J2ME rocks!

I must be the last person on this planet to get a java-enabled cell phone. After years struggling with my "roaming" Sprint phone (bad reception both at work and at our house), I finally gave it up and got a black Motorola Razr v3 from Cingular. The phone itself is ok, some would say fashionable, but I am more interested in playing with its J2ME capabilities.

Armed with nothing more than the razr, Google Local for mobile, and unlimited download plan (signed up for Cingular's $4.99 1Mb/month plan, which came with unlimited download for the first month), we set off to the concrete jungle that is Southern California, over the Thanksgiving weekend. Even with the small screen, the slow speed of GPRS (too bad razr doesn't support EDGE), the pain-in-the-neck input method, overall I'm really impressed with J2ME in general, and GLM in particular. It took some preparation and patience with finding directions using a cellphone, but I got through the spiderweb freeway system of So Cal without ever looking at a real map. And with the help of google search itself (just go to url to google.com), I was even able to find some really nice authentic chinese restaurants (thanks chowhounds). If you have a cellphone that supports J2ME and internet downloads, you should definitely try this out.

Ok, it's not J2ME itself that's so great, it's what google is doing with it that's really cool. Time to roll up my sleeves and write my own killer app in J2ME. :)