15 July 2010

Nokia Opening Its Java Runtime Under Terms
Of Symbian Foundation's Eclipse Public License

If you here for a long enough than you already well aware that I am not huge fan of java applications, or to be precise MIDlets. Apart from the stone-age user interface and general slowness, the most annoying issue are endless, annoying and worthless security prompts!

Ironically most of the phone users don’t even understand what the heck the prompts are saying and confirms all of them without thinking twice whether they really know it's safe to do so or not.

However, it's also important to say that Java is deployed on more than 2 billion devices. It is s the most wide-spread mobile runtime in the world ensuring the best market reach for developers and widest selection of mobile services and solutions for consumers and enterprises and and therefore Nokia will continue to support Java despite its plans to port QT to S60 platform and offer it as it’s own cross platform solution.

Nokia contributed the Mobile Runtime for Java™ Applications (JRT) to the Symbian Foundation and it is already available in the latest Symbian^3 PDK. This means that developers can write Java applications for Symbian^3 devices, like the recently announced Nokia N8.

More importantly, the JRT is now open source so the community can modify and add to the JRT implementation under the terms of the Symbian Foundation’s EPL license.

The contribution of JRT to the Symbian Foundation is a huge milestone for fans of the Java language, and a great opportunity to take control of the future of mobile Java development. Whether you want to add an API or develop a new open source VM, JRT is your opportunity to get involved. You can find out more about JRT, join the package mailing list and get involved by visiting the JRT project page.

The JRT contribution is compatible with shipping Symbian devices and fully supports the Symbian^3 feature set, including hardware accelerated graphics. The contribution of JRT includes the following open source API implementations:

• JSR 118 MIDP 2.1
• JSR 139 Connected, Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) 1.1
• JSR 248 Mobile Service Architecture Subset for CLDC 1.0
• JSR135 Mobile Media API 1.2
• JSR 177 Security and Trust Services API for J2ME™ 1.0 (SATSA-APDU package)
• JSR 177 Security and Trust Services API for J2ME™ 1.0 (SATSA-CRYPTO package)
• JSR 177 Security and Trust Services API for J2ME™ 1.0 (SATSA-PKI package)
• JSR 179 Location API for J2ME™ 1.0.1
• JSR 184 Mobile 3D Graphics API for J2ME™ 1.1
• JSR205 Wireless Messaging API 2.0
• JSR 226 Scalable 2D Vector Graphics API for J2ME™ 1.1
• JSR 234 Advanced Multimedia Supplements 1.1 (audio3d)
• JSR 234 Advanced Multimedia Supplements 1.1 (music)
• JSR 256 Mobile Sensor API 1.2
• JSR 75 FileConnection and PIM API 1.0
• JSR 82 Java™ APIs for Bluetooth 1.1
• Nokia UI API 1.4
• IAP Info API

JRT also uses an implementation of the open source eSWT UI API 1.0.3 from the Eclipse  eRCP project. The Virtual Machine has been provided to the Symbian Foundation by IBM under a separate license allowing it to be used for research and development purposes and for Java application development.

The JRT contribution consists of one million lines of Java and C++ source code for the runtime, application installer and API libraries as well as test cases and documentation. It is designed to be highly portable to other platforms, has a simple native extension mechanism for adding new APIs and provides a firm baseline for introducing MIDP 3 functionality.

A development roadmap has been created for JRT where you can see the features that are being worked on, and opportunities for contribution. We also welcome new an innovative contributions, so if you have something in mind please get in touch.

---

http://betalabs.nokia.com/apps/java-runtime-for-Symbian

---