14 DAY TRIAL // Sony Ericsson revealed yesterday the successful ingredients of its Java Platform 7.
Sony Ericsson's Java Platform 7 (JP-7) supports a range of Java Specification Requests, including Advanced Multimedia Supplements for enhanced camera and image handling. It is now possible to control the camera exposure, the focus, zoom functionality and the camera's flash from a Java ME-based application as well as rotating the camera image.
The ability to record video and very precisely control frame-by-frame location, allowing the end-user to 'move around' in the video, is also offered by JP-7 based phones. All these capabilities can now be controlled from a Java ME-based application, opening up possibilities for new creative imaging applications from the global third party developer community, benefiting the consumer.
Through new generation hardware with faster CPU, better optimized software supporting floating-point operations and improved critical graphics primitives for 2D and 3D graphics, Sony Ericsson claims the six new Sony Ericsson phones - the K610, K790, K800, W710, W850 and Z710 - based on JP-7 have the best gaming performance on the market.
?With the latest Java Platform 7, Sony Ericsson impressively demonstrates that Java code can be as fast as native; close to 30 frames per second on QVGA even without hardware acceleration. This means we get the best 3D game experience we have ever seen on a mobile phone while simultaneously being able to address a huge Java market and satisfying established sales channels," says Michael Schade, CEO of Fishlabs Entertainment GmbH.
?As a leading 3D mobile games developer, we have chosen Sony Ericsson as our target platform. With over 35 Mobile Java 3D-enabled phones, Sony Ericsson by far has the broadest range of 3D enabled handsets on the market. Additionally, hard to believe but true, we only need one single binary of code to support all handsets. That saves a tremendous amount of time and money, not only on the developer side but operators also need to spend much less work on game verification later on," states Michael Schade of Fishlabs.
Increased memory is now available in the phones (> 5MB heap possible), allowing more graphics heavy and higher quality games to be developed. Sony Ericsson also supports a new, optional control in the JSR-135 Mobile Media API with JP-7. With the so-called 'TempoControl', developers can control the tempo and rate of a MIDI file, typically used as in-game music and sound effects. With this fine grained control developers can create a richer game-playing experience for the user, e.g. by increasing the tempo of the music when danger approaches in a game level or similar.
With JP-7, Sony Ericsson is the first handset manufacturer to introduce support for multiple simultaneously running Java applications in a single virtual machine on mass-market mobile phones.
"In line with Sony Ericsson's strategic intent to make Java ME a viable alternative to an open operating system, we have introduced a MultiVM (multi-tasking virtual machine), making it possible to have several Java MIDlets running on the phone at the same time and switch between them," says Hanz H?ger. "This enables Java-based push e-mail solutions and many other high-value, mobile applications running at the same time as you are playing games, for example. Sony Ericsson's new Java Platform 7 really takes the Java ME technology in mobile phones to new dimensions."