Beyond Mobile Telephony: Exploring Opportunities for Applications on the Mobile Phone Handset

As mobile phone handsets attain increasing capabilities, we see many more opportunities for novel applications development. These handsets are typically characterized as constrained computing platforms, due to limitations in computing, storage and interface capabilities. Specialized development environments, such as J2ME, allow for crossplatform development that respects these limitations. While it is important to respect these resource constraints, we also want to highlight some of the unique features of mobile phones, such as high quality audio, constant connectivity and comfortable form factor for use as device to interact with the physical world. In this paper, we discuss the J2ME development environment for current mobile phones and demonstrate applications we have developed that respect the resource constraints while simultaneously exploiting the unique features of these commercially available devices. This paper is intended to whet the appetite of potential developers and designers for this important emerging platform. Category of paper relative to this special issue: • Applications, particularly in non-traditional settings • Novel functions for handheld devices • Interaction techniques for small devices • Wireless-phone computing