For beginning development, key points to remember are memory size, processing power, screen capabilities and wireless network characteristics. These all play an important part in development of a MIDlet. The specifications listed above are designed to work upon devices that have these characteristics.
Network conditions would only apply for networked applications such as streaming tickers, email clients, etc.
In addition to the specifications, an array of tools are available to assist the development cycle. These range from the command line tools provided with Software Development Kits (SDK) from Sun (as of writing 1.4.1_04) to Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) which can be free or purchased. These IDEs come from a range of sources such as Sun, IBM, Metrowerks and Borland to name a few.
In addition to the IDEs and Sun SDK for development, Motorola offers access to our own SDK which contains Motorola device emulators. From here, a MIDlet can be built and then deployed onto an emulated target series of handsets. This will enable debugging and validation of the MIDlet before deployment to a real, physical series of handsets. The latest Motorola SDK can be downloaded from the MOTOCODER website.
Please refer to the product specifications at the back of this guide for detailed information on each series of handsets.
