silverlihgt.
Silverlight is a great technology, but the Microsoft does not develop it anymore. So as a technology is a great decision. But if you want to make a Silverlight app usable on a NOT supported platform (e.g. Android or iPhone) you have to use 3rd party services. For example http://sl2html.com

A database system for storing mobile device data?

I'm starting to build an app, a mobile device. Performance is quite important (as it is in anything else) and I'd like to maximize it.
The database will be used pretty often. I'm looking to access it through the QtSQL library of the C++ Qt library.
I have experience in MySQL, but don't think that's the right choice.
So I'm looking at:
PostgreSQL
sqlite?
CouchDB?
The operating system is a stripped-down build of Ubuntu. Need regular CRUD as well as opportunity for optimization.
Thanks,
Mark
Since Apple uses sqlite on the iPhone and iPod Touch, I would take a good look at that. I assume that they will have evaluated everything available to them at the time to get to this conclusion.
Since sqlite is FOSS and "endorsed" by a well-known vendor of mobile devices, give it a try.
Did you consider Sybase Ultralite?
I'm a new student developer, but it appears that SQLite might be the best bet to go. Aside from being what seems to be the preferred iOS online database... it seems to have a lot of support with Android and the upcoming [Windows Phone 7 Platform][2] (via C-sharp-sqllite). Which seem to be the most dominating (or in the case of Windows Phone 7 - upcoming) platforms for most web development. Blackberry and webOS doesn't seem to have an issue either.

Multi platform mobile application

I am willing to develop a mobile application. I wish to have something working for android, windows mobile, symbian and blackberry.
Which is the best way to do that?
I had read here:
You could aim to wrap the sections of
the platform specific APIs (iPhone SDK
etc.) that you use with your own
interfaces. In doing so you are
effectively hiding the platform
specific libraries and making your
design and code easier to manage when
dealing with differences in the
platforms.
I was hoping there exists a framework that does this for me, but it doesn't exist or I didn't find any.
I feel that sort of things will make my code harder to maintain and perhaps it's better to have one version for each platform.
Anyone with experience in the field?
Another links of interest:
most-promising-mobile-platforms
long-term-potential-of-iphone-windows-mobile-development-platforms
Does Java not count (in various guises)
Java on Symbian
Java for Windows Mobile
Java on Blackberry
Android Java Virtual Machine
It should be simpler to manage API differences in a consistent language/runtime platform where capabilities can be assessed in-code ... and configurations of code made at build-time.
As much as I dislike Java, it is fairly ubiquitous. As for the iPhone ... apart from it being much hyped and locked down ... you can get Java to run on jail-broken phones ...
What happened to Apple's open and friendly appearance? The cynic-inside knows the answer ;)
You might want to look into PhoneGap (http://phonegap.com/). From their own description page:
PhoneGap is an open source development tool for building fast, easy mobile apps with JavaScript.
If you’re a web developer who wants to build mobile applications in HTML and JavaScript while still taking advantage of the core features in the iPhone, Android and Blackberry SDKs, PhoneGap is for you.
In addition to using JavaScript, it supports JavaScript acccess to native controls and features of the phones (GPS, accelerometers etc...).
There really isn't any magic bullet that I'm aware of. Even within just the Blackberry platform, there are tons of different devices with different capabilities, screen resolutions, etc. And that's just from one, single manufacturer; Symbian and Windows Mobile are likely even worse.
The answer is likely that you should focus on relatively new and consistent platforms (accordingly with very few and all pretty much similar devices), like Android and iPhone OS, if you really want to reduce your code forking and maximize your audience.
My advice will almost certainly change within a few years when there are nine different iPhone OS devices and two dozen Android platforms.
The first question to ask yourself is if you need a native application, if you do not then designing a mobile web site solution should give you the most cross compatibility, failing that I would make a iPhone and J2ME solution (the J2ME can then be ported for Android relatively easily) for the greatest coverage of users
Or investigate Movilizer. Supports iOS, Android, WinPhone, WinMobile, Desktop PCs, embedded devices, ... and many more. It uses a design once run anywhere approach.
http://www.movilizer.com
try out different cross platform dev tools,
Developing cross platform mobile application

Mobile devices for developers

I need to develop some programs for mobile devices but haven't decided the platform to build upon. I'm looking for Palm or Pocket PC devices that have Touch screen and Wi-Fi connection and are cheep because I'll need to buy several of them.
I don't really need camera, mp3 players, video players, pdf readers or anything else since the apps are going to be simple data collection to feed via wireless to a server database.
I'm proficient with C and C#. I could learn Java if I had to.
What devices do you recommend? Linux devices maybe?
PS: Changed the title because I don't want a flamewar between platforms. Please, don't answer with Windows Mobile sucks/rules. I'm looking for devices instead.
Thanks
Windows Mobile
It supports C#, and Visual Studio comes with the mobile SDK. So if you know C# you probably already have the tools you need. And in spite of the iPhone/iPodTouch buzz, the Windows Mobile deployment is still 10X greater.
In order of preference
Neo Freerunner
Maemo & the N800 (cheap)
Beagleboard
If you are comfortable with Visual Studio then programming for windows mobile is extremely easy. The SDK for mobile comes with emulators for all the latest and popular versions of windows mobile- and you can even debug on teh device itself using a USB cable.
On windows mobile you have a choice: Develop a .Net application or develop native (likely MFC based). Either one gives you a great development environment.
As far as iPhone development goes- you would need an apple computer to install and use iPhone SDK- and you can't run an iPhone app on your phone. You would have to go through the process of getting it registered with iTunes for you to install your own apps on your own phone!
When I first started playing with mobile development I had a few questions:
Can I develop using my favorite IDE- Visual Studio. Will it be as easy as developing a desktop app: yes.
Will I be able to access the internet from my application without 'unlocking' or in some other way enabling the phone that was not intended by the service provider? yes.
Will I be able to access device specific functionality such as GPS easily? Is there good support for doing so within the API? Yes.
You should probably target the Windows Mobile platform. The Palm platform is rather archaic and no longer widely used. The development environment is also rather spartan, while Microsoft has full IDEs available for Windows Mobile development. You might also consider the iPhone/iPod touch platform - I have a feeling the number of devices will multiply at an exponential rate and I've heard that developing applications is much easier due to the completeness of the system stack.
You should probably at least evaluate the Apple iPod Touch. It certainly meets your basic "touch screen + WiFi" spec, and your users presumably won't object to all the the other nice features that will come along for the ride.
I don't know what your cutoff for "cheap" is, but $299 for the base model seems pretty reasonable for a high-quality touch screen and WiFi in a pocketable device.
Windows Mobile and CE used to suck, really, really badly. These days however it's definitely passable and worth checking out, especially if you code C#.
Just remember that it is the baby brother of the full framework and has nowhere near enough toys and throws a lot of NotImplementedExceptions. :)
Blackberry publishes its SDK on its web site. Its apps run J2ME, so with some Java experience it shouldn't be too difficult to get started. They also give you an emulator. Disclaimer: I have no experience in writing Blackberry apps, but I looked into it once.
I would not recommend a PalmOS based handset. I have written code for PalmOS and it's about as painful as writing raw Win32 code in C. Since Palm has switched its high end handsets to Windows Mobile, PalmOS will just remain stagnant and only run on the slower, less capable hardware.
If I were to write a mobile app, I'd agree that Windows Mobile is worth checking out.
It all depends on the users who you are targeting at, If you are looking for a wide market then you should be fine with J2ME/Blackberry . However most of them lack the touchscreen and wifi features ( The HTC range of phones [WIFI/TouchScreen/Windows Mobile] have a JVM built with it),so it would work on most of the Windows devices also.
If you are making a more niche product, moving with the current buzz 'iphone' will be good . Windows Mobile is also worth checking out
The best option here would be the Neo Freerunner, with that device you can build a dedicated unit were every aspect is made especially for you're needs. The Freerunner is WiFi enabled, and has a touch interface. If you use the Qt SDK, a lot of the work is already done for you. It comes complete with emulator, as a Live linux cd. You can run in a WM, such as wmplayer. Everything is included.
I'm not gonna lie, it will take tweaking. But the final product would be really nice and intuitive.
Looking at Windows Mobile devices, your requirement of touchscreen pretty much sets your pricing at the higher end of the spectrum. You'll get those things you say you don't need just because of that.
Here's expansys's selection of touchscreens.
Mobdeal is a handy one too as that effectively filters all phones by features.
I've developed against the HTC TYTN 2, HTC Touch Diamond and randomly a PSION Teklogix Ikon
There's generally very little difference between these models, some manufacturers have SDKs that can help sometimes.
I think your cheapest option will probably be something like getting HTC TYTN 2s on ebay. They're pretty old now (hence cheap) but have Wifi, camera, touchscreen, qwerty keypad all the things you seem to be after.
you can target iPhone "touch" platform with Apple's iPhone SDK. the development environment requires a Mac, but you can get the entire IDE + tool chain + excellent debugging and profiling tools for free. And the free documentation is top notch.
As a registered iPhone developer, it is free (no cost) to target the simulator, which is sufficient for most learning and development you'll likely need to up front.
To target the actual hardware device (and up to and including release/selling your app on the Apple's AppStore) is only $99/yr. If you got an iPod Touch for your hardware target, most of the SDK applies and you are not tied into a service contract for an iPhone.
iPhone app development environment is in Objective-C, but it is a really productive, object-oriented environment so do not concerned that that may be a language you are unfamiliar with.
If you decide that your mobile app(s) would be better suited as webapps, the iPhone/iPod touch platform again is an industry leader in this space, and you have the additional benefit or being able to target other mobile platforms (and not necessarily be tied to one mobile SDK).

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