Amazon.co.uk Review
Developed by a consortium of several major mobile-telephone manufacturers and licensed by nearly all the others, the Symbian OS seems likely to be the operating system running on the next generation of mobile communications devices.
Wireless Java for Symbian Devices explains why the Java programming language is similarly likely to appeal to programmers tasked with providing services to users of Symbian devices. This book is a guide for competent Java programmers who need to know how Java works under Symbian, and want to learn by working through some illustrative examples (beginning with Hello World and working up in complexity from there).
The authors--who work for Symbian--do a good job of revealing their environment's capabilities, and leave their readers feeling prepared to dive in and do less academic development work. Code samples and class diagrams help clarify systems' workings, and explanatory prose is generally lucid. Helpfully, the authors go beyond mere explanation of APIs and show how to build full applications, including a multi-user card game and a chat-and-whiteboard tool. As with any emerging technology, though, readers may wonder how the examples will pan out outside the emulator, in a production environment. Only time and experience will tell. For now, this book represents a good value for people who want to scope out Java's behaviour under the Symbian OS before the combination goes big-time. --David Wall
Topics covered: how to program applications in Java for execution under Symbian OS version 6.0 (both the Quartz and Crystal implementations are dealt with). Sections address the JavaPhone APIs, Java Services and the special security and efficiency requirements of mobile software.
Review
"...aimed at developers who are creating Java applications for Symbian OS phones and other constrained devices." (SciTech Book News, Vol. 25, No. 4, December 2001)
"you should find space on your Java bookshelf for this book." (Wireless Developers Network, 16 April 2002)
"...a readable document, even for beginners..." (Forum Nokia, 6 March 2003)
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