Primarily I will be blogging about my new initiative to upgrade my mobile application development skills to keep up with the Joneses. You see, back in 2001 I began developing stuff in J2ME and have done so ever since, but the world spins at a bloody fast pace and this year I have felt like I have fallen off.

I was one of those VERY early adopters of Java for mobile phones, having started with tools such as Whiteboard SDK, MIDP 1.01 and the like. I even got my hands on a Motorola iDen i85s from a mate at Motorola Labs in Sydney (this phone is now a museum piece) so that I could run Java apps on an actual device as opposed to an extremely buggy emulator.

In 2002 I predicted that Java for mobile phones was going to be the future. Not all would have agreed (deluded Qualcomm BREW people for example). When I attempted to buy Nokia’s first Java handset (the 6230i) from a Sydney Telstra store, the pimply kid – ahem – salesman told me “Java, that’s just a gimmick. Now you really want THIS phone <points me to other device that I don’t want>”. Still, a billion Java phones later I reckon I was right.

Recently I have felt that despite their best efforts, Sun has failed to move to the next level with J2Me. It’s reaching the end of it’s road. Perhaps the mobile apps and games market has simply grown up and there are sweeping winds of change. So it’s time for me to grow up too.

First decision: which platform to move to. There appears to be 3 main contenders here:

1. Apple iPhone SDK
2. Google Android
3. Symbian

The winner for me was surprisingly obvious: Android. Here’s why:

1. Symbian? No, forget it. Not cool enough by half.
2. iPhone? hmmm, C based. I haven’t written a line of code in C since Data Org class at UNSW in 1998.
3. Android is Java-based. So am I.
4. iPhone is limited in distribution. Yes yes, I know, 2 billion apps downloaded…I don’t care. iPhone’s OS and platform will always be limited by the fact it only runs on one set of devices: Apple’s. It is the same thing that limits Mac OS from ever being as widely used as Windows. Those who use iPhone’s love them and download heaps of content, but they will soon be swamped in number by more open platforms that are just as good if not better.
5. Android will be that platform swamps iPhone. Mark my words, it will happen. Not in 2010, maybe not in 2011, but by 2012 it will be dominant. It will also run into many of the same fragmentation problems that plagued J2ME, but with the benefit of hindsight Google can be prepared for that.

So Android it is, and my adventures in learning Android will be told for young and old.