I have found that development for Symbian is possible in C++ with Qt, but since its a project that needs to be developed for Symbian+Android, I don’t want to spend time learning C++, since I’m into Java/Android only.
I have downloaded the Symbian SDK from Nokia site, and can make Midlets and test them on a Symbian emulator. But I have doubt that the J2ME library can keep up with Android, and support the same features.
Is there possibly an extended Java SDK for smartphones, or are there other possibilities developing for Symbian with Java?
Also, there is very little information or tutorials for Symbian development, but still it has a big share in smartphone market, which is confusing.
Like @Radu said: don’t bother. Symbian is like a person in the middle of the desert who’s been bitten by a poisonous snake. Technically, he’s not dead yet, but he will be soon, as there’s no help, so he’s practically dead.
Would you develop for Windows 95/98/ME or OS/2 or Mac OS 9? Of course not, unless you had to (i.e. someone’s paying you to). Don’t bother developing for Symbian unless you’re specifically getting paid to.
To answer the question you asked:
J2ME is clunky and missing tons of features. It almost definitely won’t keep pace with Android-Java. In college (fairly recently), I took a mobile design class that used Nokia/Symbian because they were willing to provide free phones to test on (N95s). We used J2ME because the professor didn’t want to learn the Symbian C frameworks (probably a good decision), but J2ME on Symbian is very limited, slow, and very obviously designed for the least common denominator. It’ll be just as different from Android-Java as if you were programming in Symbian C.