Best mobile application development tool/environment?

Question

I would like to develop a mobile application that is able to access all the features of the mobile device it runs on (camera, files, phone and network connectivity). I intend to build a series of applications that each have a specific function to perform, rather than a single application with a large feature set. My programming background is C, C# and web applications.

What would be the best tool set to use to do this? I have looked at using the NetBeansIDE to create a Java ME applications using LWUIT - this looks promising, but what are the caveat's?

I want to target the largest universe of mobile devices possible.

Answer 1

If your primary goal is to reach the consumer market, Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) is probably your best bet. All popular mobile phones (from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung) come with a Java Virtual Machine installed. If you look at Google, for example, they are developing all of their mobile applications (like Gmail and Google Maps) in Java.

If you instead are targeting business customers, the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework is the way to go in my opinion. The Windows Mobile operating system holds a strong position in the business market, mainly because of Outlook Mobile and its integration with Exchange.

Answer 2

J2ME is the way to go to reach the masses, in the consumer or the business market. From a consumer standpoint, most of the world's mobile phones support J2ME. From a business standpoint, most of the world's smart phones support J2ME.

Nokia owns a 40% share of the smart phone market (and the whole market) worldwide. Next in line is Blackberry with a 13% share. Both have standard implementations of J2ME on their devices (though Blackberry also has a proprietary version of Java as well). On top of this, most devices that run Windows Mobile come with a JVM as well (I developed a game recently that initially targetted the Sony Ericsson W810i and it ran flawlessly on my HTC Tilt's JVM). Add in the fact that Android has a Java SDK and the only segment you are really missing out on are the BREW only phones and the iPhone.

I'm not a huge backer of J2ME. I just know that every other mobile platform has disappeared from my life over the last 3 years as it just makes financial sense for companies to only target the J2ME segment of the industry.

Answer 3

You are facing the usual main issue of mobile development : targetting as many handsets as possible with only one programming language means using J2ME, which doesn't quite give you access to all the features of the handset.

Most open handsets will support J2ME but different phone manufacturers implement it in different ways and fragmentation is enourmous accross the board. Unfortunately, the majority of open handsets (the ones where you can install third-party applications) only allow you to develop in J2ME

The only good news is that your intent to only write small applications will provide large relief from fragmentation issues.

J2ME also has huge limitations in terms of file system access, complete lack of a telephony API, very poor interaction with the system applications management...

In order to get full features, you always need to use the native technology of the open platform you are targetting, be it Android, iPhone, the several variants of Symbian OS, Brew, Windows Mobile or Palm OS handsets. Each of these has its own native technology.

Writing your application many times in many different languages in the costly price of wanting both a large number of targetted handsets and access to the full features of each of them.

I'm a Symbian/J2ME veteran myself and, given your stated background and goals, I suspect that you are trying to learn about mobile technologies. I'll therefore shamelessly plug my book, which is meant as an introduction into the Symbian development ecosystem : http://developer.symbian.com/quick

Good luck

Answer 4

I respectfully disagree with Fostah.

If you want to reach the masses, the Web is your best bet. It's far easier to write a simple Web application that will work on millions of devices.

And the best bit is that you can easily update your application and improve the user experience everyday with the Web.