Mobile Application Development Analysis (Android and Others)

I came across this technical document on the web that does a good job evaluating four major mobile application development platforms: J2ME, BRWE, Symbian, and Android.

One missing here is Windows Mobile of course.

From the report:

Technical Features:

The technical features and specifications for Android are as follows:

· Handset layouts: The platform is adaptable to both larger, VGA devices and more traditional smart phone layouts.

· Connectivity: Android supports a wide variety of connectivity technologies including Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G, and WiFi.

· Messaging: Both SMS and MMS are available forms of messaging including threaded text messaging.

· Web browser: The web browser available in Android is based off of the open-source Web Kit application framework.

· Java virtual machine: Software written in Java can be compiled into Dalvik byte codes and executed in the Dalvik virtual machine, which is a specialized VM implementation designed for mobile device use, although not technically a standard Java Virtual Machine.

· Media support: Android will support advanced audio/video/still media formats such as MPEG-4, H.264, MP3, and AAC.

Device Support:

Recently announced by the Open Handset Alliance, whose 34 members include Google, HTC, Motorola, Qualcomm, and T-Mobile, Android is a new Linux-based platform currently available only as a developer pre-release. Although it does not yet have any fielded implementations, its support by 34 major software, hardware and telecoms companies makes it likely that it will be rapidly adopted from 2008. Android application environment is J2me CDC and thus SUN CDC emulator and J2ME Java for personal profile applies can use Net Beans and Eclipse IDEs.

Looking for a in-depth analysis of the Android OS ...