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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-23T01:14:05+00:00

I am interested in developing apps for feature phones, since a large percentage of

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I am interested in developing apps for feature phones, since a large percentage of mobile phones are feature phones in both developed and developing countries. I have read about the fragmentation issues caused by the various feature phone devices on the market.

I have some questions:

1 . What development tools do I need if I want to develop for most of the various feature phones on the global market?

(I’ve read about vendor-specific tools such as those from Nokia and Samsung, and I’ve also read about the Java ME SDK 3.0. But I don’t know which ones to use in what situations.)

2 . What kind of fragmentation problems will I encounter across vendors (such as Nokia and Samsung), across networks (such as Sprint and T-mobile) and across countries (such as devices and networks in India)?

(I’ve read that vendors may provide extra, vendor-specific APIs for their phones that are not available on other phones. I think I’ve also read somewhere that some networks may not allow third-party apps to be downloaded.)

3 . I’ve read that, in some markets, there are many low-end Chinese and Indian feature phone manufacturers. I don’t think that I can use their vendor-specific tools to develop apps for their phones because of language barrier issues. Would it be best to use generic tools such as the Java ME SDK 3.0?

Essentially, I am interested in developing for developing markets such as India, China, Russia and Brazil (the BRIC countries). What tools should I use when developing for these markets? And what fragmentation issues should I be aware of?

Thank you for your time.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    For feature phones and low-end mobile devices J2ME is the platform to use IMHO.

    If you are worried about device fragmentation I would suggest using J2ME Polish. It is a framework which is really built on top of J2ME. You can detect device capabilities, use pre-processing statements to get around bugs on certain devices, design your MIDlet using CSS and use ant scripts and customized resources and build routines to ensure your application is compatible for the widest number of devices. If your going to be developing for such wide spectrum of places there is also excellent Locale support for different languages.

    I have been using it for a while now and I feel that it really extends what I am capable of developing using J2ME, as it contains a large number of classes and tools that speed development.

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