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by bjbX 3387 days ago
Every feature phone on the planet used to run Java ME without any problem. Dalvik may have had some optimisations, but to claim Java would have run "crazy slow" is unlikely to be the reason Google chose the implement their own VM.
1 comments
izacus 3387 days ago
JavaME was a total disaster of incompatibilities, lack of any useful API and broken platform support.

The fact that you can use a lot of standard Java libs with Android was and is a huge boon that makes development significantly easier than the hell that was JavaMe.

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pjmlp 3387 days ago
I guess you never had the fun to port Android code among OEMs, using OEM specific SDKs for specific features like real time audio, or work around firmware bugs specially on Samsung devices.

Android fragmentation is no different than J2ME used to be.

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sangnoir 3387 days ago
> Android fragmentation is no different than J2ME used to be

That has to be hyperbole: no one who ported J2ME apps would say what you did with a straight face. Even a run-of-the-mill app with no esoteric features would need to be ported because Nokia's methods had different signatures to SonyEricsson's for text fucking rendering, because why not. The entirety of J2ME an "OEM specific SDK" This is before considering MIDP, CLDC versions and goddamn model-specific processor and memory differences. "Android fragmentation is no different than J2ME used to be" my ass.

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pjmlp 3387 days ago
There was this thing called LWUIT and Sony supported Nokia extensions.

> no one who ported J2ME apps would say what you did with a straight face. > This is before considering MIDP, CLDC versions and goddamn model-specific processor and memory differences. "Android fragmentation is no different than J2ME used to be" my ass.

How is Android any different? Should I start listing differences among devices here?

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izacus 3387 days ago
> Android fragmentation is no different than J2ME used to be.

This is a huge overstatement. J2ME was fragmented in things like basic UI with no tooling to handle it. In Android you really need to dig into hardware-specific funcionality (or really really mess up UI design) to be severely affected by the fragmentation.

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pjmlp 3387 days ago
Try to use the SupportLibrary in Samsung devices, or better yet, check the code for device specific workarounds.
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