Java Reference
In-Depth Information
like mobile offices; and I've yet to go to a funeral where someone's mobile
doesn't ring during the eulogy. It's fashionable to talk about people being
more 'connected', as I did above, but a world full of people with iPods
and earphones can feel like an increasingly isolated one. Even our basic
standards of interaction are affected - people think nothing of sending
text messages while talking to you and the legalities involved with using
evidence from mobile phones are still being ironed out.
On the positive side though, the plethora of lifestyle applications and
services available on mobile phones now definitely makes life a lot more
interesting. GPS and navigation applications make it hard to get lost in
most places in the world and you can send goodnight kisses to your kids
via MMS fromwherever you end up! Messaging is by nature asynchronous
so you don't haveto deal with inter-personal communication immediately
any more, which allows you to manage your time better. And if you have
a two-hour train trip to work why not listen to a podcast on some topic of
interest instead of reading the newspaper?
I was thinking the other day about the phrase 'Information is power'
and about mobile phones, games, Symbian OS, business applications,
Nokia, the future, mobile phones (again), robots, Linux and just general
technology. As sometimes happens, I had an acronym attack and real-
ized that information is indeed POWER because it affords us Pleasure,
Opportunity, Wealth, Experience and Reputation. To me, this acronym
spells out five very good reasons to start learning Java ME today. If you're
not yet convinced, stick with me, since the rest of this chapter, and
the topic, considers the use of Java technology, specifically the Java ME
platform, as the candidate to address the growing hardware diversity and
the challenges of the future.
1.3 Meet the Host - Symbian OS
Symbian OS is a market-leading, open operating system for mobile
phones. Cumulative sales of Symbian smartphones reached 226 million
units worldwide in June 2008. By the end of that month, more than 250
different models of smartphone had been created by handset manufactur-
ers licensing Symbian OS; eight handset vendors, including the world's
five leading vendors, were shipping 159 mobile phone models.
5
On 24 June 2008, the Symbian Foundation was announced
6
and,
at the time of writing, it is on track to create an open and complete
mobile software platform, which will be available for free, enabling
the whole mobile ecosystem to accelerate innovation. The Symbian
Foundation provides, manages and unifies Symbian OS, S60, MOAP(S)
and UIQ for its members.
It
is committed to moving the platform
5
www.symbian.com/about/fast.asp
6
www.symbian.com/news/pr/2008/pr200810018.asp
