[viraptor]

So the released devices have bugs - same thing happened on old feature phones. That's always going to happen - that's how consumer software works. This is not even close to what happened for J2ME.

1. If there was a J2ME bug on a phone, you were stuck with it forever. Only a handful of phones received upgrades and you had to find a specific cable to flash them, so most people never did. With Android you have a chance to receive a fix over the network - that's magic in comparison.

2. You're still using Android libs to write the apps. You're not downloading Samsung SDK which won't work on Asus, or LG SDK which won't work on something else. You're publishing one package, and not one package per phone producer, or even model. Again, magic in comparison.

[pjmlp]

> With Android you have a chance to receive a fix over the network - that's magic in comparison.

Assuming you shelled out money for a Nexus that wasn't canned like the TI one.

All the other OEMs aren't any different from the J2ME days.

All my Android devices got the same amount of updates as the J2ME we used to target, meaning either none or one.

Updated via the desktop software that came with them.

> You're not downloading Samsung SDK

You mean this SDK?

http://developer.samsung.com/sdk-and-tools

Or this one?

https://developer.sony.com/develop/

Or this one?

http://developer.lge.com/resource/mobile/RetrieveOverview.de...

I don't see any difference.

[viraptor]

All of those provide extra functionality. Extra, as in beyond what you would normally need for an app. There are sensors, themes, accessories, etc. They're not available in (for example) non-Samsung devices, so they don't really apply there.

In J2ME you pretty much needed to use custom SDK to play a sound. Or draw a screen fast enough to do scrolling. Or just activate colours at all. I'm talking about things like http://www.j2megame.org/j2meapi/Nokia_UI_API_1_1/ which provided sound and ui canvas.