Sun beams Linux/Java at mobile phones

[eddie]

Source: LinuxDevices

Sun will ship a "pre-integrated," GPL-licensable, Linux- and Java-based operating system software reference design for mobile phones, it announced at its JavaOne conference today in San Francisco. "JavaFX Mobile" targets multimedia-enabled phones, and is the first of several planned media-oriented JavaFX-branded stacks, the company said.

Unlike most Java-enabled phones, which typically rely on the language merely to provide a secure, managed sandbox for user-installed applications, JavaFX Mobile will use Java for almost everything. Whereas the Linux component will consist only of a kernel and "low-level services and libraries," Java will be used in everything from the UI toolkit to telephony and security middleware to user applications such as browsers and media players.

Java is already present on nearly every mobile phone, regardless of OS. However, with JavaFX Mobile, Sun clearly hopes to carve out a bigger space for itself within each mobile phone design.

A FIC mobile phone running Sun's JavaFX Mobile

[Zeeshan Quireshi]

ummm...doesn't it look like the iPhone ?

[gxsaurav]

Whats the point? JAVA runs in a virtual machine which means slow, now if it is a mobile device it means a self contained closed device which cannot be upgraded like a desktop, so better way is to compile the OS according to the Mobile phone for performance, so why run a JAVA OS on a mobile phone in virtual machine? I just don't get the point

JAVA apps are already running fine on Mobile phones.