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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).
Cool beans!
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Do you realize how close they are to releasing the T-1000? We're all going to die!
slashdot now linking to porn? mmm I suppose that is one use for a colour screen....
Only after getting the cell phone, however, did I realize the amazing freedom of being able to call or be called anywhere at any time.
Someone give him a coconut.
I didn't bother looking at the link until you mentioned there was porn.
If you get a contract with Verizon, and you choose the
:(
Motorola T720, the phone executes BREW only.
If you get a contract with AT&T, and you choose the
Motorola T720, the phone executes J2ME only.
I've had my T720 from Verizon about a month now, too late to return it and cancel my account.
I'd love to develop my own apps and share them with the community but because I chose Verizon it looks like I'm SOL
Shame on you Verizon...shame shame shame!
You're all bastards!
"Nice step-by-step introduction guide on how to make that cool app for your T720."
I do not have a T720, you insensitive clod!
what was the article about? i kind of got hung up on the first few photos.
Warning : Do not read the follwing if you have the mental condition called
'ethics', ethics has ruined science and has kept the world from becoming better. If you are like most people, and you dont care, then read on
The universe is properitry! Think about it, science so far has reverse
engineered an infinitley small percentage of its interneals. The GNUniverse
projects aim is to create a gpled implementation of the universe. It will be a
big task. Our aims are huge, our first step is to reverse engineer the current
one until we can create the 'Open bang'.
We are slowly making progress every day. It could be many of millions of years
before our dream is a reality, but remember, we are still trying to get usb
support in the
hurd at the moment, so give us time.
Please help our quest, you will be free from the taboos of the properitry
universe!
hmm..i just ordered the T720 from T-Mobile
does anyone know if T-Mobile uses J2ME or BREW?
----
i do not use drugs, i AM drugs -- Dali
I totally agree with this guy, J2ME is really cool. I went to lunch with a couple friends the other day and they both had java phones. So i came home, grabbed Sprint's Wireless Toolkit and started playing with it.
I'm really impressed how fast you can develop applications for it. 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.
But most things are really easy todo, such as writing a small app to send SMS messages, the important part of the code is only about 10 lines long. Check it out, I'm planning on picking up one of the Sprint phones when my contract expires in a few months
T-Mobile (formerly Voicestream) also provides GSM coverage in the US. I use their service and have been pleased so far.
thousands and thousands of geeks:
porn and programming?
where's the link?
where's the link?
where's the link?
nbfn
Verizon doesn't use GSM, they are using CDMA. It appears that the TDMA systems are all switching to GSM, but CDMA apparently has the ability to handle future apps like 3G.
Anyways, I've got the Verizon version of the T720. I have not had a lot of problems other than battery life (which SUCKS BIGTIME), but others have had numerous problems, and the only way to get apps, ringtones, etc. is to use Get It Now, for which EVERYTHING is a pay-to-play app. Hell, the even make you pay to download the Lord of the Rings picture viewer, which is just an add for the movie.
General consensus was that Verizon rushed the CDMA T720 to market long before it was ready, and their recent price cuts seem to indicate they are trying to get rid of stock before the new color phones are out.
rm
Sci-Fi Storm
Only after getting the cell phone, however, did I realize the amazing freedom of being able to call or be called anywhere at any time.
Yes, having people call you ANYTIME ANYWHERE is quite a "freedom".
If I ever give in and get a cell phone, it will be for outgoing calls only, that's for sure.
Man,
Too bad my phone is through my work. I'm gonna have to talk to our account rep about BREW.
+2 Funny, huh? Or perhaps, mabey, -2 Automated? Do you post this exact same respone to everything that might be construed as a product review?
Criticize the article. Analyze what it says. Point out how your views differ. Maybe then your comments could help overcome the bias of reviews being written by people inclined to write reviews.
As for the article, I would have found it a lot more interesting if it were not for the porn wallpaper. Some of us find the whole concept of porn degrading and disgusting and don't want anything to do with it. On the other hand, information on programming a phone is incredibly interesting. It's too bad that the author chose to limit his audience that way.
Why bother with a sig? It'll just get smoked.
This is so f**king cool ... hmmm .. maybe I'll learn Java now ... it would be cool to have your phone itself go out and check your email for you ;)
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
I had an opportunity of developing applications for both environments BREW and J2ME on Motorola T720. I agree that deploying BREW application for real phone is quite complicated and expensive. But there are ways to lower costs of development. For example, it's possible to use GCC crosscompiler for ARM which saves $1500. It's not easy, but it works! And I believe that author of the article didn't even try to develop any J2ME application for T720 phone. I did, and J2ME is about 20 times slower than BREW, which makes it completely useless...
lamenes filter, woo
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I think you posted to the wrong forum.
This is /.: News for Nerds
I think you are looking for GQ: News for shallow yuppies
I think it's great that that Sprint and AT&T are allowing any developer to provide content, but it's not always the case. In the work I'm doing I have to navigate a maze of different options depanding if the carrier is a Walled Garden or not.
What do you know I wrote a novel
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.
I don't know about you but I want a mobile phone to make calls. I don't need a phone that decides to crash and reboot in the middle of a call... I have enough headaches with PCs, I just want my phone to work. (ps, I have never tried one, just my observation from reading that newsgroup when I was trying to decide what phone to buy. Based on the rants, I got a v60i for the wife and hung onto my trusty 2 year old moto 7868W startac which has always worked like a champ)
Sounds like a good script for a horror movie. The bad guy is about to slash you up in bits, you reach for your fancy cell phone, and it blue screens while trying to call 9-1-1
With the rant about porn, I agree. With the rant about cell-phones, I completely disagree.
At work we have a couple hundred employees who are not in the office - or any office - most of the time. They stay in contact and do there work by means of their cell phone. In addition to basic voice calls, it sends and recieves email and acts as a modem for thier laptop computer. These features exist because of the very innovation you rail against here.
Furthermore, innovations and open innovative systems like J2ME create an environment in which additional feature sets can be added to a phone at an exponentially faster and more diverse manner. This means that some people are going to choose to do some disgusting things, but it also means that you can choose to do some amazing things. In fact, you probably won't have to - some other geek will do write the programs for you. He might even give it away for free.
Here's the point. Most people don't need (or want) all of the power of their laptop while they are walking down the street, but there are some things they'd like to be able to do. If their phone can handle it they don't have to carry (or even buy) a laptop.
I'm alergic to sig smoke.
I know my Samsung S105 supports J2ME but Ive yet to see any good free J2ME programs out there that do anything worth wild.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
First off, this guy is probably a developer for Sprint, Motorola, or Nokia and is getting paid to post this to Slashdot.
And I suppose you work for Verizon. "Those lousy other companies, using types of tech that make better product than ours! Curses!"
But customizing a cellphone that probably has just as crappy reception as every other crappy cellphone out there is nearly pointless.
Crappy? My current cellphone gets great reception, and sounds as good as a landline. Staticky? That went out of style in the 90's along with analog signals.
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.
Sigh...
Either this is just a troll, or you just had a bad experience with a cellular phone company. The phone I currently use works great all the time. I can call people whenever I want.
You seem to be an unhappy person.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
I have to admit I didn't look too closely. I'd rather not. It looked like it was porn, so I avoided it.
Personally, even with a bathing suit I don't want to look at it. Its about treating myself and others with respect and not using them as a recreational drug. A picture that focuses on a woman's physical beauty only, particularly in a suggestive way, is not something I want to see.
Are you addicted to sigs?
Although I have not intention (at all) of developing or using programs on my phone knowing that my phone has been hamstrung is very annoying. AAMoF, I currently pay $100/mo for a family plan, thus a $175 fee to cancel my contract (which I just renewed for two years) is not very painful: if I cancel now I'll deprive VZN of at least $1100. . .
This article has made me pissy. Maybe it's because I'm enjoying my new Zaurus which allows me great flexibility as a developer. I specifically didn't choose the PokeyPC because the open Zaurus is available (and Opera, esp. Opera 6 (in beta) far surpasses PokyIE). VZN blew it for me.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I picked up an LG 5350 with the SprintPCS service, and I'd have to say I'm very happy with the phone. Although they don't advertise it the LG 5350 comes java enabled, I nice surprise after buying the phone. I've used a few freely available java apps and I've been very impressed with the quality of J2ME applications on the phone. If anyone is interested in the next-gen phone they should definitely make sure it is java-enabled (and color too!)
Speaking as a former employee of a large cellular phone company, I have one big question..
Why the hell is everyone looking at some whiz-bang cell phone features but settling for crappy reception/range?
Grr. I know why certain areas don't have cell towers. Not profitable, NIMBY folks, FCC regs, etc.. but what I don't get is the notion that your phone needs to be a second Game Boy. If I want to play games and crap, I'll get an actual Game Boy Advance. I use my Ericsson T68 for my address book & calendar stuff. Maybe some WAP browsing here & there. But, that's about it. I would much rather have more effort put into stability & call quality than "gee whiz!' features.
Colin,
I just read your article at http://www.colinfahey.com/2002dec14_j2me_cell_pho
This one is true, but work is being done to solve this problem. You should soon be able to use GCC.
Test signatures expire after three months. A real signature, which is required to in order to make your app available via a carrier, does not have this limitation.
You are absolutely not required to submit source code for anything. You must submit your *binaries* for testing in order to have them signed. You do not need to submit any part of your application to acquire a test signature.
Get It Now is Verizon's brand name for BREW. In order to make your app available, you need to have it tested and signed. You then submit the app to Qualcomm, which makes the app available to carriers. The carriers then choose which apps they want to carry.
I hope you will correct these mistakes in your article. Thanks.
-Mark
You can always turn your phone off.
Or leave it at home.
Sheesh.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
You could have saved yourself some hassle installing all the different toolkits. Just download Sun ONE Studio 4 update 1, Mobile Edition, its completely free (as in beer), and is a great integrated development environment (about 20MB download). All the tools, emulators and demos from the article are bundled. Since last week I'm running it under RH Linux 7.2, with 512mb of ram (YOU NEED LOTS OF RAM!!!). Took just one minute from skipping the regestration screen to stepping through the worm game in the debugger (I always love the game worm/snake/nibbles in all its incarnations, and the demo version provided is beautifully programmed - simple but object-oriented and multi-threaded in a tiny amount of code).
'Be the change you want to see in the world' - Al Gore
I just found this yesterday: http://www.chesseverywhere.com
It allows you to connect to a chess server to play people.
While using the phone to manipulate pieces is slow (don't try playing any blitz without a good amount of increments) it's pretty mindblowing that I can play chess in realtime with someone across the world on my phone.
First off, if you are serious about developing for J2ME, you should get the Sun WTK (which is free), or perhaps the JBuilder personal edition + MobileSet (also free).
Creating JARs and JADs by hand is a pain in the ass. One should build with ant, and use a JAR creation task such as JADCreator or the tool from Stampy soft (whose name escapes me at the moment). JBuilder Professional will also build JARs for you.
Moving on to the T720; it has problems. Networking is seriously screwed, and there are reports among developers of bugs such as: your JAR not working if the size is an even multiple of 100 bytes. While it is cool that you can do OTA downloading, the real deal is to load apps via the serial cable using Midway. Unfortunatly, the only way to do this is to be a developer, and convince Motorola to flash your phone with the correct ROM version. It also blows that you cannot view output from the phone via the serial cable using Hyperterminal; the i95CL does allow this, which is vital for debugging on the actual device.
Lastly, the Brew issue: development companies love the very things the author despises (well, not the $1500 for the dev kit). If you are shipping product on J2ME, and actually plan on making money, you have to deal with the complete lack of adequate billing solutions (and each carrier does things differently, and has a volumnious documentation describing what you need to do to work with them). Brew takes care of this for you, which is a big plus.
Doesn't the GSM coverage suck in US? At least in LA and NYC..
Slashdot community, please notice: I am looking for a girlfriend.
Nave H. Weiss
You have the honour of receiving a message from the holy NaveWeiss. Please read it carefully, try to understand it and do what it said.
Message begins:
WHY do you write this crap? Don't you see it's ANNOYING to see trolling stuff like that??? You should be ASHAMED of yourself!!!
Now SHUT UP and get me a girlfriend!
Message ends. Thank you for your using the NaveWeiss Advanced Coaching Services.
Slashdot community, please notice: I am looking for a girlfriend.
Nave H. Weiss
The author has already updated his article to take into account my criticisms. I thank him for that.
You are a BAD PERSON! Why do you treat me this way? Repent!
Slashdot community, please notice: I am looking for a girlfriend.
Nave H. Weiss
I think J2ME is a good idea because platform independency is very important for cell phones. Performance is also quite important for games. All current J2ME phones seem to use a interpreter based VM, because a Just-in-Time compiler is too complex for a phone. What about network-side just-in-time compilation ? You could get nice speed and platform independency. The WAP gateway already compiles the ASCII based WML into a smaller and easier to render binary format. Why shouldn't it also compile J2ME midlets ? With caching that shouldn't require too much performance.
Jan
You'd think someone so anti-MSFT would have done his little programs under linux.
Although I smell a troll, unfortunately most of the SDKs and emulators are only available for Windows at the moment. You could develop on a linux box, if you installed the extra java APIs I guess, but it's pointless if you can't run the app (unless you're gifted with the ability to write 100% error-free code, blind)...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
You just don't get it, do you? Do you think the web would have succeeded in its early days if it had required proprietary and expensive tools and signed deployment modules? There were any number of such schemes pre-HTTP/HTML but they all failed because the barriers to entry were too large. It took non-obfuscated HTML code and open sourced servers to create the impetus for our current boom in distributed systems. Creating a similar boom in distributed mobile applications will require a similar open access paradigm.
Da Blog
Sun's J2ME Wireless Toolkit is available for Linux and includes an emulator, so Linux is fine for MIDlet development. I do almost all my MIDlet development under Linux, only occasionally loading up the old Windows box to check my MIDlet on other emulators.
There are important reasons for the differences between BREW and J2ME, and BREW solves many problems that J2ME does not. As others have said, some of these are extremely important to carriers and professional software development companies:
- J2ME performance is very slow compared to BREW native code
- Most J2ME implementations are also very limited in total code size in the JAR, and available heap space to work with at runtime. It's a bit frustrating, b/c the current limits are typically just below the threshold for "toy app". If they were even 2-3x what they are now certain types of more complex apps would become possible, but I expect the next release of J2ME to increase the JAR and heap limitations significantly, so this is more of a temporary gripe.
- There are significant limitations in the current J2ME APIs that restrict multimedia capabilities. E.g., can't create a new Image out of an array of pixel values, so you're left with blitting around bitmaps loaded from the jar or the net. This means no 3d graphics, among other things
- J2ME implementations change from phone to phone, many manufacturers add custom multimedia extensions to get around the restriction above, but this makes it hard to build certain types of apps and deploy widely (often a business relationship is required w/ the phone manufacturer or carrier to get access to their extended APIs.)
- There is no standard download model for J2ME (this is very important to carriers)
- There is no standard billing model for J2ME. This is extremely important for carriers and software producers, and is one of the main reasons for Qualcomm's centralized control of the certification process, and the download/billing infrastructure. It is proprietary, but provides many important things (billing, versioning, test-downloads for free that expire, etc.) that in the J2ME world keep getting reinvented for each separate carrier, if they get implemented at all.
- I know that paying for apps is not as "nice" as free downloadable applets, but it's the only thing that creates a real market of real apps. How many companies are selling java applets that run inside web browsers? How many java applets do you download and use from the web, in your day-to-day computer usage? NTT DoCoMo implemented their own custom certification and billing process for their version of J2ME called "i-Mode", and it led to the incredible explosion of the cell phone market there. You pay incremental monthly billing charges for your apps, but it has driven the "coolest" market for phone technology in the world, both for cell phone software and hardwrae. It is fun and cheap to have really cool stuff on your phone in Japan, because companies can make a lot of money with small billing charges in a mass market.
- In a certain sense, BREW can be thought of as trying to replicate the market and business model of NTT DoCoMo, but using their own custom native-code platform instead of J2ME. The carrier gets a small cut (~10%), Qualcomm gets a small cut (~10%), and the developer gets most of the money (~80%). I believe these numbers change some from carrier to carrier. But this type of billing market I believe is necessary to duplicate the kind of explosion that happened in Japan.
On the flip side, I concede what I think are some of the major points in the author's article:
- BREW is proprietary, controlled by Qualcomm. There are pluses and minuses to this, I'm not looking to start a religious war. Personally, I prefer open-source standards. Business-wise, it has been very helpful for companies that Qualcomm controls the BREW standard and the software infrastructure that supports the business model.
- The development tools are harder to come by. Either pay $1500 for ARM tools, or do some extra legwork to get GCC to compile correctly for BREW apps. There is no widespread community for support yet, outside the companies who have started developing for BREW.
- You can't upload your own code to the phone outside of the Qualcomm/carrier download model, and the certification process typically costs in the low $1000s of dollars per app, so this completely closes out the geek hobbyist development market. This is very lame. I'm not buying a cell phone until I can: 1) develop in native code for it, 2) upload the code to the phone on my own.
Some things in the argument were overstated or perhaps misunderstood:
- You don't have to submit source code for your application. In the case of a library (not app), you have to submit the source code for a unit-test program that exercises the functionality of your library in all of the various use-cases.
I develop both for BREW and J2ME, native-code is very important to me for application speed (multimedia, 3d). I have been very happy with BREW as a platform and have found it better to work with than J2ME in almost every regard. However, it is too closed and expensive for hobbyist at-home use, a major downside, and not an option for open-source development. Also, there is some chance that the next few revs of J2ME will fix many of its current drawbacks and the terms of this debate will be reversed.
Emulate it baby, yesss!
Rowr!
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
I've now decided which cell phone I will be getting after christmas. Well, not that particular model, but I will be using a J2ME phone, and not another platform. Makes more sense since I know Java already, yes?
Question
http://www.ironfroggy.com/
Its funny that this was posted now. I'm a software engineer for Motorola. We just had "Motocoder" day this week. They had a bunch of presentations about how "the customer" can develop BREW and J2ME apps for our phones.
I didn't go because I hate Java and I'm not really a fan of the T720 either. I'd rather that you went out and bought my product -- a C33x from Cingular or T-Mobile. It doesn't have J2ME yet, though. But, that's one of the reasons it isn't so expensive...
Anyway, if you were interested, you could check out Motorola's official information about developing apps.
Sprint PCS seems to be the first to offer an unlimited data transfer plan (PCS Vision).
:)
:)
Yes, that's unlimited data transfer. Download all the apps you want, run network-enabled J2ME apps, browse the web, as long as you want! This is significant because it raises the incentive for running these phone based apps.
What's interesting is that they're marketing a distinction between their voice and data services - other providers, AT&T, Verizon, TMobile, etc. don't make as clear of a distinction between the two, nor are they setting themselves up to be viewed as a wireless *information* provider, rather than traditional wireless voice services.
I can't wait to trade in my phone for a Samsung A500 or an LG5350.
No, I'm not a sprint employee. I was just blown away with the possibilities presented by unlimited wireless data services!
browse the web, as long as you want!
You make it sound like surfing with the browswer on your phone is a fun activity. I don't know about you, but I cringe every time I fire that thing up. Its slow as hell, and there's no good pr0n! The only thing that I've found it useful for is stock quotes, weather info, and movie listings -- and that stuff only takes seconds to look up. Its worthless for serious surfing.
With all the developers and programmrs that subscribe to slashdot i was hoping someone would develop an application that would aalow u to install J2ME on Brew phones...
The Wireless Toolkit from Sun here. I use it and it's pretty cool, and there's a version for Linux and Solaris also. It bundles the MIDP and CLDC packages referenced in this article. It makes the whole .jad and MANIFEST file management a snap. And it's also free!
... is whot bwings os tugevza tsuzay.
Does anyone know if J2ME supports sound? And if so does this phone's implementation? By some strange coincidence I just bought one of these phones yesterday. Got the T720e (European? Enhanced?) on Orange which is set up for J2ME. Anyway the point being all the games I've tried are silent. This makes the sense from the "not annoying the heck out of other people" perspective, but I might want sound for my own pleasure:-)
Most of the sites that people have made for Sprint phones to allow you to download ringers and such for free (because Sprint started out charging for them, too) will also work with Verizon phones that have downloadable ringers. Same thing with a lot of the software that's out there, and such.
As far as the battery life goes, turn GPS Location off.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Actually, you can't turn aGPS off. You can limit it to 911 calls, which is the default.
rm
Sci-Fi Storm
I just updated my J2ME web page with more images, better formatting, clarifications, and a new section: "RESPONSE TO FEEDBACK REGARDING THIS PAGE" (I give my opinions on some of the major issues raised in this thread).
I liked the post "Someone give him a coconut" regarding my amazing discovery that using a cell phone gives you freedom to be mobile! I also liked the observation that the ability to be called at any time is not necessarily a "freedom". "I Galactus Laugh at you puny earthling," is just what I wanted to hear! "(Score: 0)", pretty harsh! I bet Galactus isn't feeling the love here. (Ms. Cleo voice:) "I'm seein' intergalactic invasion possibly, by the Moon card!"
When I discovered that my obscure post to a mailing list got promoted to a discussion thread on Slashdot, I felt a little bit guilty for presenting such a specific and brief cell phone programming experience. But to be honest I was only really interested in presenting a kind of "proof of concept" for complete newbies. Showing an actual popular cell phone model, and the exact steps I took, may make the concept very real for people. Frankly I was confused by all of the development software and the wacky error messages on my cell phone before I got everything to work.
Thanks for the nice feedback. I'm glad something I worked on appealed to other people.
I'd not rush out to get a T720 myself. Having developed for it for several months now, I can safely say that it is buggy, slow and clunky (IMO). The Nokia 7650 is better, but you can't do much with any of the J2ME phones (i.e. sound, addressbook) until MIDP2.0 comes out - give it 'till late 2003...
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"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind" - Gandhi