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Free Development Systems for Cell Phones?

mongoose(!no) asks: "Does anyone know of a free development environment for cellular phones? Right now, my phone has support for Qualcomm's BREW. Qualcomm offers a free SDK, to develop applications. However, to put the application on a phone, it costs $400 to become a BREW authorized developer. I am in the market for a new cell phone and am looking for one I could write applications on. Smart phones running Palm, and Windows CE are too expensive for my budget. Do I have any options or am I pretty much locked out of writing software for my cell pone?"

3 of 20 comments (clear)

  1. Audiovox SMT5600 by tongue · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I know you said Windows smartphones were out of your budget, but if you're up for changing providers, Amazon is offering the Audiovox SMT5600 for $25. I own this phone and i love it. not only can you develop applications in any of win32-CE, .Net Compact Framework, or J2ME, but it also offers most of the functionality of a pda and MP3 player in a tight package. The phone is only slightly larger than my ericsson t610 was.

    its totally open to develop apps on too--you don't need any of that crappy developer signing BS to put your apps on it.

    if that's out of the question, then the best advice i have for you is stay away from verizon and tmobile--both of them required belonging to developer programs beyond the budget of the casual developer, at least when i was using them.

  2. Re:Cell phone SDKs by jm92956n · · Score: 1, Insightful

    And the little script-kiddie (or perhaps his more advanced older brother) wants to write a FREE virus for the phone, too.

    No, probably not: that scenario isn't very plausible, but I suspect Samsung is wary of potential malicious threats. "Samsung publishes interface specifications" wouldn't even make a 10-page deep headline; "Samsung phones are susceptible to a new phone virus" would be big news, and that could seriously harm them.

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  3. Treo 600 on contract in UK is £100 by Cato · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Subject says it all really - as long as you have a monthly contract on Orange of £15-20 or so (less than US$30-40) the Treo 600 is just £100 ($180), which is pretty cheap for a smartphone.

    Palm has free as in beer and speech development kits (GCC toolchain) and free emulators, so you could even develop for Treo without having a Treo, though it would be harder to ensure it really worked well on Treo and you'd need one for final testing and support.