Comments on: Mobile Phones for Music, Built in Java/Processing

By: alexislli

alexislli — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 11:38:25 +0000

In the http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/ad2/ there is double tap to zoom in on the New York Times–not multi-touch finger spread zoom? Where is it?

http://www.pspconverter.com/iphone_converter/

By: bluderfok

bluderfok — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 06:06:26 +0000

I am wondering now how to play games and create music tunes on iPhone with its lovely multi-touch screen device

http://www.mp4-converter.net/iphone-converter/

By: M-.-n

M-.-n — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:49:02 +0000

and I forgot in the wish list:

!! A SDK !! :)

The difficulties in getting homebrew running is a major point. That’s why I’m not even considering porting LGPT to the PSP for example. When consume your free time in writing application, the last thing you wanna do is struggle with dumb plateform issues.

By: M-.-n

M-.-n — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:45:30 +0000

I’m not too much gaggin for the ‘phone’ part.

I’d rather have a dumb 10$ cell phone for talking and a small-ish powerful device to write exciting apps that won’t ring. With that respect, the GP2X is a *blast*, I still can’t believe how much power I get out of it.

I think my perfect machine at this point would be the bastard child of the GP2x and DS:

+ Power and open-friendlyness of the 2X
+ Nice 320×240 of the 2X
+ Linux on board for remote telnet/samba
+ Wi-fi
+ Touch screen from DS
+ 200 euros price tag.
+ Before some mention some tablet/pocket pc:
it needs the knobs too.

As Extra:

+ The DS’s dual screen for extra clarity
+ Twice the power (so I can start cramming
more algorithms in the piggy)

I tried to mate mine but they don’t see too attracted to each other :(

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 03:46:38 +0000

Oh, yeah … and I never did get to fully appreciate the Beatnik technology, developed by a startup led by Thomas Dolby, that powers MIDI phones … I don’t know how much of that is actually left in modern phones, though I know it had an impact.

Some phones now have pretty high-performance CPUs. I think sometimes they bog down because of poor bloatware running on them — possibly just memory consumption. I’ve seen exactly the same hardware perform radically differently. Some here probably know more than I do, though…

I’d love to have a totally open phone platform.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 19:57:26 +0000

well most cell phones have a general midi synth that shouldnt use much cpu to drive.. i think I would be interested in a decent sketch pad that could export midi from songs made with that..

By: M-.-n

M-.-n — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:28:57 +0000

Thanks for the fix.. good to know there’s an opening there. what about the amout of processing you can do ? All cell phonezee I’ve seen so far are dead slow even for their regular usage (sending message, accessing the phone book). Hi end nokias have bell and whistles but still browsing the photos is a pain in the butt. Is there anything worthwile there ?

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:04:33 +0000

Interesting to hear, divbyzero … which provider would you say is better? Both Sprint and AT&T/Cingular appear reasonably open.

I found Verizon really closed in general and dumped them, finally — especially when they stopped supporting phone-as-modem features they actually pitched *to me* when I went with them. (And that’s a case where the closed/open thing will be painfully obvious even to a fairly average consumer.)

By: divbyzero

divbyzero — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:50:02 +0000

A reasonably featureful real-world J2ME application (i.e., Java for mobile phones) I’m currently developing for my day job clocks in at 800 kb total memory usage. Yes, thats kilo, not mega. Obviously if they’re trying to support devices with noticably limited hardware, they’re going to optimize the runtime a heck of a lot more than the desktop version.

The available APIs are fairly limited, but not necessarily prohibitively. If your phone supports the right optional media APIs, you should be able to run a nice little toy MIDI sequencer on the go. I’d write one for myself in a heartbeat, but my personal phone is on the Verizon network (USA), which is, for all intents and purposes, completely closed to independent developers.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:06:57 +0000

Java applications most definitely don’t need to use 100MB, but what you’re seeing is Java’s biggest problem — the massively bloated JRE. The good news is, the Java community seems finally to be waking up to just what a big problem this is. I think you’ll see a much better “consumer” JRE as soon as early 2008, and the OpenJDK initiative is likely to mean people will start working on open source development initiatives that address some of the other issues. Even now, there are ways around that.

Mobile is going to be a completely different story — it’s designed to be small. You don’t get direct access to the hardware, necessarily, but you get a lot. I don’t think cell phones are every likely to be serious music tools, but you ought to be able to do *something* with them. :)

And I agree … buttons are great!