The fact that Sony Ericsson, my former employer, is about to launch a JSR248-capable handset is starting to sink in to the blogosphere. For example, this is what Disruptive Wireless is writing:
SonyEricsson Z750: first-to-market featurephone with Naked SIP?
So it’s nice to see that Sony Ericsson’s newly-announced Z750 and indeed its new variant of its Java platform, supports MSA JSR-248, an “umbrella” Java extension intended to be a new standard, which includes JSR-180 as one of its mandatory components when implemented in its “full” rather than “subset” version. This line in the press release is quite telling when it comes to SIP-enabled applications “Java Platform 8 (JP-8), supporting a range of new Java programming features including instant messaging / chat and presence based functionality”
Why is this so important? And what’s a “JSR”?
JSR stands for Java Specification Request as defined by the Java Community Process. It is a standardized API for java applications, enabling certain functionalities for a developer. For example, there’s JSR135 which makes it possible to playback multimedia content on the phone.
JSR 248 is an umbrella JSR which the entire industry (more or less) is behind. That means all the functionality in all the JSRs within JSR248 will be available in many phones that have java the coming years. Considering that there are over a billion devices on the market with java, it’s easy to understand that JSR 248 will have a major impact.
Within JSR 248 there are APIs for building location aware applications, SIP phones, vector graphics GUIs, FM radio management, security, SIM-card access, payment and internationalization to name a few.
Sony Ericsson phones also have the possibility to set a midlet as a standby application making it possible to build widgets running in the background on your phone. Add to that the OpenGL-ES API and Sensor API and it’s becoming difficult to tell the difference between a feature phone and a smartphone.
Sony Ericsson is first, but JSR 248 will become an important building block for the mobile web throughout the mobile phone industry.
It will be disruptive in deed.
And then there’s MIDP3…
Technorati Tags: JSR 248, J2ME Java ME, mobile services architecture