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Asked: 2026-05-11T15:23:46+00:00

Recently I started developing a J2ME app prototype. I noticed how difficult it is

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Recently I started developing a J2ME app prototype. I noticed how difficult it is to develop a good looking UI. Consider developing an app in J2ME for booking flights interacting with webservice.

A website to book flights will be easy to develop with nice ui and can be accessed by browser on a handset. I understand not all handsets have browser but all the new and upcoming ones have browser and have big screen as well.

Is it a good idea to develop such a application in j2me which need to talk to webservice for it to work? Or j2me is only suitable for standalone apps?

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  1. Advantages of J2ME:

    • Can access phone resources, like file system, phone book and GPS. The last is very important in map applications.
    • You can build richer User Interfaces. It may be difficult as you say, but there are many GUI libraries that could assist you. On the contrary the UI for a mobile browser (you can’t rely on CSS and javascript working) would be very poor.
    • Greater flexibility on the communication logic. You can encrypt/decrypt data, compress them, use SOAP web services. With the browser, your best bet would be to develop REST services.

    Disadvantages of J2ME:

    • Midlets need to be signed. This has some cost and there are situations that even a signed app won’t run properly in specific phones.
    • Developing a midlet to run in all types of phones is a nightmare. On the contrary, a well designed mobile web application would be displayed properly in all recent phones.
    • You need to have a channel for distributing your application. People would need to download it and get charged for the required bandwidth. You would need to care for angry customers having problems with the application. Things are easier with a web site.
    • J2ME apps are inevitably compared with native applications (iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian). Compared to these, they are very poor and many would find that paying for them or even using them isn’t justified.

    My conclusion: Nowadays real smart phones are becoming more popular and win an ever growing market share. Under these circumstances, the advantages of J2ME can’t really overcome its restrictions. The only exception I could think of, is if to have to develop a GPS application. For all other cases, a mobile web site is a better idea.

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