Sega, Motorola To Load Games On New Phones

[Galaxie] writes: "Motorola's new iDEN handset, which is a damn cool product, allowing text paging, internet-ready, digital phone, and 2 way radio has something new to add to there list. The phone is built on top of the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2METM) technology (here) using the KVM (K Virtual Machine) which will work with only a small footprint allowing it to work on 128k of memory. Looks like they have teamed up with sega to produce the ultimate handheld wireless phone gaming machine! (here) Also application ability will rock with these phones, hell, if you can play a game or 2 at a decent res, then why not load up gcc :)" 3G, iMode, Javaphones ... any phone maker who isn't putting games on their phones deserves to listen to some juicy voice menus for a while.

Comments

Re:Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I noticed the sega link seems broken. But what really irks me is the lack of a link to the iDEN page. So I went and found it:

Motorola iDEN Group

Btw, the news is old (Nov 29th, 2000):
MOTOROLA WIRELESS PHONES TO FEATURE SEGA GAMES

And, yes, the phones are low power, so you don't have to worry as much about your batteries, although they do invariably run down. Why doesn't anyone put some solar cells on these things? (Or a minature cold-fusion core, goddammit.)

Any more questions are probably answered here.

On the road

[OO7david]

It's annoying enough to have people that can't drive while on the phone but now we have people engrossed in games while on the phone while driving?

Full details on iDEN phones and J2ME.

[Jose.LacalMOT]

[Disclaimer: I run iDEN's Developer Support program.]

As an introduction, iDEN is a unit of Motorola based in SoFla that produces a handset that combines cell phone, 02-way radio, pager and WAP capabilities. Our largest customers include Nextel in the US, Clearnet in Canada, and other operators in Latin America, the Middle East and Far East. http://www.motorola.com/iden.

So what is so exciting about running J2ME apps on the iDEN phones? Let's see:

• You get a full-blown cell phone, with pager, WAP, and 02-way radio capabilities
• Plus the equivalent power to a 386 PC in terms of MIPS and RAM
• Able to run J2ME apps. J2ME is a subset of Java, with 02 million plus developers out there
• Al this power in the palm of your hand, with wireless data capabilities (19.4 kbps) at 1/100th the weight of a 386 PC and 1/10th the cost

The bottom line: J2ME-powered devices are not just game-enabled phones. With these devices you can create complete, server-based wireless mobile IT applications. iDEN will make more announcements in these directions in the next few weeks. Please visit http://www.motorola.com/idendev for regular updates

What kind of wireless mobile IT solutions can you build with the iDEN J2ME-powered phones? For example:

• Server-based solutions where you can replicate a portion of the corporate database in your iDEN phone for off-line access.
• Stand-alone applications where all the business and presentation logic reside on the local app. Once the app completes the data processing, it can quickly send / receive updates via the wire
• Highly-interactive games that can stay in touch with your game server, allowing you to stay up to date on the "state" of your game.

So, why should developers partner with iDEN to create such wireless solutions? iDEN offers its registered developers:

• A free CD-ROM loaded with 03 Java IDEs, Apache, Enhydra, Sun's J2ME documentation, an Open Source RDBMS, plus debuggers and emulators. For both Win32 and GNU/Linux.
• Access to a multimedia J2ME training and certification program
• Access to e-mail, web, and telephone technical suport
• Once the developer creates an application, iDEN can distribute the app worldwide through its carriers (Nextel in the US, Clearnet in Canada, plus operators in Latin America, Middle East and Far East).

By working with iDEN, developers focus on whjat they do best (designing apps, coding, creating), while iDEMN handles the rest (app certification, distribution, merchandising and e-commerce back-end). iDEN is committed to help developers become more successful in the emerging Wireless Java Internet space.

By the way, current iDEN phones (like the i1000+) do not support J2ME apps. You will need to buy one of the upcoming "Condor" series phones, available int he US market by Q01 2001.

For additional info:

• http://www.motorola.com/idendev. Register free, and receive a free CD-ROM with all the tools you need to start creating cool J2ME MIDlets for the iDEN phones.
• e-mail Jose C. Lacal

Thank you for reading. Regards.

Seems pretty limited

[Zico]

If you're really wanting to do gaming on your phone, you might want to check out Mitsubishi's Mondo Trium (info here, picture here). It's a phone + PocketPC, so along with the other cool non-gaming stuff that comes with it (Internet Explorer, Outlook, Word, Excel, Windows Media Player, MS Reader, etc.), you can just fire up MAME for CE or a CE-based NES emulator and blast away.

Cheers,

The little computer

[perdida]

I am not a huge gamer- I get very involved in certain >role playing games but do not play them except at home.

I am very interested in the phone as a little computer, and the possibility of sharing data alongside voice conversation.

I am imagining someone driving around, using such a phone to find the personal ad of someone looking for a date,

traveling performers and sales people beaming a peddler's pitch to the computers of homes and businesses as they head into town,

live, coordinated field research between distant scientists, and group work between students in different countries.

All stuff we have now, in a much cruder form.

When intranets and the internet shift primary focus onto telephones and away from desk and laptop machines, there will be a subtle, slightly magical transformation. It won't be just more convenient- much of the information added to the net will be localized, much more intensely than it was before.

A person's computers are their individual "nodes" in the "ether" right now, but most computers are not tied to the home phone number or cell phone number. What happens if most consumer connections to the Internet go through a telephone?

Of course, the "fingerprint IP" or IPv6 technology is perfectly suited to a world in which everyone is connected, but everyone is potentially visible.