“Wow! Why aren’t you in Windows Mobile?”

This is a question that I’ve been asked every couple of weeks over the last year, as more and more people pop into my office for phone advice.

It’s a short answer, really, but there’s a long telling to get it.

I spent three years in a combination of HDML, WML, BREW, and J2ME, while working for a company that had become an WASP [Wireless Application Service Provider] on a whim. We were in the business of pumping out streaming data to PC’s in the late 90’s and decided – right or wrong – that we should start pumping this data to all types of devices, even thought we had no business plan or model. Make the technology and business will follow!

Via the Web we supported PC’s, Pocket PC’s, Palm-sized PC’s, Handheld PC’s, Palm VII’s, RIM devices, and a myriad of phone styles (via HDML and WML). Via client software, we also offered software on BREW and J2ME devices, as they started to hit the market.

That’s a lot of knowledge and experience, no? So why does Randy shy away from profession mobile positions…

Fear. Pain. Exhaustion. Frustration. And more angst than you could fit in Yankee Stadium. The old one, at that. Ya know the old House. The one with the 80 thousand people capacity or whatever.

First and foremost, the landscape has changed since my last foray into the field… the SmartPhone from MS has hit. Symbian is popular, sorta. So is Linux on the handset, in theory. The VII with Palm.net is gone. RIM is a totally different company now. HDML is long since dead. WML refuses to die, like a patch of crabgrass and remains as attractive.

And then there’s the “Oh, it’s Java! Write once and run on any J2ME device!” myth, which goes hand in hand with the “Oh, it’s BREW! Write once and run on any BREW device!” thought.

What. A Bunch. Of Shit.

Every BREW device has had different screen sizes, soft keys and memory options, not to mention color depth and repainting issues. That always required some tweaking, but for the most part, you could get by with one code base and a bunch of #IFDEF’s. After all, it was C and ugly to code on it’s best day, but still. You could do it.

J2ME is a complete pooch screw, as I’ve lamented here before… every handset maker has it’s own virtual machine for J2ME (called a KVM). Hell, Motorola has three for it’s handset. Not counting the Linux phone, there’s the iDEN phones, the Chinese team [Accompli mostly], and the rest of the Motorola. All of them behaved differently.

See, in J2ME, you request things. You strongly suggest stuff. You never get to tell the KVM what to do… you say “gimmie two soft key menu buttons”, right? Nokia gave you one softkey with a popup menu that had both options. Motorola-iDEN gave you the buttons. Motorola-everyone-else did too, but reversed them from the iDEN phones. Motorola-Accompli had no soft buttons so they would give you on-screen buttons to tap. Samsung was somewhere in the middle.

Want to support the funky vibration API for games and feedback? Only works on phones A, B, and C. Someone got a 8-billion color display? You can’t support it unless you pick up a specific API. Every phone in creation have a different resolution that is supported? Yes! And J2ME offers no built-in support to deal with it.

In short, a nightmare.

Even so, the Window Mobile platform is a bit better than that. Yes, there’s a Pocket PC platform that’s different from a SmartPhone platform, but that’s not such a bad thing: it makes sense to tweak the UI for each device type. One has a touch screen and one doesn’t. One may have a clam-shell or a candy bar format; the other almost never would. The resolution problem exists but can be resolved via the .NET Compact Framework. And since they all use the core language(s), with 80% of the same API, at lot of the same code base can be shared. But still… You’d have to get involved with hardware companies (ow) and carriers (ow!) and all that type of crap (OW! Crap!)… And I haven’t even mentioned that poochscrew here – too much pain involved on multiple continents.

But, for the most part, it’s because of the technology. I’m still into gadgets. I still like cool devices. I just think I’m a little tired by that rat race that is mobile technology. What do I mean by that?

Consider the RAZR. I can promise you that Motorola never expected it to be the overnight hit that it’s become. They may have hoped. They may have thought they had a snappy phone. They never expected it. And once they realized that they had a hit, you saw things like RAZR-BLK, PBLR, ROKR, or whateverthefuck. That was bound to be followed by other competition from other handset makers, right?

Saw this today on PhoneScoop: NEC L1 Beats RAZR At Own Game which points to MobileSite in Italy for a picture and a reference to a Japanese site’s forum posting [what a reliable source that is!] for specifications where you learn that it’s got a camera, GSM coverage, and some other neat features.

All of that for a phone that will never be picked up by a US Carrier meaning that it will never make it to the US shores… except via eBay and $1800, maybe.

Why aren’t you in Mobile, indeed.

I don’t think I’m tired of it all… I just think I’m getting smart enough to pick the battles that have a hope of being fought, much less won…