Developing for the Motorola T720

r0.ini writes "Nice step-by-step introduction guide on how to make that cool app for your T720." Worth a read even if you never intend to write a program for your cell phone, for the comparison between BREW and J2ME (and implicitly between Verizon and AT&T).

Comments

Another Hippie-Crit!

[stratjakt]

He spends the first half of the article ranting against MicroSoft and QualComm (which is why this no-shit submission is on slashdot), and then treats us to this:

Add the following lines to you AUTOEXEC.BAT file:

REM ---- Java Support ----
SET MIDP_HOME=C:\j2me\midp
SET PATH=%PATH%;c:\j2sdk1.4.0_03\BIN;
PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\j2sdk1.4.0_0 3\BIN;C:\j2me\midp\bin;%PATH%

Then force these variables to be reloaded by running
the batch file:

c:\> autoexec.bat

You'd think someone so anti-MSFT would have done his little programs under linux.

Or perhaps, linux just doesnt work for this task (no shock there).

It's a phone, people

[SteweyGriffin]

You use it to talk to other people. That's it. Anyone who spends several days researching the hardware inside, taking pictures of, writing about, and immersing themselves in their cell phone has serious issues.

First off, this guy is probably a developer for Sprint, Motorola, or Nokia and is getting paid to post this to Slashdot.

Secondly, he's showing how to put pornography on his phone, which I'm sure isn't something that would impress your girlfriend's parents or is something that your little sister should be looking at.

I do agree that some instances of "tweaking", "hacking", or whatever it's called these days are necessary. Let's face it -- if you're going out to the club, you should dress up nicely, smell nicely, and look good if you want to pick a guy or girl up and bring them home; "tweaking" yourself certainly has its advantages, like earning you better looking friends, earning you more friends, getting potential bedmates, girlfriends, wives, etc.

But customizing a cellphone that probably has just as crappy reception as every other crappy cellphone out there is nearly pointless. I do appreciate the "geek factor" though, but still.

I mean, cellphones aren't even legal in New York State anymore when you're driving, so what's the point. I'm back to using payphones anyway (with a calling card) since that's what works. Go ahead and call someone you love when they're in the hospital via your staticky cellphone and see if they ever talk to you again.

Cellphones are rude, and developers cramming more "features" onto them is ridiculous when you consider how poorly they work to begin with. If it all weren't such a scam, they wouldn't have all those confusing plans to begin with. The phone would just work, and work well. You could call people whenever you wanted.

I tweak my appearance, I keep my house clean, I keep my German sports sedan clean and maintained properly, I "hack" my TV if I want to view pay-per-view channels, but that's about it. I throw dinner together too sometimes, but I don't publish Web pages on the subject.

Let's all snap back to reality and remember what's important. The T720 or Q480 or XL170 phones aren't going to stop war, or teach love, or cure hate, or stop cancer, or anything important. It's a frigging telephone -- talk ON it, but don't talk ABOUT it.

Worth it?

[SteweyGriffin]

One friend wanted a tip calculator, which took about 5 minutes after I figured out how everything worked. It is alittle different from standard Java and you're missing some important things such as floating point numbers (float and double are gone). So it does take some getting used to.

Why spend hours researching how to program applications on your cellphone? I stick to simple math, man.

Let's say your bill is $17.48 at a restaurant and you have to leave the tip.

If bad service: Move decimal one place left ($1.748, which you just round to a dollar and three quarters). This is a 10% tip.

If good service: Use the method above, only multiply the amount by two ($1.75 x 2 = $3.50). This is a 20% tip.