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).
I’d like to develop for as many phones as possible without locking myself into a specific manufacturer/platform (if possible). It looks like the article covers developing for J2ME/MDIP, so it should cover any MDIP compliant device.
It looks like WAP is the lowest common denominator: it works on the most platforms, though it is as limiting as HTML3.01 or earlier. Most if not almost all of your processing has to be done on the server side. This isn’t particularly bad, thought I do have a place in my heart for tightly written compact code that gets the job done. I think developing for J2ME/MDIP is probably a good idea, though it looks like Nokia has a well designed SDK, and MDIP is in there.
I’d like to urge developers to stay away from vendor-specific extensions as much as possible. Ideally, you would be able to write code that would work on both Motorola, Nokia, and other platforms. I haven’t done any coding for MDIP phones, so I’m not sure that this is the case. I know that some java-enabled phones have more features than others, so it would be bad to limit higher end phones to lower end features. However, do your best to “degrade gracefully” for lesser platforms.
I plan to work in J2ME/MDIP in the near future, and I will blog whatever I find out.