Finding a decent MIDP 2.0 phone

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6 comments, last by Ravuya 17 years, 7 months ago
I'm trying to pick between these resellers of phones where I am: Fido (GSM, generally unlocked) Bell (1X/CDMA, generally locked down: I can't send MP3s to my test Moto E815 over Bluetooth, so I doubt unsigned code will fare much better) Telus (Terrible customer support, probably locked down) Obviously I've got a semi-bad situation going here. I can't find a single Series 60 phone -- is there a phone from this list that's halfway decent for game development? I was kind of leaning towards the SLVR L2, but it looks like it's too slow to handle a lot of stuff. I don't want to do what I did last time, and buy a phone with Bluetooth+Java support only to find the Java support is crippled and slow. I don't care about: - MP3 playback (although a plus) - Camera quality - GSM vs. CDMA vs. stupid other proprietary radio formats I do care about: - Bluetooth - Java - The ability to send JARs to my handset with Bluetooth or a link cable and then be able to actually run them on the phone. - Price: If it's more than $300 after a 36-month plan, then I'll just buy a damn GP2X. Any tips on this would be much appreciated. I really like personal experience. I'll probably start researching by looking at jbenchmark's high score list.
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Based on rudimentary comparisons, I'm leaning towards the Nokia 6126 ($100, Fido) or the Samsung SGH-D407 ($75, Fido).

I'll probably end up getting the 6126 unless someone can convince me otherwise.
Watch out for those Samsung phones. Many of them only allow application installation over the air (their way of doing DRM I guess).

shmoove
Good tip. I've never owned a Samsung phone before.
Don't touch the Samsungs unless you *really* have to. You need very weird bluetooth drivers to install JARs and they are horrible phones to work with. Sony Ericssons are very nice phones for development of games and some of the newer Nokias are pretty good too.
i have slvr l7. yea its a bit slow for games, but i have a lot of nice games on it :) installing is very easy, i just connect with cable, copy jars to phone mmc and install from phone. i think sony ericsson should be what you want, they can look on other phones dirs with bluetooth too(and take games from it), they even run almost all games from other phones. i personaly like nokia n70 or s60 series, but they are too expensive to me :(
Sony Ericssons are definitely great for development. One of the sweetest features is that on-device debugging support is trivial.

shmoove

EDIT: Of course, I (and I imagine the posters above) mean the newer SE phones (K700 and newer). Since you want Bluetooth API, that's a given. Because the older ones (T610 and friends) were just horrible.
Yes, my current phone is a T610. I bought it for Bluetooth, only to find that the fact that the phone was ludicrously expensive was no guarantee of the quality of its Java implementation. MIDP 1.0, *SLOW* MIDP 1.0, no sound, no rumble, no Bluetooth, jack shit, crappy keypad.

They also seem to be leaving North America; you'll notice from my three provided lists of phones that there are only a few S-E phones, although the Z520a certainly looks tempting!

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