Before iPhone and Android, just about every phone with a color display had a reasonably compatible Java ME subset, and there was an entire industry of mass produced applets sold at prices from $1 to $10 in vast numbers paid via premium text messages with special fields that all Java ME phones recognized as App download links.

The compatibility issues and fragmentation was on par with the fragmentation between x86 PCs with Windows, experienced developers knew mostly by heart which features to avoid when going for maximum portability.

As with PCs, there were a few dud models that were fatally broken, such as my old LG flipphone, which lacked one file by mistake and never received a firmware update.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]