[stevejanko]

Hi All

Before I start, This is not meant as a rant. I am an avid Nokia fan and believe it of not I even enjoy J2ME development (Masochistic as it may seem).

My interest is in developing software that is to be used in the bussiness environment. Among the applications I have developed are Ordering, Quoting, Invoicing, Time Keeping, Courier ......

All of the above applications run on Nokia Series 40 and 60 devices except for the Courier System as it requires a touch screen for signatures.

All were developed using J2ME.

Scenario:

From past experience, you do not always get GPRS, 3G or HSDPA coverage wherever you may be, so you can not rely on internet coverage 100% of the time, therefore I download a stock file to the phone and put it into a recordstore.

Last week I had a request to store 8500 records into the record store. I did not think that would be a problem until I tried it. Of the 8500 record only 5403 were stored (using a N95 1GB). This really bothered me, so I took a different approach to storing the data. I rewrote my application to download all the records into 1 concatenated record in the record store and rewrote my search function to accomodate this. It actually works quite well (On N95 And E61, I will be testing a 6300 tomorrow and after testing on a 6680 I am not optimistic).

This is where the problem begins: As developers we can not dictate to our customers as to which phones they must use (one of the best selling points thus far is - you already own the hardware, why not make use of it?)

My aim is to develop J2ME applications that run (Stock Standard) on as many mobile phones as possible e.g most of the above mentioned applications run on Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and even on certain Windows Mobile devices.

Obviously we can not expect applications that use variable amounts of data to run on all devices if the phone is expected to store large amounts of data, but the N95 1GB version has far more than the capacity to store more than 1.2 MB of data, so why can it not be used?

In addition to the above, a question that I have asked many times is, When will we be able to use the phone's camera as a barcode reader using J2ME. Yes I know about JSR257, but other than the 6131NFC no other Nokia phones support it - When will a Nokia Series 60 phone that supports JSR257 be available?

As I've mentioned in previous posts Certificates (For which there appear to be no GLOBAL standards) and the "Sandbox" are also issues - I have taken Harti's advice and emailed jcp.org - but guess what no one has answered the mail. Surely the guys that develop the jsr's should look at forums such as this one to get a better understanding of what developers needs are and exactly where the stumbling blocks currently are (just count the number of posts regarding certificates, getting a devices cell phone number,IMEI code etc.., accessing SMS in the inbox etc..).

To sum up:

If Mobile Phones are to be percieved as serious bussiness tools, the development environments (and limitations) have to be looked at sooner rather than later. Features such as a real database engine need to be included. Manufacturers that are part of the "J2ME Alliance" need to start ensuring that if an application is built for model x phone, it will run on their model x phone (without any modification) otherwise what is the point of Standards. If a device has the hardware to perform a task please let us make use of it.

Otherwise what's the point of continuing ...

Regards
Steve

[hartti]

Thanks for your comments Steve.

You have encountered the same issue as many other developers before you, that the Java ME field is fragmented (different APIs, various amounts of memory, different processing power, different screen resolutions, etc.)
Even though there are a couple of JSRs, which are trying to remove the fragmentation (JSR-185 = JTWI, and JSR-248 = MSA) there is still a lot of variation allowed in Java ME implementations.

Unfortunately I cannot comment on the Nokia roadmap question you posted. Although you should note that JSR-257 is not part of the MSA API set. Hence, I do not see it appearing on many devices any time soon.

Also note that the 6131 NFC supports only the RFID part of the JSR-257, the barcode reading packages are not implemented on that phone.

Hartti

[stevejanko]

Hi Hartii

Thanks for the response. Also thanks for the info on the 6131 NFC I was contemplating buying one to test the barcode reading capabilities.

Regards
Steve