A Look at Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless

An anonymous reader writes "Qualcomm's BREW is proving an increasingly addictive end-to-end wireless development solution, although it does come with a hitch. In this month's Roaming charges, Larry Loeb chats with the folks at Qualcomm about the pros and cons of the company's security certification system, then taste tests BREW's highly caffeinated code for himself."

Comments

brew is nice..

[gl4ss]

..if you want a preview of the 'secure computing' future.

seriously, if you're small time or considering doing it for free, or as a hobby, it's not an option. neither is it a real option for inhouse stuff. neither is it fit for something you'd like people from all over the world to use.

if you want to target just their system with just their rules, it's ok. but remember, it's mostly tuned to make _them_ money. and makes doing tiny niche apps a bit stupid because whats the point when burocracy takes more time than writing the app itself.

well, can't speak firsthand because it's not available here, nor will it ever be, nor would I touch it without someone paying me a hefty sum to do it(j2me is plenty powerful for that type of apps anyways and brew doesn't really stand up to something like series60..).

is it time to wake up and smell the brew?

[museumpeace]

I have plenty of out-of-date Java experience so I subscribed to Sony's developer news 2 minutes after I saw the Java logo pop up on my new Sony/Ericsson T610. The cost of the SDK with interface h/w for the Sony platform is a bit out of hobbiest range. and I hear bad things about bluetooth security holes. Is this my next chance to write the killer app? That Sony is now obsolete and never had CDMA anyway so now I got TWO reasons to buy a new cell phone. Anybody got a pretty printer..the sample code is wrapped ugly. and its C code! great! I have even more C experience and its even more out of date. OK, brew sdk is a free download,...this is gonna be fun. BTW, go read the article then follow link to an article on porting games from J2ME to Brew

Re:is it time to wake up and smell the brew?

[gl4ss]

**The cost of the SDK with interface h/w for the Sony platform is a bit out of hobbiest range.**

sorry but, wtf you mean with that, the mophun sdk or what? why wouldn't you just surf to http://developer.sonyericsson.com/
and download the j2me sdk, then have your first j2me program done in under a hour? for free, and upload the program to the phone through whatever free means you'd like?

in short: HOW CAN _FREE_ BE OUT OF HOBBIEST RANGE?

Re:is it time to wake up and smell the brew?

[Jahf]

You (and the submitter) make it sound like BREW is something new and until recently unheard of.

BREW has been on cellphones about as long as J2ME has been on cellphones.

Last time I went shopping I found a phone (maybe a V60) that, on the manufacturer's website claimed both BREW and J2ME ... BUT when you talked to the carriers they only enabled one or the other (and strangely to me, AT&T was one that carried J2ME, but with only CDMA you couldn't load your own J2ME apps ...).

I took a look at the license for both and decided that the reason I was interested in either was to do my own app development playground, and I liked the low cost of doing so with J2ME. Maybe I missed something, but BREW was awfully restrictive.

Of course, shortly thereafter I moved to an area that doesn't even get CDMA, much less GSM, so I decided it didn't matter since I didn't want to drive 30 minutes one-way to test the apps :)

Anyway, back to the point, BREW is not new and has definite licensing (and probably platfrom support) disadvantages compared to J2ME.

Re:is it time to wake up and smell the brew?

[sethstorm]

Well, some people dont care for the sandbox that goes along with J2ME, let alone the delivery methods. That's one reason some go to Symbian based phones, since there is a cost but not the clear premise of avarice ala BREW. Also, you dont have to deal with the code possibly being somewhere else. It's on the phone.

Re:is it time to wake up and smell the brew?

[museumpeace]

You're right. I forgot what put me off about the Sony/Ericsson developer support. Part of it was they didn't handle MIDP2 back when I looked into it and part of it was the $500/$2500 membership if you wanted to be a developer who actually got your questions answered. I just checked the Java support page and see that they do handle MIDP2 nowadays...I should stay tuned or shut up.

Re:is it time to wake up and smell the brew?

[gl4ss]

midp2 doesn't give you that much advantages over midp1 for it to be crucial(and the gameapi implementations leave a lot to be desired too, so you're better off writing your own most of the time).

also, if you just mess around with the device for couple of weeks you'll get a lot more for your "money"(for your time) than if you just paid someone to answer some silly questions.

and for those(silly questions) there's always irc, hop on to #j2me on ircnet or #mobitopia on freenode or some other channels and get most stuff you would need the support for answered(or pointers to). or just ask around on the dozen or so developer forums.

only thing that might be worth paying for would be lists of some obscure bugs, j2me basic libraries being so few anyways that they're easy to master.

Brew is a crock

[Anonymous Coward]

It comes from the old school model where you treat your customers like idiots and finely control what they get access to. The goal is total control over your experience. Once you get to see what is actually published (try the Get-It-Now menu if you have Verizon Wireless), you will see the most pathetic collection of applications I have ever witnessed. Most have no demo, have very poor descriptions of what they actually do, have a pathetic frame rate, or make you blink at the price. Here are some fine examples I have seen:

• An action/flying game with one frame every two seconds
• A tip calculator that is an exact duplicate of one already in my phone (the apps are certified by phone model - what you get to pick is based on your phone model)
• A motorbike driving game where I didn't touch a key for two minutes and didn't crash in that whole time
• A XXX game (that action Vin Diesel flick) where after many screens of legal warnings etc it turned into a slightly less pathetic motorbike driving game than above
• A map application that contacted the network every time you scrolled the screen. You could be moving the map corresponding to 20 yards on the ground and it would have to go back to the network (using your minutes of course)

As for all the security the article goes on about, that is also a pile of manure. You can find many tools and web pages online describing how to "backup" your applications and restore them elsewhere.

Re:Brew is a crock

[XO]

As the article says, there are good points and bad points for everything.

Verizon uses BREW because it has a guaranteed quality control process. Verizon also has a very specific guaranteed quality control process that every phone model they let onto their network now will go through. Verizon's semi-official position is "we don't use the same equipment as a lot of other carriers do because that equipment is why those other carriers have such awful networks" .. ie, if the phone sucks, that reflects poorly on the carrier. Right?

It would be nice if someone who would let their phones run J2ME and other open things, would build out a network like Verizon has - but they don't care about the quality of service like Verizon does.

Re:Brew is a crock

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon uses BREW because it has a guaranteed quality control process

The "quality" is only that the application doesn't crash the phone. There is absolutely no quality control over wether the application is any good. I have yet to see one that is.

And the "quality" checking is nonsense as well. As the article states, they use the binary which happens to be ARM code. Ask a computer scientist one day about the halting problem, and if it is possible to check that a program is harmless just by running it and looking at what APIs it uses. (On the other hand the Java bytecode was specifically designed for verification and they still find it hard).

And as for Verizon Wireless' handset quality control, they like you to believe that. In 18 months they did 5 firmware updates for my phone (LG VX4400).

As the debacle over the V710 showed, VZW is more interested in how to squeeze more money out of you, not in giving you better handsets or improving your communication and connectivity experience.

This BREW ain't smellin' good...

[abelikoff]

There are things that are both good and bad about BREW:

• I absolutely hate the BREW API. Consider Windows 2.0 286 edition SDK API. Now castrate it to fit into an embedded O/S - this is pretty much what you get. Forget all you knew about device independent programming: data structures have fixed layout you are supposed to depend upon. Start dealing with bits and bytes. Add on top the compatibility hell between different BREW releases - here you go. J2ME is also an embedded platform but it is lightyears ahead of BREW.
• For those liking the open-source model, BREW is not good news. Forget about distributing your software, as the only distribution channel is controlled by the provider and it is geared toward making money. To get in, one needs to at least certify the program on each applicable phone model/architecture and it costs.
• Now, playing the Devil's advocate. This distribution model actually does spell good news for the developers of commercial software as they significantly limit themselves from pirating and they get rid if that pesky open-source competition eating into their profit.

I am in no position to predict the future but I would like BREW to die a horrible death. I do like the J2ME both from technical point of view and for its open distribution model.