Building Apps for Motorola Cell Phone

Question

I have an L6 phone from motorola, a usb cable to connect it to my computer, and the Tools for Phones software so I can do things like upload my own custom ringtones or download pictures from the phone's camera.

I have some ideas for programs I'd like to run on the phone, and it supports java, but I don't see anything in the software that I have for uploading them. Even if they did, I wouldn't know where to get started.

Does anyone have any info on how to get started building apps for this or similar phones?

Answer 1

Perhaps Motorola's own site

link

Answer 2

Yeah, the act of asking the question pointed me in the direction of an answer, and I found this:
https://developer.motorola.com/docstools/motodevstudio/
I could still use some pointers from someone of what to expect if anyone has done this before.

Answer 3

I've never used Morotolla's SDK but from my limited work in JME the real hook in the 3rd party tools are the emulators. Setting up a JME dev environment quickly is something that Sun got surprisingly right. Just get NetBeans with the JME pack and there is a regular emulator right in the IDE, and then you can hook in other proprietary emulators such as those from Motorolla.

Not sure what kind of apps you are looking to do, but if you're interested in games I thought Beginning Mobile Phone Game Programming was a great starting point:

Answer 4

I have not used the new Motorola development studio, because my experience with Motorola's development tools has not been a joyous one. When working with Motorola devices I tend to stick to the standard emulator (or sometimes the Sony Ericsson emulators as those are the best I have worked with by far).

The problem with Motorola's tools is that I always seemed to spend way too much time trying to figure out how to work around them. I would run into emulator specific issues and bugs, and I honestly don't have time to waste trying to figure out why the application runs on the target device but crashes on the emulator. It should be the opposite.

A good emulator is very important for mobile development though as that is where you will do 90% of your development, testing and tweaking, only periodically trying it out on the phone.

Finally, I agree with bpapa...Netbeans is an excellent IDE for J2ME development and here is a book that I recommend (get the original if possible, not the second edition as the second edition focuses way too much on MIDP 2.0 and assumes you know the basics).

http://www.amazon.com/J2ME-Game-Programming-Development/dp/1592001181/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221692983&sr=1-3