Surviving Java for mobiles

Mobile devices are gaining popularity worldwide, and constant hardware improvement is increasing their computational power every year. So, we can now equip mobile devices with more powerful applications. One of the most promising software platforms for mobile devices is Java 2 Micro Edition. Sun representatives assert that 18 to 20 million mobile phones support the J2ME platform. Analysts predict that within the next few years, this technology will become omnipresent. According to Gartner Group estimates, in 2006, approximately 80 percent of mobile phones will support Java. In our experience in creating applications for Java-enabled mobile devices, we´ve had to deal with several unforeseen problems not typical of desktop Java development projects. Unfortunately, literature on the subject has only fleetingly mentioned most of these problems. Here, we describe some of them and propose our solutions.