Mobile App Testing

A few weeks back, guest blogger Anuj Gupta laid out the basics of mobile operating systems and platforms, where he covered Symbian, iPhone, Windows Mobile and RIM OS among others. Here is part II of the article. In this post, Anuj dives into BREW, J2me, Maemo, Limo Qtopia and others.

Anuj is a Creative Writer, Marcom Consultant and a Technology enthusiast with 4+ years of experience in Mobile technologies and Advertising. He undertakes various freelance assignments apart from his job as a marcom executive in an IT firm. Read more of his writings at http://www.techmodish.blogspot.com/.

BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) from Qualcomm

Brew is an application development platform originally developed for CDMA mobile phones, but it also supports GSM  for some devices. It debuted in September 2001 as a software platform. It can download and run small programs for playing games, sending messages, sharing photos, and the like. The main advantage of BREW platforms is that the application developers can easily port their applications between all Qualcomm devices. BREW acts between the application and the wireless device on-chip operating system in order to allow programmers to develop applications without needing to code for system interface or understand wireless applications.

J2me by Sun

Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) is Sun’s version of Java aimed at machines with limited hardware resources such as PDAs, cell phones, and other consumer electronic and embedded devices. J2ME is aimed at machines with as little as 128KB of RAM and with processors a lot less powerful than those used on typical desktop and server machines. J2ME actually consists of a set of profiles. Each profile is defined for a particular type of device — cell phones, PDAs, microwave ovens, etc. — and consists of a minimum set of class libraries required for the particular type of device and a specification of a Java virtual machine required to support the device.

The most common of these are the Mobile Information Device Profile aimed at mobile devices, such as cell phones, and the Personal Profile aimed at consumer products and embedded devices like set-top boxes and PDAs. Profiles are subsets of configurations, of which there are currently two: the Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) and the Connected Device Configuration (CDC).

There are more than 2 billion Java ME enabled mobile phones and PDAs.

Maemo from Nokia

Maemo is a software platform developed by Nokia for smartphones and Internet Tablets. It is based on the Debian operating system.

Maemo is mostly based on open source code, and has been developed by Maemo Devices within Nokia in collaboration with many open source projects such as the Linux kernel, Debian and GNOME.

Maemo is based on Debian GNU/Linux and draws much of its GUI, frameworks and libraries from the GNOME project. It uses the Matchbox window manager and the GTK-based Hildon as its GUI and application framework.

Limo

The LiMo Platform is a software platform for mobile phones and other handheld devices. LiMo is developed by the LiMo Foundation (founded by a group of cellular handset makers and network operators) for handheld devices, and it uses Linux as its operating system. It has a modular plug-in architecture, and supports DRM. LiMo application developers will be able to use SDKs to write managed code running in a Java virtual machine, browser apps for WebKit, and native code.

Orange and Access have licensed LiMo to develop cellular telephone handsets.

Access Linux Platform ALP

ALP is mobile platform developed by Access based on Linux. ACCESS Linux Platform is compliant with the platform requirements of the LiMo Foundation. The LiMo Foundation is an industry consortium dedicated to establishing the first truly open, mobile, Linux-based software platform. The combination of

ACCESS Linux Platform and LiMo compliance enables accelerated design, development and deployment of mobile and Internet-enabled devices.

Qtopia

Qtopia is a platform for embedded Linux devices that provides the end-user with a set of core applications such as PIM applications (Address Book, Calendar and Todo) and a Media Player.

Qtopia provides the developer with a clean object-oriented API to write applications for an embedded device. Most of the API presented to the developer is the same API offered by Trolltech for cross-platform development between Windows, Mac and the UNIX/Linux. The same code can be shared and reused on all of these desktop platforms and now Qtopia is just another platform to run Qt applications.

The Qtopia platform encompasses both the software that runs on an embedded device and the software that runs on an end-user desktop. The software that runs on the desktop, called Qtopia Desktop, allows the user to synchronize their data between the embedded device and the desktop. Qtopia Desktop has built-in versions of the PIM application found in Qtopia. Qtopia Desktop allows developers to write plug-ins to synchronize their information. Please refer to the Qtopia Desktop documentation for more information.

Software Stack: The Qtopia software stack on the embedded device has four main layers as shown in the following image:

WIPI

(Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability) is a middleware platform used in South Korea that allows mobile phones, regardless of manufacturer or carrier, to run applications. Much of WIPI is based on Java, but it also includes the ability to download and run compiled binary applications as well.

The specification was created by the Mobile Platform Special Subcommittee of the Korea Wireless Internet Standardization Forum (KWISF). The South Korean government had enforced that all cellular phones sold in that country include the WIPI platform to avoid inordinate competition between mobile companies, but the policy is withdrawn from April 2009.

Soleus

As the world’s first Microsoft® Windows® Embedded CE-based mobile handset platform, Soleus™ by Intrinsyc is redefining the way mobile handsets are developed and branded. Soleus™ offers a new way to develop consumer phones. Built on the industry leading Windows CE core, Soleus™ utilizes world class development tools, pre-integrated hardware and software, and pre-certification of telephony elements.

Editor’s note: If you would like to contribute posts for mobileapptesting.com, send your articles and ideas to mikeb@utest.com.