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Java ME on Symbian OS
Roy Ben Hayun
With
Sam Mason, Daniel Rocha, and Ivan Litovski, assisted by Sam
Cartwright
Reviewed by
Gavin Arrowsmith, Brendan Donegan, Erik Jacobson,
Martin de Jode, Mark Shackman, Jo Stichbury
Head of Symbian Press
Freddie Gjertsen
Managing Editor
Satu McNabb
A John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., Publication

Java ME on Symbian OS
Inside the Smartphone Model

Copyright  2009 John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester,
West Sussex PO19 8SQ, England
Telephone (+44) 1243 779777
Email (for orders and customer service enquiries): cs-books@wiley.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hayun, Roy Ben.
Java ME on Symbian OS : inside the smartphone model / Roy Ben Hayun, with Sam Mason ... [et al.].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-74318-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Smartphones–Programming. 2. Java (Computer program language)
3. Symbian OS (Computer ﬁle) I. Title.
TK6570.M6H33 2009
005.26’8–dc22
2008053889
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-47074318-8
Typeset in 10/12 Optima by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell & Bain, Glasgow
This book is printed on acid-free paper responsibly manufactured from sustainable forestry
in which at least two trees are planted for each one used for paper production.

Contents
Foreword ix
Kicking Butt with Java Technology on Symbian OS xv
About This Book xvii
Author Biographies xix
Author’s Acknowledgements xxi
Symbian Press Acknowledgements xxiii
Part One: Introduction to Java ME and
Programming Fundamentals 1
1 Introduction to Java ME, Symbian OS and
Smartphones 3
1.1 2003: Rise of the Mobile 3
1.2 2008: Mobile Generation 6
1.3 Meet the Host – Symbian OS 7
1.4 What Is Java? 9
1.5 Java ME 12
1.6 Why Use Java ME on Symbian OS? 17
1.7 Java’s Place in the Sun 21
1.8 Routes to Market 22

vi CONTENTS
1.9 Time for a Facelift 24
1.10 Back to the Future: MSA 2.0 and MIDP 3.0 24
1.11 Summary 26
2 Fundamentals of Java ME MIDP Programming 27
2.1 Introduction to MIDP 27
2.2 Using MIDlets 28
2.3 MIDP Graphical User Interfaces API 34
2.4 Non-GUI APIs in MIDP 56
2.5 MIDP Security Model 59
2.6 Networking and General Connection Framework 69
2.7 Using the Push Registry 78
2.8 MIDP and the JTWI 81
2.9 Mobile Media API 82
2.10 Wireless Messaging API 95
2.11 Symbian OS Java ME Certiﬁcation 100
2.12 Summary 101
Part Two: Java ME on Symbian OS 103
3 Enter Java ME on Symbian OS 105
3.1 Running a MIDlet on a Symbian Smartphone 106
3.2 Which APIs Are Supported? 113
3.3 Proprietary JAD Attributes 122
3.4 Computing Capabilities of Java ME on Symbian OS 123
3.5 Java ME: Exposing the Power of Symbian OS 125
3.6 Tools for Java ME on Symbian OS 131
3.7 Java ME Management on Devices 131
3.8 Crossing to the Native Land of Symbian OS 139
3.9 Finding More Information 145
3.10 Summary 146
4 Handling Diversity 149
4.1 General Approaches to Handling Diversity 150
4.2 Detecting Diversity using Properties 151
4.3 Using Adaptive Code and Flexible Design to
Handle Diversity 153
4.4 Handling JSR Fragmentation 158
4.5 Handling Transitions Between Foreground and
Background 161
4.6 Supporting Diverse Input Mechanisms 162
4.7 Handling Diverse Multimedia Formats and
Protocols 166
4.8 Handling Screen and Display Diversity 169

CONTENTS vii
4.9 A Last Resort: NetBeans Preprocessing 173
4.10 Summary 173
5 Java ME SDKs for Symbian OS 175
5.1 Recommended Tooling Approach for Java ME on
Symbian OS 176
5.2 Generic SDKs: Java ME SDK 3.0 and WTK 2.5.2 177
5.3 SDKs for the S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition
Platforms 178
5.4 SDKs for the UIQ 3 UI Platform 189
5.5 Summary 205
Part Three: MSA, DoJa and MIDP Game
Development 207
6 Designing Advanced Applications with MSA 209
6.1 What Is MSA? 209
6.2 What Can I Do with MSA? 213
6.3 Spicing up Legacy MIDP Applications 222
6.4 Beyond MSA 1.1: MIDP 3.0 and MSA 2.0 227
6.5 MSA and Symbian OS 229
6.6 Summary 230
7 DoJa (Java for FOMA) 231
7.1 In the Beginning. . . 231
7.2 DoJa – the Basics 234
7.3 I Love JAM 238
7.4 DoJa Basic Operations Manual 240
7.5 Eclipsing DoJa 240
7.6 Dirty Hands 243
7.7 A Safe Port 250
7.8 DoJa 5.1 Proﬁle 254
7.9 Summary 264
8 Writing MIDP Games 265
8.1 What Is a Game? 266
8.2 Building a Simple MIDP Game 273
8.3 MIDP 2.0 Game API Core Concepts 279
8.4 Building an Advanced Java Game on Symbian OS 282
8.5 Summary 303

viii CONTENTS
9 Java ME Best Practices 305
9.1 Investing in the User Experience 305
9.2 Good Programming Practices 308
9.3 Streamlining the Deployment and Execution
Lifecycle 322
9.4 General Tips for Symbian OS 325
9.5 Summary 327
Part Four: Under the Hood of Java ME 329
10 Java ME Subsystem Architecture 331
10.1 Java Applications and Symbian OS 331
10.2 Application Management Software 336
10.3 MIDP Push 337
10.4 Mean and Lean Virtual Machine 338
10.5 MIDP Implementation Layer 342
10.6 Handling Asynchronous Symbian OS Operations 346
10.7 Java-level Debugging Support 348
10.8 Performance 349
10.9 Security 350
10.10 Summary 351
11 Integration of Java ME and Native APIs 353
11.1 Importance of Integration with Symbian OS
Services 354
11.2 Types and Levels of Integration 356
11.3 Integration Challenges, Costs and Considerations 357
11.4 Determining the Right Integration Style 358
11.5 Examples of JSR Integration 359
11.6 Summary 384
Appendix A: WidSets 385
Appendix B: SNAP Mobile 411
References 433
Index 435

Foreword
James Coplien
It was great re-discovering through this book just how much of a nerd I
am. Roy’s descriptions and exercises painted amazing pictures in my head
of the internal workings of my own Nokia S60 phone, to the extent that I
unearthed new and useful menus previously invisible to me. While I can’t
promise that every casual reader will ﬁnd this book suitable as a user’s
guide, and while I can’t promise that every programmer will become an
expert user of their own handset by reading the chapters that follow, I can
promise the intent programmer a treasure chest of knowledge not only
for understanding what goes on inside your phone but also for changing
what goes on inside your phone.
Java ME on Symbian OS is a title that sounds like nerd’s heaven – and
it is (though it’s more than that, as I’ll come back to below). Though
the title bears two trade names, the meat of the book proudly displays
its inclusiveness across the market: Sun, Symbian, Nokia, Samsung, LG,
Sony-Ericsson, Motorola . . . It’s the ultimate mash-up. This is a book less
about niche technologies than about a broad phenomenon. It isn’t only
a technological phenomenon but a sociological one; if you don’t view it
that way today, I believe that vision is rapidly approaching tomorrow.
To the everyday programmer, I think this book will open a new
world of wonder, as history has similarly favored our industry several
times in the past. Twenty years ago, someone would have thought
you to be drunk if you asked him to take a picture of you with his
phone. Today we have lost touch with photographic ﬁlm and, to a large
degree, with those ancillary devices called cameras. We used to have a
shelf-full of gadgets for voice dictation on the run, digital photography,
calendar management, and, yes, even communication – all of which are

x FOREWORD
converging on single small, convenient computers that are the brain-
grand-grand-grand-grand-children of Alexander Graham Bell. And those
boxes need software – software such as you will find in this book, along
with guidance for bringing it to life.
It was inevitable that the evolution of consumer programming should
turn to the telephone. I remember the visions of unification of computers
and telephones in the minds of people such as Jerry Johnson back in
Bell Lab in the 1970s. We can now look back at the past 20 years and
conclude that computers’ primary contribution to society has been not
as calculating engines in their own right, but as tiny points on an almost
fully-connected network that ties together most computers in the world.
The phone network is more than just a metaphor for the worldwide web:
it is often its backbone. As the pundits predicted, the intelligence has
evolved out of the network into its periphery, out of its bowels and into
its eyes, ears, and fingers.
The intelligence hasn’t stopped at phones. Next year, Nokia and RWE
are expected to market a box that extends the phone network to control
heating, window shades, and home security cameras. The possibilities are
endless. Programmable phones will replace not only cameras and small
dictation machines, but will reach ever further into both our immediate
and physically remote realities. They have already made a significant
foray into the video game space, taking advantage of advancing display
technology, complementing our newfound connections with reality with
newfound escapes into fantasy. In the not so distant future, these two
worlds may blend and merge. Whereas yesterday’s play was a personal
Tamagotchi and today’s play includes multiple Tamagotchis talking via
an infrared Tamacom protocol, tomorrow will see our phones as a
Tamagotchi interface whereby we feed or clean up after the flesh-and-
blood Fido back home – all with a sequence of a few DTMF tones.
Roy’s book takes us on a journey into a land that is more than
just nerd heaven. The history of computing has drawn more and more
everyday folk into programming. This trend sits squarely in the center
of the vision of people such as Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg: that
computers should be the sidekicks of human beings from early life,
enabling children of all ages to extend their memory and processing
power by manufactured, rather than biological, means. This vision of a
Dynabook – a truly personal computer, an extension of self – includes
information tethered to the outside world as one of its central building
blocks. Because my Dynabook is part of me, I get to program it. Today,
that programming means setting a date on my calendar or setting an
alarm for a meeting. Those humble acts may not entail using Java, but

FOREWORD xi
it’s still programming: as Dan Barstow used to say, ”No matter how
high-level, it’s still programming.” To me, as a C++ programmer, Java
looks almost like a scripting language. And that’s not even an insult.
Java has perhaps finally realized its vision of ubiquitous expression of
general-purpose computation that is portable and intelligible enough that
Everyperson can at least tweak the code. I know that such æsthetics
are difficult to judge from the seat of a professional programmer, but
we can at least say that Java code provides a glimpse of such a world.
Perhaps even my neighbor, the real-estate salesman, could read some of
the code in this book and understand it well enough to play with it. Or
my dentist. Or my banker. None of them are professional programmers.
But each has a computer on his or her desk: a machine which 40 years
ago would have terrified most secretaries, and which still terrifies some
executives today. Machine creatures inhabit more and more of the human
ecosystem.
It’s interesting to note that such programmability has played out not in
desktop phones (yes, they still exist) but in hand-held portable phones.
Why? Perhaps it is because only personal cellular phones are close
enough to our heart – or some other part of our anatomy – to truly be part
of Self. It was a revolution when people who bought the early Ataris and
Amigas discovered that they could actually program them themselves. We
are perhaps on the threshold of a revolution that unleashes more powerful
programming into the hands of what will be over one billion owners of
Symbian OS phones in two or three years. Even if great programmers arise
from only one in a million of these users of small-handheld computers
that take pictures, play games, and even place phone calls, it will be
enough to move the world.
This book, as a nerd’s text, is nonetheless a bold foray into Dynabook
territory. If nothing else, it will make you realize that if you own a
regular personal computer and a mobile phone, that it’s within your
reach – today – to write software that can be an at-hand extension of
yourself any time, anywhere. It is perhaps one small step on the road to a
future vision of even further integration between man and machine. Such
integration must go forward with intense ethical scrutiny and social care;
if we choose such a path, machines can make us even more human,
humane, and social than we are today.
I leave you with a poem which, when published, was wrongly
attributed to me alone. It was written by the attendees at VikingPLoP
2004 as we took the human–computer symbiosis to its limit. Think of
Java ME on Symbian OS as an important step on this journey. Nerds,
children of all ages, and everybody out there: Happy Programming!

xii FOREWORD
Comfortable as blue jeans
She fits.
Part of me, yet not me;
Unplugged: oxygen is her food
And the breeze her power adaptor.
Her identity mine, yet not me:
I put her down, I take her up
like a well-worn wallet plump
with life’s means and memories.
A thin mask worn in life’s play
And both of us are players.
I call her Self; she does not call me User
A curse unique to programmers and other pushers.
I and my computer are one
But we own each other not.
Envision this: my new machine, a soulmate,
With whom I talk in whispers unencumbered by flesh and bone
Software begotten, not made
Of one being with its person.
She hears my voice, and perhaps my thoughts
rather than the drumming of my fingers
that burdened her forebears:
35 calcium levers linking brain to digits,
slow and tired machines of the information age.
Now, mind to mind,
there for tea and sympathy
all day, and our night
minds together process the day,
sharing dreams – yet
She slumbers not, nor sleeps.
An invisible mask the birthright of all humanity;
Her software penned by
My soul
And like my soul, her hardware
Im-mortal, invisible
Us together wise.
Transparent personæ mine, yet not me,
That with me loves, and lives, and walks life’s journey –
A path both real and virtual at once
as only a True and rich life is.

FOREWORD xiii
With me she dies
– our immortality inscribed in
the fabric of the network.
No duality of community here
and Internet there –
The Network is the Com-
munity:
One Web of life.
Jim Coplien
Mørdrup, Denmark
2 July 2008
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James O. Coplien

Kicking Butt with Java Technology on
Symbian OS
Mobile phones have changed the lives of billions of people and it’s
clear that the revolution is just beginning. The quickly evolving world
of mobile technologies is an exciting place for developers to create new
applications to connect people and information.
Java technology has enjoyed dizzying success in just under a decade
in the mobile phone industry. As I write, more than 2.1 billion Java
technology devices are deployed worldwide. At the same time, Symbian
OS dominates the fast-growing smartphone market (with approximately
70%). This book is about the conﬂuence of these two technologies and
how to create your own powerful mobile applications.
Now is a great time to be a mobile developer. You can help shape
the coming landscape of advanced mobile applications by harnessing the
power of both Java technology and Symbian OS. Learn the technologies,
let your imagination run free, and have fun!
Jonathan Knudsen
jonathanknudsen.com
Author of Kicking Butt with MIDP and MSA

About This Book
In 2001, Symbian published its first book devoted to Java on Symbian
OS. Jonathan Allin’s Wireless Java for Symbian Devices provided an
in-depth exposition targeted at programming PersonalJava on Symbian
OS. In 2004, Martin de Jode’s Programming Java 2 Micro Edition on
Symbian OS focused on programming MIDP, particularly MIDP 2.0 on
Symbian OS. This book is the third in the series and there is no longer a
need to explain what Java is. Therefore, the primary goal of this book is
not to teach Java programming but to introduce you specifically to Java
Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) on Symbian OS.
This book covers various topics from different perspectives. Our
approach has been to start with the basics and prerequisites that are
assumed in the rest of the book, then zoom into Java ME on Symbian
OS specifically and then out again to discuss a few key areas of Java ME
development today. We finish the book by delving deep down to expose
what’s happening ’under the hood’.
The book logically divides into four main parts:
1. Introduction to Java ME and programming fundamentals
In Chapter 1, we describe the playground of Java ME on Symbian
OS. It is recommended reading if you are not familiar with Java
ME, Symbian OS or the smartphone industry. Chapter 2 is targeted
at developers with no experience in Java ME. It sets the baseline
information that is a prerequisite for reading the rest of the book,
which assumes a certain level of knowledge of Java programming
and, specifically, Java ME. Chapter 2 deals with the basic concepts
of a MIDlet, LCDUI, MMAPI, and so on.

xviii ABOUT THIS BOOK
2. Java ME on Symbian OS
Part 2 assumes you are familiar with Java ME but are interested
in learning about the Java ME platform hosted on Symbian OS.
Chapter 3 explains what makes Java ME on Symbian OS different
from other Java ME platforms; what makes it more powerful; and
what else is unique to Symbian smartphones. Chapter 4 provides
guidelines on how to handle differences between different Symbian
smartphones. Chapter 5 provides an overview of development SDKs
for Java ME on Symbian OS.
3. Drill down into MSA, DoJa and MIDP game development
Part 3 expands the discussion into various key areas of Java ME
development. We show how to leverage the power of MSA, give
an introduction to how Java evolved very differently in the Japanese
market, provide a glimpse of games development and equip you with
best practices for your next application.
4. Under the hood of Java ME
In Part 4, we reveal information that has rarely been exposed before.
Chapter 10 explains the internal architecture of the Java ME subsys-
tem as a Symbian OS component and Chapter 11 explains how Java
ME on Symbian OS is tightly integrated with the native services.
Appendix A introduces WidSets which is a run-time environment that
makes use of the Java language and the Java ME platform. Appendix B
introduces SNAP Mobile for game developers.
This book contains a number of web addresses. If any of them are bro-
ken, please consult the wiki page for this book at developer.symbian.com/
javameonsymbianos to ﬁnd the updated location.
We welcome beginners and professionals, third-party application
developers and OEM developers working inside Symbian OS. Whether
you’re just starting out in the exciting world of mobile development, want
to learn Java ME or just like reading interesting stuff, this book is a mix of
different topics that combine in the same way as a dish full of spices.

Author Biographies
Roy Ben Hayun
Roy Ben Hayun has more than 10 years’ experience in various Java
technologies in various software engineering roles: engineer, consultant,
team lead, tech lead, and architect. He started his career in Lotus IBM,
working on JDK 1.1.8, and then became a founding member of eMikolo
networks, which pioneered P2P in the early days of Project JXTA. He later
worked in various roles in other startup companies in Java SE, Java ME and
Java EE. From 2002 until the end of 2007, he worked for Symbian, mostly
in the Java group working on the design and implementation of JSRs and
CLDC-HI VM tools support. In his last year at Symbian, he worked in the
team supporting developers, during which time he authored a number of
technical articles and white papers about run-time environments.
After JavaOne 2007, Roy joined Sun Microsystems. He is currently
working as a system architect in the Engineering Services group, which
leads the development, marketing and productizing of Java ME CLDC
and CDC on various platforms.
Ivan Litovski
Ivan joined Symbian in 2002, working ﬁrst in the Java Team and later with
the System Libraries, Persistent Data Services and Product Creation Tools
teams. Ivan has 11 years of professional experience with Java, embedded
software, information security, networking, scalable servers and Internet
protocols. He enjoys solving difﬁcult problems and research and devel-
opment. He has authored several patents and papers in peer-reviewed,

xx AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
international journals. He holds a BSc in Electronics and Telecommuni-
cations from the University of Nis, Serbia and is an Accredited Symbian
Developer.
Sam Mason
Sam spent about two years working on a Java-based, multi-lingual,
video-on-demand system for SingTel and other Asia-Paciﬁc Economic
Cooperation (APEC) telecommunications agencies. He has spent most of
the last four years working with and learning about mobile phone tech-
nologies, while picking up a couple of Java certiﬁcates and completing a
Master of Information Technology (Autonomous Systems) at the Univer-
sity of New South Wales along the way. He was a contributing author
to Games on Symbian OS, writing the chapters on Java ME development
and DoJa. He is an Accredited Symbian Developer.
Daniel Rocha
Daniel is a software engineer with 10 years’ experience in application
development, having worked with web (Perl, ASP, PHP, JavaScript, JSP,
Flash), enterprise (Java EE) and mobile software (Symbian C++, Java ME,
Flash Lite, Python). He currently works as a Forum Nokia Technology
Expert.

Author’s Acknowledgements
I feel vividly that this project was an amazing experience, primarily
because of the people involved. I am blessed that there are so many
people to thank – editors, contributing authors, reviewers, test readers
and colleagues.
Two of the people whom I had the honor to be guided by, Jo Stichbury
and Jim Coplien, I met for the first time on the same day. The place was
the ACCU conference in 2006 and the idea of writing the next book about
Java ME for Symbian OS was too embryonic to be called ’an idea‘. Jo
Stichbury (who had just returned from Nokia to Symbian) knew from her
own authoring experience how to deliver a book from start to finish, and
I am thankful for her personal guidance, her professionalism and wisdom
as a technical editor, which has always managed to find the right solution
at any time and on any matter.
I am also thankful for meeting Jim Coplien, a truly visionary guy. Full
of passion, equipped with his one-of-a-kind way of thinking, he has that
rare long memory into the past of software engineering and a vision into
the future of what will come out of all that we are currently doing.
I am also in debt to the wonderful people who have contributed from
their knowledge and experience: Ivan Litovski, Sam Mason and Daniel
Rocha. Ivan has been a great friend from day one in the Java group at
Symbian, and is a reviewer and contributing author to this book. Sam
is a passionate mobile expert and the founder of Mobile Intelligence in
Australia. I have been lucky enough to work with Sam on this book and to
meet and become friends at JavaOne 2008. Daniel has constantly given
this project wonderful support and his contributions, from his viewpoint
inside Forum Nokia, have been invaluable. He came to the rescue on
many occasions, and I’m truly appreciative of his hard work and energy.

xxii AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’d also like to thank Mark Shackman for the pleasure of working
with him during my four and a half years in Symbian. I am grateful for
his constant insistence on the build up of logical arguments and perfect
phrasing. Mark always delivers, and he manages to get the best out of
hundreds (by now probably thousands!) of embryonic articles and book
chapters.
Thanks also to Martin de Jode for his valuable comments from his own
experience in writing the second book in this series and much gratitude
to Satu McNabb for her support and for always being there to help.
I’d also like to acknowledge:
• the people at John Wiley & Sons for working with us on this book
with their high standards of professionalism and quality
• my current group, Engineering Services in CSG, Sun Microsystems,
which had the ability to see the future of Java from the remote distance
of the 1990s and leads the way towards the next generation of Java
technologies
• the Java group in Symbian, of which I had the pleasure to be a member
during most of my time in London
• the Developers’ Consulting team and the Developer Product Market-
ing team in Symbian
• the many people who took time and patience to read all the sugges-
tions and ideas that were yet to become chapters: Arnon Klein, Assaf
Yavnai, Yevgeny (Eugene) Jorov, Jonathan Knudsen, Tomas Brandalik,
Erik Hellman, Per Revesjö, Magnus Helgstrand, Lars Lundqvist, David
Mery, and Emil Andreas Siemes
• my parents and sister and all of my friends.
Finally, this book is for my friend, partner and wife – Gabi – and our
wonderful, beloved children, Noa and Ariel.
For being blessed with everything that has happened and the things
that are yet to happen.
I hope you will enjoy reading this book.

Symbian Press Acknowledgements
Symbian Press would like to thank Roy, Sam and Daniel for the hard
work and energy they’ve put into this book. Roy piloted this project with
particular passion, and the results you hold before you are testament to
his efforts and those he inspired in his co-authors. We were privileged
indeed to put together such a team of talented writers and developers,
and they in turn were fortunate to be able to draw on an extensive and
experienced support crew, including Sam Cartwright, Martin de Jode,
Ivan Litovski and Mark Shackman.
We’d like to thank everyone involved in writing and reviewing the
text of this book and in helping prepare the ﬁnal manuscript. As usual,
we’re grateful to the Wiley team (Birgit, Colleen and Claire), and to Sally
Tickner and Shena Deuchars.
In particular, Jo would like to thank Antony and Bruce for supporting
the completion of this title.

Part One
Introduction to Java ME and
Programming Fundamentals

1
Introduction to Java ME, Symbian OS
and Smartphones
Symbian OS is the operating system that powers more than 70% of
smartphones worldwide. In addition to providing one of the industry’s
most powerful native platforms for after-market applications, Symbian OS
pushes the boundary further by allowing third-party software developers
to work with a wide variety of mobile technologies including Symbian
C++, Flash Lite, Python, POSIX-compliant C and, of course, Java ME – the
focus of this book.
The Symbian OS ecosystem has ﬂourished over the last decade and,
like any success story, is made up of many parts. Handset manufacturers,
such as Nokia, use Symbian OS as the foundation stone of their user-
interface platforms. In Japan alone, Symbian OS powers over 30 million
phones that use NTT DoCoMo’s MOAP platform. The latest version,
Symbian OS v9, is used in almost all of Nokia’s famous Nseries (feature-
focused) and Eseries (business-focused) devices.
In this chapter, we explore the Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME)
technologies and see how they are uniquely positioned to address the
on-going mobile phone software revolution. We start with a look at
recent history, follow with a brief discussion of the Java language itself,
the composition of Java ME and the beneﬁts it inherits from Symbian OS.
Finally, we wrap up with a look at the mobile phone market and get a
glimpse of what the future holds.
1.1 2003: Rise of the Mobile
One of the problems with turning points in history is that they’re often
only apparent in retrospect. Don’t expect to see Monday 16 June 2003
in any documentary about days that changed the world because it’s
not there – I checked. However, by the end of that day, a startling new

4 INTRODUCTION TO JAVA ME, SYMBIAN OS AND SMARTPHONES
concept in mobile device hardware had been released, ushering in an
era of exponential progress in mobile computing.
On that rather special Monday, Nokia released a completely new type
of mobile phone. The Nokia 6600 was the most advanced mobile phone
anyone had seen, and it is still remembered today as a clear indication
of where the future was headed. It had a large, 16-bit color screen,
a four-way joystick for navigation and games, and a VGA, 640 × 480
camera for video recording and photography. The phone was a 2.5 G,
Internet-enabled GPRS phone running Symbian OS v7.0 s with 6 MB of
memory for storage, 3 MB RAM and had Bluetooth wireless technology
connectivity. It was also easy to use and looked great at the time (it looks
like a bit of brick today, as you can see from Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1 Nokia 6600
This new device was clearly going to cause quite a stir, so the
Nokia marketing team came up with a special phrase just for the
launch – something that was prophetic and sounded really cool: Image is
Power.
Less important at the time but far more relevant to us today, the Nokia
6600 was the first mobile phone to come with the very latest in Java
technology – the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) 2.0, which
had recently been finalized. Java ME was already dominating the mobile
software market; it was about to take a huge leap forward and the Nokia
6600 was the springboard. Even today, I keep my Nokia 6600 in a special
place and consider it with reverence.
In 2003, while the rest of the software industry was dragging itself out
of the Dot-com Bust, the constrained-device development sector was at
the start of a vertical rise. Hundreds of business applications had already
been written and shipped in expectation of an amazing shift in the way
people did business. The momentum for mobile hardware and software

2003: RISE OF THE MOBILE 5
built over the years following the release of the Psion Organiser 1 in
1984 and, by 2003, millions of portable information devices had sold
around the world. These included pagers, iPods and generic MP3 players,
personal organizers (both the original handheld computers and the latest
PDAs), Game & Watch1 devices and, of course, mobile phones.
People were getting busier and more ‘connected’. Business was becom-
ing more demanding, requiring decisions faster, for higher stakes, and
24 hours per day. It was an exciting time and mobile technology, it
seemed, had all the answers. Except that it didn’t work out that way.
What the oracles didn’t predict was that while there would be a
worldwide explosion in the use of mobile phones, they would largely be
used to send text messages, buy ringtones and wallpapers, and take photos
or video. People didn’t buy them to do business after all. They bought
them as personal statements and as fashion accessories. They bought
them as a convenient communications device. They also bought games.
Quite a lot of games, actually. Thousands of titles were developed and
sold directly to the public or shipped on devices. The market for mobile
phone games quadrupled between 2002 and 2003 and it is estimated that
over 50 million phones that allow after-market game installation were
shipped in 2002 alone.
Fast forward five years to 2007 and there are nearly three billion mobile
phone subscribers worldwide.2
The mobile phone has now become the
personal information accessory of choice – everyone is ‘texting’ using
appalling new pseudo-grammars (wch is gr8 if u cn do it), crowded buses
sound like call centers, the mobile games market has exploded into the
public eye with huge titles, such as The Sims 2,3 and in many parts of
the world a new kind of digital life has emerged and become the norm.
The newest devices are a far cry from the Nokia 6600. January 2007 saw
the iPhone launched into the marketplace, followed closely by the Nokia
N95 in March of the same year with the slogan ‘It’s what computers have
become‘. In October 2008, the T-Mobile G1 became the first smartphone
to use the Android platform. Clearly innovation and demand caused
many changes in just those five years!
Let’s look at some of the figures to put this into perspective – in 2007,
mobile handset annual sales exceeded 1 billion units for the first time.
That means that more than 2.7 million phones were sold each day.
Moreover, sales of Nokia handsets alone in 2007 were larger than the
entire industry in 2001 and 2002! Figure 1.2 charts annual sales and
shows how the market almost tripled over a six-year period, with an
annual growth rate of nearly 20%.
1 If you missed the 1980s, find out about the Game & Watch craze at en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Game %26 Watch
2
Global cell phone penetration reached 50% in November 2007, according to
www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSL2917209520071129
3 www.thesims2.com

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
00
200,000
Sales
(000s)
400,000
600,000
800,000
1,000,000
1,200,000
Nokia Motorola Siemens Samsung Sony Ericsson LG Others
Figure 1.2 Annual number of devices sold4
Add ﬁve more years and it is 2012. At current growth rates, it is
estimated that smartphones will comprise nearly 30% of the market
(compared to 10% in 2007) and that subscriber levels worldwide will
reach 3.5 billion. Just think about that number – we can’t really conceive
ﬁgures like this in our minds, but this is a really big market. Eight out
of ten devices support some form of Java-based technology – quite an
opportunity for the budding technically-minded entrepreneur. If you sell
every thousandth person a $1 Java ME MIDlet, pretty soon you’ll have
made over $3 million – job done, time to retire.
1.2 2008: Mobile Generation
Our world has changed. Like all great upheavals, the ‘rise of the mobile’
has had both positive and negative effects on us. As a society, we’re
irrevocably addicted to our information devices now. Everywhere we look
we see iPod MP3 players, Tom-Tom personal navigation devices, mass-
market feature phones, smartphones, managers who can’t get off their
Blackberries, people talking while walking, people setting up meetings,
messaging, listening to music, reading, using devices for entertainment,
organization, romance, learning. It goes on and on.
Mobile information devices are the instruments of an unprecedented
wave of fundamental social change. The very basis upon which we inter-
act with each other has suddenly changed without notice and the results
are not necessarily all good. SMS bullying is on the rise; onboard cameras
have changed our expectations of personal privacy; train carriages are
4 java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/javame/mobilemarket

MEET THE HOST – SYMBIAN OS 7
like mobile offices; and I’ve yet to go to a funeral where someone’s mobile
doesn’t ring during the eulogy. It’s fashionable to talk about people being
more ‘connected’, as I did above, but a world full of people with iPods
and earphones can feel like an increasingly isolated one. Even our basic
standards of interaction are affected – people think nothing of sending
text messages while talking to you and the legalities involved with using
evidence from mobile phones are still being ironed out.
On the positive side though, the plethora of lifestyle applications and
services available on mobile phones now definitely makes life a lot more
interesting. GPS and navigation applications make it hard to get lost in
most places in the world and you can send goodnight kisses to your kids
via MMS from wherever you end up! Messaging is by nature asynchronous
so you don’t have to deal with inter-personal communication immediately
any more, which allows you to manage your time better. And if you have
a two-hour train trip to work why not listen to a podcast on some topic of
interest instead of reading the newspaper?
I was thinking the other day about the phrase ‘Information is power’
and about mobile phones, games, Symbian OS, business applications,
Nokia, the future, mobile phones (again), robots, Linux and just general
technology. As sometimes happens, I had an acronym attack and real-
ized that information is indeed POWER because it affords us Pleasure,
Opportunity, Wealth, Experience and Reputation. To me, this acronym
spells out five very good reasons to start learning Java ME today. If you’re
not yet convinced, stick with me, since the rest of this chapter, and
the book, considers the use of Java technology, specifically the Java ME
platform, as the candidate to address the growing hardware diversity and
the challenges of the future.
1.3 Meet the Host – Symbian OS
Symbian OS is a market-leading, open operating system for mobile
phones. Cumulative sales of Symbian smartphones reached 226 million
units worldwide in June 2008. By the end of that month, more than 250
different models of smartphone had been created by handset manufactur-
ers licensing Symbian OS; eight handset vendors, including the world’s
five leading vendors, were shipping 159 mobile phone models.5
On 24 June 2008, the Symbian Foundation was announced6 and,
at the time of writing, it is on track to create an open and complete
mobile software platform, which will be available for free, enabling
the whole mobile ecosystem to accelerate innovation. The Symbian
Foundation provides, manages and unifies Symbian OS, S60, MOAP(S)
and UIQ for its members. It is committed to moving the platform
5 www.symbian.com/about/fast.asp
6 www.symbian.com/news/pr/2008/pr200810018.asp

to open source within two years of the Foundation’s announcement.
See www.symbianfoundation.org for more information.
There have been many operating systems available over the last
decade – so what is it about Symbian OS that has enabled it to stay so far
ahead of the competition? The design of Symbian OS is highly modular,
which means that it is constructed from well-defined, discrete parts. Most
Symbian OS components expose a Symbian C++ API7
and a large number
of these APIs are available to third-party application developers.
At a high level, Symbian OS can be thought of as a layered model, with
a flexible architecture that allows different UI layers to run as platforms
on top of the core operating system. That is, Symbian OS provides a
framework that supplies a common core to enable custom components
to be developed on top of it. The generic UI framework of Symbian
OS supplies the common behavior of the UI and supports extension
by licensees who define their own look and feel. For example, the S60
platform, supplied by Nokia, sits on top of Symbian OS. S60 is the world’s
most popular smartphone platform, and is currently used by Nokia, LG
and Samsung. Almost 180 million S60 devices had been shipped by S60
licensees by the end of June 2008.8
The power and configurable design of Symbian OS are the key con-
tributing factors to its success. Today, Symbian OS devices are being
sold in every market segment as you can see from the variety of
hardware shown in Figure 1.3. If you want to find out more about
Symbian and Symbian OS, there are a range of resources including books
from Symbian Press, available from developer.symbian.com/books, and
www.forum.nokia.com. If you are new to Symbian OS and interested in
a slightly more detailed overview about Symbian OS, a recommended
resource is the first chapter of [Babin 2007].9
Walkman®
Sport
Remote
Control
Music
Multimedia
Waterproof
Mobile
TV
Biometrics
Hybrid
Business
Music
Fashion
Imaging
Simple
Figure 1.3 Symbian OS is everywhere
7 Symbian C++ is a dialect of C++ with idiomatic extensions.
8
www.forum.nokia.com/main/platforms/s60
9 The chapter can be downloaded from developer.symbian.com/main/documentation/
books/books files/dasos.

WHAT IS JAVA? 9
1.4 What Is Java?
Let’s jump back to August 1998. The word ‘Java’ is synonymous with the
Internet in the public mind. The most common question at the time is
‘What is Java?’ If you can explain that then you have a job.
The company behind Java technology is Sun Microsystems, which was
founded in 1982 and today provides a diversity of software, systems,
services, and microelectronics that power everything from consumer
electronics, to developer tools and the world’s most powerful data centers.
Other than Java technology, the core brands include the Solaris operating
system, the MySQL database management system, StorageTek10 and the
UltraSPARC processor.
In the early 1990s, Sun formed the ‘Green Team’ whose job it was
to prepare for the future. One of the team members was James Gosling
(known as ‘the father of Java’). The aim was to create a software platform
that could run independently of the host platform – and the ‘Write Once
Run Anywhere’ mantra was created. By creating a controlled virtual
environment, or machine, software written on one hardware platform
could run unaltered on any other hardware platform.
The Java programming language was introduced by Sun Microsystems
in 1995 and is designed for use in the distributed environment of the
Internet. It was designed to have familiar notation, similar to C++, but
with greater simplicity. The Java programming language can be character-
ized by:
• Portability: Java applications are capable of executing on a variety of
hardware architectures and operating systems.
• Robustness: Unlike programs written in C++, Java instructions cannot
cause a system to ‘crash’.
• Security: Features were designed into the language and run-time
system.
• Object orientation: With the exception of primitive types, everything
in Java is an object in order to support the encapsulation and message-
passing paradigms of object-based software.
• Multithreading and synchronization: Java supports multithreading and
has synchronization primitives built into the language.
• Simplicity and familiarity: This is, of course, relative to C++. Don’t
imagine that Java can be learned in a day.
Java is a technology rather than just a programming language. It is a
collection of software products and speciﬁcations that provide a system
10 StorageTek is a tape-based storage solution from Sun. See www.sun.com/storagetek
for more information.

for development and deployment of cross-platform applications. After
you’ve worked with Java technologies for a while, you’ll realize that
they’re also much more than that – they’re a way of thinking about
software systems and how they work together.
Java is an interpreted language. This means that program code (in
a .java source file) is compiled into a platform-independent set of
bytecodes (a .class file) instead of into machine-specific instructions
(which is what happens to a C program). These bytecodes are then
executed on any machine that hosts a Java platform, a software-only
platform that runs on top of a native platform (the combination of an
operating system and the underlying hardware). A Java platform is divided
into two components:
• The Java virtual machine (JVM) that executes the Java language
bytecode can be ported to various native platforms.
• The collection of Java APIs are ready-made software libraries that
provide programming capabilities.
Together, the JVM and the APIs form the Java platform which insulates
an application from the native platform.
This was a remarkable achievement but it was not achieved without
cost. Support for low-level power and fine-grained control was sacrificed,
as well as explicit memory management and pointers. It was almost
impossible to write Java software that would corrupt memory, but pro-
grammers couldn’t dispose of memory themselves (to the horror of many
there was a new keyword but no delete); instead it was handled auto-
matically by the run-time environment using the ‘garbage collector’. This
was part of the environment that monitored object references at run time
and would decide when to reclaim allocated memory on behalf of the
program.
Added to all of these new ideas was the ‘applet’. This probably had
the largest role in making Java a 1990s buzz word. Java applets are small
programs that can run inside a web browser. Code resides on a remote
server, is downloaded over the network and is executed locally inside a
‘sandbox’, restricting operations to those considered ‘safe’. At the same
time, class file verification and a well-defined security model introduced
a new level of software security.
Java applets had limited use and were quickly outdated by the rise of
Flash as a browser-based, client-side technology but applets had served
a special role in the Java world. They demonstrated the power of this
new language called Java, raised awareness of the Internet and helped
create a strong worldwide Java developer base that today numbers over
six million.
As time went on, Java moved to have more of a focus on desktop
applications and then server applications: suddenly, everyone was talking

WHAT IS JAVA? 11
about Enterprise Java Beans. Following this was a big leap to smart cards
and the emerging market with the rise of mobile phones.
Sun quickly realized that while there were Java solutions for all of
these areas, no one set of technologies could adequately address all
requirements. It was at this point that Java was separated into the four
core technologies that we see in Figure 1.4.11
Optional
packages
Servers &
enterprise
computers
Servers &
personal
computers
High-end PDAs,
TV set-top boxes &
embedded devices
Mobile
phones &
entry-level
PDAs
Smart
cards
Optional
packages
Optional
packages
Optional
packages
MIDP
Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME)
CLDC
JVM
CDC
Java
Card
Card VM
JVM
JVM
JVM
Foundation Profile
Java 2
Platform,
Enterprise
Edition
(Java EE)
Java 2
Platform,
Standard
Edition
(Java SE)
Personal Profile
Personal
Basis
Profile
Figure 1.4 Java technologies
The Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) fork was created to address
the constrained-device market. Java Card is a separate technology that
has nothing to do with Java ME. These days, most mobile phones include
some kind of Java technology. Blackberries run a superset of Java ME,
extended with RIM libraries. Google’s Android platform uses a ‘Java-like’
platform and even Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and Pocket PC support
Java ME. Nokia’s Series 40 phones, which form the backbone of the
feature phone market, all have support for Java ME as do all phones
running Symbian OS.12
If you want to know more about the other Java technologies or learn
about the Java language, this is probably the wrong book for you. If that’s
what you want, then probably the best place to start learning about Java
11
Java ME consists of two ‘ﬂavors’, which is why there are ﬁve groups in Figure 1.4.
12 Except for MOAP(S), which has DoJa; it is very similar to Java ME, but is not strictly the
same.

is straight from the creator himself, James Gosling in [Arnold, Gosling
and Holmes 2005]. From this point on, we’re only going to talk about
ME – Java ME!
1.5 Java ME
Sun launched a research and development project called Spotless in the
1990s in order to produce a JVM that could run on devices with small
memory and power budgets, intermittent or non-existent connectivity,
limited graphical user interfaces, divergent file system concepts (if any)
and wildly varying operating systems. This could be anything from set-top
boxes to Internet phones, parking meters, digital TVs, vending machines,
automotive interfaces, electronic toys, personal organizers, household
appliances, pagers, PDAs, high-end smartphones and mass-market feature
phones.
The result of the project was the Kauai virtual machine (KVM). This
was a cut-down version of the JVM that required less than 10% of
the resources needed for the desktop standard edition of Java. This was
achieved by targeting the size of the virtual machine and its class libraries,
reducing the memory used during execution and by creating a pluggable
architecture that allowed sub-systems of the KVM to be tailored to specific
device architectures.
With such a diverse range of hardware targets, it was decided to
adopt a more flexible model for Java ME and the final result consisted of
three high-level components that together make a wide range of solutions
possible. Java ME consists of:
• configurations
• profiles
• optional packages.
We’ll look at each of these in detail shortly. In order to allow for future
expansion and new technologies, additions to the Java ME technologies
are managed through the Java Community Process13 in the form of Java
Specification Requests known as JSRs. Each JSR is reviewed by panels
of experts and public drafts allow a wide range of interested parties to
contribute to the process. JSRs are usually referred to by their name and
number; for example, JSR-82 is the specification request for the Bluetooth
API.
A lot of functionality had to be removed from the desktop Java Standard
Edition (Java SE) to make Java ME. For example, some things that are
missing include:
13 www.jcp.org

JAVA ME 13
• reflection
• thread groups and advanced thread control
• user-defined class loaders
• the Java native interface (JNI)
• automatic object finalization.
Compatibility played a large part in the design of Java ME. In order
to maintain as much compatibility with Java SE as possible, the Java
ME packages were divided into two logical groupings: those that were
specific to Java ME (packages whose names start with javax) and those
that were a subset of their Java SE counterparts which followed the same
package-naming convention.
One of the strongest features of the Java language is its security – both
at the application layer and within the virtual machine itself. The VM
security layer ensures that bytecodes are valid and safe to execute. This
works really well on servers and the desktop environment but not so
well on mobile phones with small processors and small power and
memory budgets. The solution was a hybrid approach using the concept
of pre-verification performed offline as part of the build process on the
development machine. Only after VM acceptance may the bytecodes
execute on the host hardware.
1.5.1 Configurations
Configurations define the lowest common denominator for a horizontal
category of devices that share similarities in terms of memory budgets,
processor power and network connectivity. A configuration is the spec-
ification of a JVM and a base set of necessary class libraries which
are primarily cut-down versions of their desktop counterparts. There are
currently only two configurations:
• The Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) was aimed
specifically at mobile phones, two-way pagers and low-level PDAs.
• The Connected Device Configuration (CDC) was aimed at devices
with more memory, better network connectivity and faster processors.
We should be clear, however, that the CDC profile doesn’t really
have a role in the mobile phone space at this time. Although high-end
devices, such as Symbian OS phones, can accommodate a CDC-based
Java platform, the consumer market today is based on MIDP/CLDC
applications, so CDC is not within the scope of this book.

Table 1.1 CLDC 1.1 Packages
Package Description
java.io Basic classes for I/O via data streams, Read-
ers and Writers
java.lang Reduced math library, threads and system
functionality, fundamental type classes
java.lang.ref Support for weak references which allows
you to hold a reference to an object even
though it is garbage collected
java.util The Vector and Hashtable classes, basic
date and calendar functionality and a
pseudo random number generator which
is great for games
javax.microedition.io CLDC specific interfaces and factories for
datagrams, connection stream etc. Imple-
mentation deferred to profiles.
So far there have been two versions of the CLDC,14 the latest being
CLDC 1.1. Most mobile phones shipped since 2003 contain version 1.1
of the CLDC. CLDC 1.1 (see Table 1.1) includes, amongst other updates,
support for floating-point operations with the introduction of the Float
and Double classes, thread naming and interrupts. The total minimum
memory requirement was also lifted from 160 KB to 192 KB.
While the discussion so far has focused on mobile phones, the CLDC
is not just for phones. As we’ll see in the following section, it forms the
foundation for a number of profiles that target completely different device
families.
1.5.2 Profiles
Profiles sit on top of a configuration and allow it to be adapted and
specialized for a particular class of devices in a vertical market such
as mobile phones. A profile effectively defines a contract between an
application and a set of devices of the same type, usually by including
class libraries that are far more domain-specific than those available in
any particular configuration.
Figure 1.5 shows the three profiles that currently extend the CLDC. The
Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) is most relevant to our work
here; the Information Module Profile15
(IMP) targets small devices that
may have no user interface at all, such as parking meters, call boxes, and
14
See the white paper at java.sun.com/j2me/docs/pdf/CLDC-HI whitepaper-February
2005.pdf .
15 java.sun.com/products/imp/index.jsp

JAVA ME 15
Mobile Information
Device Profile
Information
Module Profile
CLDC
Digital Set Top
Box Profile
Figure 1.5 CLDC profiles (adapted from [Ortiz 2007, Figure 5])
vending machines; and the Digital Set-Top Box Profile is aimed squarely
at the cable television market.
CLDC is also used by the proprietary DoJa profile for i-mode devices
from NTT DoCoMo, which dominates over 50% of the Japanese market.
We talk more about DoJa in Chapter 7.
Applications that use the MIDP libraries are called MIDlets. MIDP
defines the core functionality that mobile applications can leverage (for
example, the user interface (UI), local storage and network connectivity)
and also specifies application lifecycle management. The original version
of MIDP was started in November 1999; even though it did not specifically
provide libraries for games, that didn’t stop hundreds of titles being written
and sold worldwide. In fact, so successful was MIDP 1.0 that work began
in 2001 on defining the second version – MIDP 2.0.
The MIDP 2.0 libraries include a high-level UI API with support for
standard widgets (textboxes, check boxes, buttons, etc.) and a low-level
UI API supporting graphics contexts aimed mainly at games develop-
ment. The low-level API includes standard routines for creating graphics
primitives (lines, polygons, arcs, etc.) as well as supporting clipping,
full-screen canvases, regions, image manipulation, fonts, brushes, colors,
and off-screen buffers. Support for local persistence on the MIDP is pro-
vided through the record management system (RMS). The CLDC Generic
Connection Framework was extended with additional connections, such
as HTTP, TCP and UDP.
MIDP 2.0 also introduced timers, the Media API (a subset of the
optional JSR-135 Mobile Media API) and the Game API package which
enables the development of rich gaming content for mobiles.
1.5.3 Optional Packages
The optional general-purpose APIs provide a set of functionality that is
not specific to any particular class of devices and have allowed the Java
ME platform to evolve and embrace emerging technologies. They add
extra functionality to a profile and are sometimes incorporated into the
profile as the technology matures. The Mobile 3D Graphics for J2ME API
(JSR-184) and the Location API (JSR-179) are good examples of optional
packages. It is common to simply use the term ‘JSR’ when referring to

the set of packages a device may support, although configurations and
profiles are actually all the product of particular JSRs.
Java ME got off to a bumpy start – the realities and pressures of
business competition, largely due to the phenomenal rise of the mobile
games industry, led to a wide disparity in optional JSR support across
the set of available devices in the market. There was no standard set of
JSRs available, some implementations didn’t comply with the defined JSR
requirements and some only offered partial compliance; it was extremely
difficult even to find out which JSRs were supported on any particular
handset. Sometimes irregularities occurred within the same family of
mobile phones from the same manufacturer, with APIs missing for no
obvious reason. Manufacturers would also add their own proprietary
APIs to allow non-standard functionality or extra functionality that wasn’t
covered by the standard JSRs. While that addressed the short-term need,
such libraries had to stay around for compatibility reasons long after they
had been superseded.
The net result was a series of device-specific workarounds leading to
complex code forks and build trees for Java ME applications – particularly
games which would typically target hundreds of handsets at any one time.
Game development houses wrote entire libraries trying to work across
these heterogeneous environments and then had to work to recoup the
investments made. This unfortunate phenomenon is known as ‘fragmen-
tation’ and the ‘write once, run anywhere’ mantra became ‘write once,
debug everywhere’. This had an extremely detrimental effect on the time
to market of Java ME applications and games.
1.5.4 Tackling Fragmentation
Something had to be done. The first attempt to tackle fragmentation
was JSR-185, Java Technology for the Wireless Industry (JTWI), which
specified a minimal level of optional API support for JTWI-compliant
devices. Release 1 of the JTWI was approved in July 2003 and defined
three categories of JSR: mandatory, conditionally required, and minimum
configuration. A handset that declares itself to be JTWI-compliant has
CLDC 1.0 or CLDC 1.1 as a minimum configuration and must support at
least:
• MIDP 2.0 (JSR-118)
• Wireless Messaging API (JSR-120).
If the device allows MIDlets to access multimedia functionality via
APIs, then the JTWI also specifies that the Mobile Media API (JSR-135) is
required (i.e., it is conditionally required).
JTWI also defined a number of implementation parameters for these
JSRs, including support for JPEG encoding, MIDI playback, the number of

WHY USE JAVA ME ON SYMBIAN OS? 17
record stores allowed in the RMS, Unicode support and some threading
requirements. While this was a great start, more needed to be done. JTWI
served as a necessary consolidation point in the evolution of the mobile
industry, but there were still many JSRs in the world of Java ME.
The Mobile Services Architecture16
(JSR-248, MSA), finalized in
December 2006, mandated that an MSA-compliant device is JTWI-
compliant and implements a much wider range of JSRs. The specification
defines two categories of MSA, known as Full MSA and MSA Subset (see
Figure 1.6).
(a) (b)
Figure 1.6 Mobile Services Architecture: a) Full MSA and b) MSA subset (adapted from
[Ortiz 2007, Figure 3])
MSA is a huge step forward and the number of MSA-compliant devices
available in the market is increasing all the time. Have a look at the Java
ME device registry at Sun, which lists some of them, to see how MSA has
raised the bar. (For more information on MSA, see Chapter 6.)
1.6 Why Use Java ME on Symbian OS?
Why not just use Symbian C++? That’s a good question. To answer it, we
need to look firstly at what people do with their smartphones and then
how it is achieved technically.
16 jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=248

web surfing once a day
primary camera
primary MP3 player
download music
willing to pay for mobile TV
% mobile users 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
Figure 1.7 Smartphone usage17
Figure 1.7 shows the results of a survey of how people are willing to
use their smartphones. In addition, if we were to ask a random sample
of people in the street what they do regularly, we’d also expect them to
include activities such as playing games, sending text messages, sending
pictures, social networking, checking match scores, ﬁnding directions,
watching videos, checking weather or trafﬁc – and annoying other people
on buses.
It is clear that there are many uses for smartphones, most of which
involve downloading mobile content, such as installable applications and
games, purchasing multimedia, such as music, videos, and mobile TV,
or simply downloading web pages while browsing the Internet. ‘Content’
is the key word here. A high-end mobile platform cannot exist without
content; in its absence there’s nothing that compels the user to buy a
high-end device. Who would buy a fully featured smartphone to make
voice calls and send SMS messages only?
In theory, it is possible to restrict all installable content to that created
using Symbian C++, in order to control where it comes from. That just
results in a ‘walled garden’, which goes against the principle of Symbian
OS as an open platform, because millions of talented engineers who are
not well-versed in Symbian C++ cannot contribute to the platform and any
existing content not written in Symbian C++ cannot be reused. That would
be unduly limiting, so the Symbian strategy is to enable environments
that maximize third-party developer contributions and content re-use.
Apart from Java ME, the other run-time environments available include
POSIX-compliant C, Flash Lite, Silverlight, Python, Ruby, Web Runtime,
and WidSets.18
So a better question is ”when should I use Java ME on a highly powerful
and open environment, such as Symbian OS?”. To work out the answer to
17
‘Welcome to the Smartphone Lifestyle’ by Nigel Clifford CEO of Symbian Ltd, Symbian
Smartphone Show, 2007 keynote address
18 developer.symbian.com/main/documentation/runtime environments

WHY USE JAVA ME ON SYMBIAN OS? 19
that question you need to do a cost–benefit analysis which covers areas
such as the available skills in your organization, functional feasibility in
Java, development effort in Java compared to other options, performance
considerations, and cross-platform requirements, all framed by the profile
of your application.
Let’s take a quick look into how the ‘leading Java platform’ strategy
translates into technical support. The Symbian implementation of the Java
ME technology platform is best of breed, so we’ll run through some of the
benefits that Java ME enjoys under Symbian OS.
Optimized Performance
The most common criticism leveled at Java ME (or any version of Java) is
that it doesn’t execute as fast as native code because it’s an interpreted
language (in principle, the JVM interprets Java bytecodes at run time). This
is mentioned so often, you’d think that everyone was writing real-time
satellite control systems instead of games for mobile phones. Java runs
much faster than it used to: the KVM was placed in the Java museum
long ago. Symbian replaced the KVM with CLDC-HI HotSpot, in which
the application bytecode is compiled to the ARM instruction set on the
fly. As a result, Java applications received a major performance boost
that was not only measurable by objective benchmarks but also by the
user – which is the real benchmark in most mobile applications.
No Hard Limits on Computing Resources
On most feature phones, the memory assigned to Java is fixed when the
device is created, which causes a wide variety of challenges for advanced
application development on these platforms. Symbian OS does not place
arbitrary constraints on available memory, storage space, number of
threads, number of connections, or JAR size. Within the bounds of
available resources, there are no limits – the heap can grow and shrink
as required.
Consistency and Variety of JSRs
Probably the greatest benefit of working with Java ME on Symbian OS is
the consistency and variety of JSRs. The problems of JSR fragmentation are
largely a thing of the past. The set of optional JSRs supported has grown
with each new version of the operating system and the latest smartphones
expose some of the very latest in technology directly to MIDlets.
With this wide variety comes both implementation consistency and the
ability to leverage the best of the operating system. For example, releases
of Symbian OS v8.0 and later support the full Mobile Media API (JSR-135)
and provide native support for OpenGL ES 1.0 (an abstraction layer for
the Mobile 3D Graphics API (JSR-184), meaning that your MIDlets auto-
matically benefit from hardware acceleration on the handset). Symbian

Table 1.2 JSR Support on Symbian OS
JSR Nokia 6,600 Nokia N70 Nokia N96
Symbian OS version v7.0 s v8.1a v9.3
Release Date 16 June 2003 27 April 2005 11 Feb 2008
CLDC 1.0/1.1 1.0 1.1 1.1
MIDP 2.0/2.1 2.0 2.0 2.1
Bluetooth 82 ✓ ✓
Mobile Media (MMAPI) 135 ✓ ✓ ✓
Wireless Messaging 120 ✓ ✓ ✓
Wireless Messaging 20519 ✓
File and PIM 75 ✓ ✓
Mobile 3D Graphics (M3G) 184 ✓ ✓
JTWI 185 ✓ ✓
Web Services 172 ✓ ✓
Location API 179 ✓
Security and Trust Services 177 ✓
SIP API 180 ✓
Scalable 2D Vector Graphics 226 ✓
Advanced Media Supplements 234 ✓
MSA 248 MSA Subset
OS v9 enhances a number of existing APIs and adds many more. The net
result is a rich diversity of functionality optimized for performance and
memory efﬁciency. Table 1.2 shows a snapshot of how JSR support under
Symbian OS has evolved over the last few years.
Summary
When you develop using Java ME and Symbian OS, you are combining
the world’s leading smartphone operating system with the most successful
mobile phone development platform to date. Symbian OS brings consis-
tency, performance, reliability and variety to its Java ME offering while at
the same time removing the most common limitations of other operating
systems.
19 JSR-205 was an update to JSR-120 that added programmatic support for MMS.

JAVA’S PLACE IN THE SUN 21
There are an enormous number of Java ME applications already out
there – far exceeding the number of native Symbian C++ applications
ever built. The number of Java developers for the mobile environment
is also increasing and is undoubtedly bigger than the army of Symbian
C++ developers.
Having said all this in praise of Java ME, do keep in mind that there are
times when you need to go native, times when you need the maximum
speed, real-time performance, fine-grained control or bare-metal access
to native services that are not exposed in Java. When you need low-
level power, tight integration with the operating system, or advanced
features that are not scoped by Java, then your best option is probably
Symbian C++. For example, Symbian OS native services allow you to
develop hooks into the TCP/IP stack and plug extensions to the Symbian
OS Messaging component. Java ME is simply not designed for such
requirements. For a further comparison of native Symbian C++ and Java
ME on Symbian devices, please see [Mason and Korolev 2008].
1.7 Java’s Place in the Sun
There can be no discussion of Java ME without a section about mobile
games. This is such a booming and exciting industry that Symbian has
already published an entire book just on mobile game development
[Stichbury 2008].
Almost as soon as the first Java-enabled handsets reached the public,
the mobile games explosion was under way. While MIDP 1.0 was a
fantastic start, it was the release of MIDP 2.0 with its Game API that
really made the difference. Suddenly, there was a GameCanvas class,
support for basic sounds via tone generation, support for sprites and
collision detection, the ability to take over the entire screen and efficient
mechanisms for representing large animated backgrounds and detecting
multiple keystrokes during the main game loop.
It was pretty clear that mobile games were out-selling every other
type of application across all platforms and the pace was accelerating. A
new type of gamer emerged who was very different from the traditional
hard-core console jockeys. They didn’t sit in darkened rooms eating pizza
and pretending to be someone else online – instead people played games
on their mobiles while waiting for a bus, walking around or just sitting in
a park. In a major research project for N-Gage,20 one of the key findings
was that mobile games were played almost as much on the move and
when waiting as when at home.
In this market, games needed to be designed to be played in short
bursts, to be paused and re-started without warning, to deal with sudden
20 ‘Evolution of Mobile Gaming’, available from Forum Nokia (www.forum.nokia.com).

loss of battery power or to be interrupted by an incoming call. Ad-hoc
networks could be created with Bluetooth wireless technology for multi-
player games and, with the introduction of the Mobile 3D Graphics API
(JSR-184,21 also known as M3G), artists and designers could create game
assets using industry-standard 3D modeling tools and developers could
include and animate them in 3D scenes on actual handsets. On Symbian
OS phones, the M3G implementation leverages the native support for
OpenGL ES that comes with the operating system.
Of course there were problems. Mobile phones, even high-end ones,
have limited power, memory, processing and screen area. Floating-point
operations present a significant hurdle to be overcome when trying to
perform 3D graphics calculations on a phone. It was quickly apparent
that JSR-184 could not provide acceptable frame rates in the absence of
hardware acceleration.
Now that a few more years have passed, it’s pretty common to see
mobile phones with dedicated hardware for graphics and floating-point
calculations and the latest Symbian OS phones natively support OpenGL
ES 1.1. The introduction of OpenGL ES 2.0 will change the entire mobile
gaming landscape; it has support for the programmable graphics pipeline
(i.e. shaders) and there is already a JSR in progress to work with it – the
Mobile 3D Graphics API 2.0 (JSR-297).22
Realizing that mobile multiplayer game-play was a huge potential mar-
ket, Nokia launched the Scalable Network Application Package (SNAP)
framework23 in 2003. Network operators love it because it generates
revenue by increasing bandwidth usage. SNAP 2.1, the latest version of
the SDK, has only just been released at time of writing; it is discussed in
Appendix B. We also discuss general games development in more detail
in Chapter 8.
1.8 Routes to Market
So you bought this book, learned all about Java ME application devel-
opment, designed and built the killer Java ME mobile application and
you’re ready to sell – now what? How do people find and buy mobile
applications? In 2006 alone, roughly $2.5 billion dollars’ worth of games
were sold worldwide so let’s discuss how you can grab a piece of it.
There are currently two main ways to get your applications working
for you. The first way is to make a deal with a network operator or carrier
for a slot on their ‘deck’. The deck is a space on their mobile portal
where the top mobile applications (usually games) are made available for
21 For a great introduction to JSR-184, check out developers.sun.com/mobility/apis/
articles/3dgraphics.
22 www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=297
23 www.forum.nokia.com/main/resources/technologies/snap mobile

ROUTES TO MARKET 23
subscribers to download. The subscribers usually have some deal where
they can download a certain number of applications per month and it
simply gets added to their bill.
This is a really difficult path to tread. To start with, you need to be a
tough negotiator with a strong sales pitch and a business plan. Secondly,
operators tend to look for applications that are unique in some way so that
they will sell well, and there are already thousands of titles out there so a
mobile version of Frogger probably isn’t going to cut it. Thirdly, operators
tend to avoid making deals with small-timer ’unknown’ developers – not
only because of quality concerns but also because when something does
go wrong, it is the operator that must deal with the irate customer not the
developer. Lastly, in order to mitigate some of this risk, operators often
insist that MIDlets be Java Verified, which can introduce some additional
overhead that needs to be taken into consideration.
However, let’s say you ignore all of this and go ahead anyway. The
chances are pretty good that the last hurdle will tell you if your application
is truly ready. The Java Verified program24
is a quality assurance program
run by third-party testing houses that ensure MIDlets meet well-defined
and accepted sets of guidelines. MIDlets that are Java Verified can use
the Java Powered logo on their splash or ‘about’ screens which marks the
software as having passed a rigorous testing process. This conveys a level
of trust in the quality of the software that is widely regarded in industry.
A better way for small developers is to work with content aggregators,
companies such as www.gamemobile.co.uk, www.handango.com and
www.glu.com with online portals hosting thousands of mobile applica-
tions available for sale straight to the public. The details of the process
varies, but generally speaking, they host your software for free (or a very
small fee) and then take a cut of each sale.
There are distinct advantages to this. The content aggregators handle
marketing, billing, payments and invoicing; they are already well known,
have disaster recovery plans for their server farms and are likely to have
large volumes of Internet traffic which translates directly into increased
sales. They also tend to be far more interested in the application than in
the fact that you’re a small business.
Other areas that need thinking about include a support framework
for your application. This can involve taking support calls, responding
to FAQs or emails, forum administration, distributing patches, releasing
upgrades and, worst of all, processing refunds. We hope this won’t happen
too often and the best way to prevent it is to get hold of hardware and
test it thoroughly. For further information about taking your application
to market, we recommend ‘Getting to Market’, a booklet published by
Symbian Press, which can be downloaded from developer.symbian.com/
booklets.
24 www.javaverified.com

Other documents randomly have
different content

CHAPTER XXV
Homeward Bound—The Stowaway
Having cleared the English customs and with a clean bill of health,
we were ready to sail. The pilot was on board and his boat's crew
had a line fast through the stern chalk so that we could tow them
with us clear of the channel reef. Once clear of the reef all that
remained to do was to haul the pilot boat alongside and have this
servant of His Majesty climb down the Jacob's ladder and into the
boat which would bear him away to the spot where the sound of the
surf merged into the music of the clinking glass.
While giving orders to rig out slip lines for him I heard a familiar
voice on the wharf sing out "Bon voyage, bon voyage." I looked up
to see the portly figure of Captain Kane. He looked as if he had slept
in his clothes. His pea jacket had many wrinkles in the back and in
front it was inclined to roll up toward his chin. I jumped ashore to
say good-bye to this kind, if groggy old sea dog, shook him by the
hand, and thanked him for my trip to the interior of the island,
saying that I hoped to see him again.
"You know," he said, "I am getting old, but the smell of the
Stockholm tar, the white flowing sails, the squeaking blocks, the clink
of the capstan, bring back memories of long ago, and, damn it all, it
makes me young again."
Captain Kane laid great stress on the hurricane season, as January,
February and March were the months to be dreaded in the South
Seas. After seeing the boulder that had been hurled by the last
hurricane on these islands, I was hoping that I should be well
enough to the northward, so that if one should come I would be out
of the storm center, and therefore out of danger. The pilot was

nervously pacing up and down the main deck anxious to get me
away from the wharf and out to sea. Possibly a game of chess had
been left unfinished. I jumped aboard and ordered the foresail and
main jib set. With this done and the slip lines hauled aboard, the
"Wampa" glided away from the wharf as if propelled by steam.
With the aftersails spread and set to the southeast trades, and
sheets trimmed to the wind, we were not long in clearing the
channel reef and getting out into open water. After the pilot left I
ordered the topsails set. The breeze was fair, and I was anxious to
clear Bangor Island and get to the westward of it before darkness
set in.
The crew looked happy even after their night's debauch, some were
whistling, others humming familiar ditties. Riley could be heard
singing "Rolling Home Across the Sea" from his position on the
foretopmast, as he changed the topsail to windward, a job which is
usually done with very little sentiment of home or any other place.
Distance was shutting out the tall green palms around Suva, and the
town itself was just a speck on the horizon. Taking careful cross-
bearings of Bangor Island, so as to avoid the dangers and
submerged coral reefs that project from it, I ordered the staysails set
to increase our speed so that with darkness I would be well to the
westward.
Our staysails were put away and stowed in the fore peak when we
came into port. The second mate went forward to get them up, and
Swanson went down to bend a line around them before hauling
them on deck. He had been down in the fore peak only a minute
before he came up the ladder running very excitedly and saying that
there was a dead man lying on the staysails. The crew, much upset
by this remark, slunk away from the fore peak hatch as if deadly
fumes were coming from within, so I got a lantern and went down
to see the supposed dead man. I was confronted by a Hindoo
stowaway.

He was so weak from the heat of the fore peak and thirst that he
seemed to have little life left in him. I called up to the deck above
for a couple of men to come down and give me a hand to carry him.
Old Charlie and Riley cautiously felt their way down, Riley giving
orders to the crew above not to stand too close to the small hatch,
as it might be necessary for him to ascend with all possible speed
and he did not care to have any obstruction to his flight. Old Charlie
approached with his usual forebodings. The finding of the dead
Hindoo, in his estimation, meant nothing less than doom and
destruction to all on board.
Riley was more cheerful when he found that there was little chance
of physical danger from the supposed dead man. Bending the rope
around him and carrying him to the mouth of the hatch, I shouted to
the crew on deck to haul away very gently. We steered him up the
hatch and landed him on deck without any serious bumps. The cool
breeze restored him, and when we forced some water down his
throat he began to show signs of life.
I went aft to get a glass of Scotch whiskey, knowing that this would
stimulate the heart action. After taking a teaspoonful, his moaning
changed to some kind of Hindoo gibberish. This change seemed to
amuse the crew. They no longer looked gloomy and down in the
mouth, but seemed very willing to help him in his fight for life. As he
lay there I was seized with a very inhuman and selfish impulse. The
night shades of the tropical evening were becoming conspicuous in
the western horizon, the run on the log showed the "Wampa"
sixteen miles to the southward and westward of Suva harbor, with
the southeast point of Bangor Island bearing two points on the
starboard bow.
Should the Hindoo stowaway come back to life, it would be
necessary to tack ship and put back to Suva in order to put him
ashore.
U. S. alien laws are well known to sea-faring men. This stowaway
had no money, no position, and all that he had in the way of clothes

was a thin pair of pants. Should unfavorable conditions prevent my
putting him ashore, I would be forced to carry him to San Francisco.
Once there I knew what the immigration authorities would do to me
or to the owners. More than likely I should have to pay his passage
back by steamboat to the Fiji Islands. With darkness approaching it
was not my intention to put back to Suva and run the risk of striking
the reef at the entrance of the harbor. For these reasons, I should
much prefer a sea burial for the Hindoo stowaway.
While these hard and unsympathetic thoughts were passing before
the visible horizon of my mind, I was nevertheless attracted by his
delicate and artistic form. The long and straight black hair, the finely
molded ears, the aquiline nose, the perfect profile, the well-rounded
chin, the sensual mouth with its uniform white teeth were truly
oriental of high caste. An unusual type for a Fijian contract laborer.
I was deeply impressed with his boyish figure as he lay struggling for
breath on the deck. Suddenly I was seized with an impulse of
sympathy for this frail-looking creature. Grasping the bottle of Scotch
I pressed it to his lips and poured some down his throat. This act
caused him to strangle. After fighting for breath he opened his eyes
and sat up against the hatch combings.
His eyes were bright and fiery and seemed to penetrate through one
like an X-ray. They took in the situation at a glance. He realized that
he was out at sea. His gaze alternated from the flowing sail to the
members of the crew. His eye finally rested on Swanson, he being
the most brutish looking sailor of those who were standing around,
and therefore the most to be feared. I spoke to the Hindoo and said,
"How long have you been on board?"
"Oh," said he, "I have been down there," pointing to the fore peak,
"for three days." He spoke English without an accent. Then he told
how he had swam off to the ship, while we were still lying at anchor,
and said that he had no idea that we would have been delayed so
long before putting to sea.

I then told him that it would be impossible to carry him to the United
States of America. Although weak from heat and hunger, he
staggered to his feet and kissed my hand, crying, "Oh, please,
Captain, take me along with you. I cannot live there under these
horrible conditions, working for sixpence a day with nothing to eat
but curry and rice. I will work for you, I will do anything, only take
me away from here."
I deeply resented my previous thought of disposing of this intelligent
Hindoo. The picture this outcast made standing there trembling, with
tears streaming down his boyish face, pleading as though his heart
would break, was getting the best of me. Very few men of the sea
can stand tears and emotion. Although hardened by years of kicks
and knocks, the old-time sailor would much prefer a knock-down
and drag-out to any signs of agitation. Many of the crew themselves
consciously looked to windward and wiped away a rusty tear.
While the Hindoo was still pleading, Swanson stepped up to me and
between sobs said, "I wish you would take him along, sir, I have no
one in the world to care for, and I can easily spare the forty dollars
that you say will be necessary for him to enter the United States."
With this offer coming from a man like Swanson, I was as much
overcome as the Hindoo was, in his pleading for liberty to be taken
away from the low and dirty castes of Bombay and Calcutta which
furnish labor for the Fiji Islands. He thanked Swanson by gracefully
bowing and said, turning to me, "I am sure you can make some use
of me on your voyage home." This statement proved true, for had it
not been for the stowaway, this narrative would never have been
written.
The Socialist cook was standing with his back up against the galley,
deeply impressed with this new possibility. From the way he ran to
make milk toast for the Hindoo, one would think that at last he had
discovered a new clay to mold and construct and pattern after his
own impressions.

CHAPTER XXVI
The Mysterious Hindoo
With the Hindoo question solved and the fisherman's staysails set,
Suva was lost in the distance and remained but a memory. By the
time the studded diamonds in their azure setting were twinkling in
all the splendor of a Southern sky, we were well to the westward of
Bangor Island. We had nothing to fear from coral reefs until we
neared the Gilbert group, which lay east of the 180th meridian and
north and south of the Equator.
After the Hindoo had eaten the milk toast and found that he was in
the midst of friends, sailing away to a country where opportunity
knocks on the door of hovels, he no longer looked the slave to his
master. He refused to bunk in the forecastle, preferring to sleep
under the forecastle head. The tropical nights were warm, and for
the time being this was a comfortable part of the ship in which to
sleep. The crew were kind enough to furnish blankets for him, in
fact, were willing to give him anything they had, for they considered
him an unusual guest.
At ten o'clock I turned in and left orders with the second mate to call
me at midnight. By that time I knew that if we held our present rate
of eleven knots per hour, we should be far enough to the westward
to change the course, and haul her more northerly. Coming on deck
at eight bells and getting the distance run on the log, I went back to
my room to measure the distance on the chart before changing the
course. I decided to run one more hour before changing to the
northward.
Old Charlie was at the wheel, and it seemed from the way he was
clearing his throat that he was anxious for a chat. But discipline

forbade. I walked forward to look at the sails, and see if they needed
sweating up. While looking around I ran into Riley, who as usual was
smoking his clay pipe, with its black bowl and short stem. It was
strong enough of nicotine to drive a wharf-rat to suicide.
"Riley," said I, "no doubt you are happy that we are on the last leg
of our voyage."
Before answering he gave a few heavy puffs on the old dudeen to
insure its not going out. While he was doing this I immediately
changed for a new position to windward, for to be caught to leeward
of these deadly fumes was to share the fate of the wharf-rat.
"Well," said Riley, "I am, and I am not."
"Come," I replied, "what is it that troubles you?" Thinking that I had
found the source of his discontent, I added,—"Surely, you can't
expect me to feed you on Scotch whiskey all the passage home?
What little there is on board must be kept for medicine. Just think
what might have happened to the poor Hindoo had I not had a little
Scotch left on board."
At the mention of the Hindoo's name Riley stepped up close to me,
saying, "Whisht, and it is that what is troubling me, it is that damned
coolie," and he pointed to the forecastle.
"Surely," I protested, "you are not afraid of that poor weak
creature."
Riley fastened down the tin cover to his pipe so as to secure the
remains of the tobacco for future use. Economy of tobacco is strictly
observed on long voyages. Even the ashes have an intrinsic value
among sailors, like the kindling wood of a coal stove. Tucking the
pipe away in the folds of his breeches, he said:
"Ho, ho, and it is afraid you would have me! Shure'n I am afraid of
nothing in the say, and I will be damned if I will be afraid of
anything on top of it."

"Well, what about the Hindoo, what harm can he do to you?"
"Oh, it's the divil a bit he will be doing me. It's his snaky movements
and his ferret eyes that is getting on me nerves. During the dog-
watch," continued Riley, "we fixed a place under the foc's'le head for
the coolie, giving him what blankets we could spare. At eight o'clock
our watch below turned in. Says I to Dago Joe, 'Turn down the glim.'
'I will blow it out,' says he. 'Not by a damn sight,' says I. 'Shur'n we
are liable to scrape our bottom on an auld coral reef around here,
and it isn't Mike Riley that is going to get caught like a rat in a trap.'
The Dago is a reasonable man to talk to, and with that he turns the
light very low. About eleven o'clock I woke up along the hearing
Broken-Nosed Pete snoring. After throwing me auld shoe at him, I
rolled over with me face to the scuttle hatch, to get meself another
nap before eight bells, when I see the Hindoo standing there at the
bottom of the ladder. I rubbed me eye to make sure it wasn't
desayving me. Pulling meself together, I says to meself, says I,
'Whativer he is, he is there for no good purpose.' Begob, the
strangest thing about the coolie was that he did not move a muscle,
but stood there like a statue, staring straight into me eye.
"I shouted to the Dago to turn up the light, which is within easy
reach of him. Says I, 'Things are not as they should be down here.'
With me eye still on the Hindoo, Dago Joe turned up the light. I
declare to me Maker when the light was turned up the Hindoo had
disappeared.
"'That's damned strange,' says I to Dago Joe. 'Be Hivens he was
standing there not a minute ago,' and when I comes up on deck at
eight bells I looked under the foc's'le head and there he is, fast
asleep. So I lights me poipe, and takes a look over the sea to
leeward of the foresail, to see if we are still in sight of land. While I
am standing there humming a bit av an auld ditty, all of a sudden I
felt meself in the presence of something uncanny, and turning
around quick-like, there stood the coolie. Ses I to him, ses I:
"'What are you up to, me boy?'

"'Oh,' says the coolie, 'the wash on the prow is disturbing to my
peaceful slumbers. I should much prefer being crooned to sleep by
the waving branches of a Himalayan evergreen.'
"Ses I, 'Me coolie friend, no more of your palavering. Back to bed
with you, and stay there.' I looked at him again, and, shure, Howly
St. Patrick, he disappears like he did in the foc's'le."
"Where is he now, Riley?"
"Begobs, and I don't know, sir."
I went forward to see the strange visitor who seemed to be causing
Riley so much misery. There, under the forecastle head, the Hindoo
lay, wrapped in his blankets, sound asleep.
"Riley," said I, "you drank too much Scotch last night; be careful that
you don't get the Jimmies and jump overboard. If you feel yourself
slipping just tie a gasket around you. We need you to work ship on
the voyage home."
These insults were too much for Riley. He slunk away to the lookout
where Broken-Nosed Pete would lend a willing ear to his story of the
Hindoo and his abuse of me.
At one o'clock, feeling sure of the reefs, I changed the course to N.
N. W.
The next morning the Hindoo was eating his breakfast off the
forehatch and looking much better than he had on the preceding
evening. He rose and thanked me kindly for the interest we had
taken in him, saying:
"I feel the pleasure of liberty after my prison term, among those
terrible people. As for last night, I was quite comfortable. I can
easily adapt myself to the new environment. But although I could
not quite understand what the one-eyed man meant when he bent
over me in the night, exclaiming, 'There he is, and the divil a move

out of him,' I feel nevertheless, that I am in the midst of friends, and
I shall do my best to entertain their friendship."
These quaint expressions were pleasing to me, and I continued the
conversation. He said that he had had no sea experience. That while
going from Bombay to the Fiji Islands he was battened down in the
hold with the rest of the coolie labor, and only allowed to walk the
deck a short time in the evenings. He was anxious to work and help
in any way that he could. The second mate put him to work
scrubbing paint-work. There is always plenty of this kind of work to
be done on every ship. The Hindoo went to work with a will, as if
glad to have the opportunity.
For the next four days the southeast trades held fair, until we were
well to the northward of the Fiji group. I was hoping to get east of
the 180th meridian before crossing the Equator, This would give me
a better slant before I struck the northeast trades. Then in latitude
about 30° north we would encounter the westerly winds, which
would be fair for the Pacific coast.
I was well pleased with the progress we had made since we left
Suva, and I anticipated making a sailing record from the Fijis to San
Francisco.
Events had favored us since our departure. The crew were willing
and the good ship herself seemed to feel that she was homeward
bound. But our outward peace was somewhat broken by the sudden
and mysterious illness of the Hindoo, who, after the second day out
from Suva refused to eat, complaining of a headache, and later
remaining for hours in what appeared to be almost a state of coma.
I was worried by this new disease, and hoped that it would not
prove to be contagious. As a precautionary measure, I removed the
Hindoo aft to the deceased Captain's cabin. For two days it was with
a great effort that he was even aroused to drink a cup of bouillon.

CHAPTER XXVII
The Hurricane
At two o'clock in the morning of our fifth day from Suva, I was
awakened by hearing the booms and gaffs swinging as if in a calm. I
thought this very strange, as the southeast trades should have held
until we were well across the Equator. Rushing up on deck, I was
indeed surprised to find the sails hanging in midships, and not a
breath from any quarter of the compass.
I ordered the staysails down and the topsails clewed up and made
fast, also the flying-jib and outer jib. (These lighter sails in a calm
usually flop to pieces, especially where there is a rolling swell.) Away
to the eastward I noticed a heavy bank of clouds, but considered
this of minor importance, as we were nearing the Equator. It usually
means heavy rain, but seldom wind.
Yet this morning there was something out of the ordinary, because
of the long swell coming from the northeast, and the sickly and
suffocating atmosphere. The unusual stillness was intensified by the
murmuring and talking of the crew. The men who were making fast
the headsails on the flying jibboom could be heard plainly from the
poop deck, growling and swearing as they passed the gaskets
around the sails. Such was the funereal quietness of the morning
that even the stars were hidden in halos of a yellowish color.
Giving instructions to haul in the log line, I went below to look at the
barometer. I was surprised to find it falling. I next consulted a Pacific
directory, and found that these unusual conditions preceded a
hurricane. This information upset me greatly. I had never
experienced a hurricane, but well knew that their force and
destructive power was very great.

Before going on deck again, I looked in on the Hindoo in the
Captain's room. As usual, he was in a stupor, and looked as if he had
not moved since being fed the preceding evening. I did notice from
the heaving of the skeleton-like breast, that the breathing was
regular, and not intermittent as it had been on the preceding
evening.
On deck, I had all the reef-earrings brought up from the lazarette,
and got everything in readiness for any emergency.
I was well to the westward of the Gilbert group, but still to the
eastward of the 180th Meridian. Should the hurricane come out of
the east, I could heave to and ride it out without any danger of
fetching up on one of the Gilbert Islands.
In the cabin the barometer was falling so fast that it now showed
hurricane weather. I knew that it was only a question of a few hours
before we should feel its fury. My experience was limited in the laws
of storms. If we were in the storm center it would be necessary to
put her into the port tack. By doing this I should be forced south,
and back onto the northern isles of the Fiji group, while on a
starboard tack I should be driven onto a lee shore of the Gilbert
Islands. Either course meant destruction.
With daylight and hot coffee this gloomy situation assumed a more
cheerful aspect. While the old sailor has the light of day to guide him
over storm-tossed decks, he becomes more tolerant of ship and
crew.
At half-past five the white caps could be seen coming from the
northeast, and before we got the spanker down the gale struck us,
about six points on the starboard bow. The old ship reeled to
leeward, with the lee rail under water. The decks were almost
perpendicular. It seemed that no power on earth could right her to
an even keel again. There were two men at the wheel, trying to
keep her off before the gale, but it was of no avail, for she refused

to answer her helm, and lay throbbing as if undecided whether to
seek a watery grave, or to continue her fight for victory.
Swanson, by a heroic effort, cut the fore and main sheet, and then
let go by the run. The tense situation was relieved as the booms
flew seaward over the lee rail. We then kept her off before the gale
with the wind on the starboard quarter, immediately setting to work
to reef the fore and main sail.
By nine o'clock, three hours and a half later, it was no longer a gale,
but a hurricane. With three reefs in the foresail and a goose-wing
spanker, we ran before it. It was too late to heave to. With such a
tremendous sea running it would mean destruction to ship and crew
to try the latter move. As it was, the ship was awash fore and aft
from seas breaking over her. Should the hurricane hold out for ten or
twelve hours more with our present rate of speed we should be
dashed to pieces against one of the Gilbert group.
At four bells the velocity of the hurricane was so great that one was
in danger of being blown off the schooner. We rigged life-lines on
the fore and main decks, also on the poop deck, and by their help
the crew managed to keep from being washed or blown overboard.
The sea looked like an immense waterfall, one enormous roaring
mass of foam. Occasionally from out of this terrible cataract a
Himalayan sea would gain in momentum and dash itself against our
starboard quarter, submerging the vessel. At such times all that
would be identifiable of the "Wampa" would be her rocking spiral
masts.
Like a struggling giant she would raise her noble head and shake
herself clear of this octopus, shivering, but never spent.
About noon the hurricane jumped suddenly from the northeast to
east southeast, without losing any of its velocity. In order to keep
running before it, and keep the wind on our starboard quarter we
hauled more to the northward and westward, although to do this it
was necessary to drive into a beam sea, which made it all the more

dangerous. Also the sea was driving from the east southeast and
this formed a cross sea.
When these two seas came together, the "Wampa" would rise and
poise on them as if on a pivot. In this position, and with the gale
blowing on the starboard quarter, her head would be thrown into the
beam sea. It looked as if we could not survive. There was constant
danger of our being broken up into small pieces. We dropped the
peak of the spanker that formed the goose-wing sail, put it into
gaskets, and ran with a three-reefed foresail.
We then put the oil-bags over the stern in the hope of quieting these
angry seas. But this was useless. While we were fastening the lines
that held the oil-bags in the water, a crushing comber came whistling
along and filled our stanch little ship again from stem to stern. When
she shook herself clear of the boiling foam I noticed that our oil-
bags were gone, and with them the Captain's boat which hung from
davits over the stern.
Old Charlie and Dago Joe were steering. Old Charlie had a faraway
look in his watery eyes as he spoke and said:
"I am afraid, sir, this will be my last trick at this wheel."
I spoke harshly to this old sailor, saying, "To Hell with sentiment, this
is no place for it. Watch your steering and don't feel sorry for
yourself." Had I known what was so soon to happen I should not
have so upbraided this poor harmless old soul. I have often
regretted it.
Riley, who was taking no chances, was seemingly not all
handicapped by his one eye. Always alert and as agile as a tiger, he
went about the decks as if nothing were out of the ordinary,
although to hear him talking to himself one would think that he
expected to be extinguished by every sea that came. He had about
twenty feet of manila rope tied about his waist with the end held in
his hand. When a sea would hit us Riley would see it coming, and

would pass the rope end around a belaying-pin or anything that he
thought would hold his weight.
It was while she cleared herself from the sea that carried away the
Captain's boat that I found Riley twisted around the spanker sheet
like an eel. It took him some time to extricate himself, always
watching the progress of the stern sea, and not seeming to notice
his number ten brogans, which had woven themselves into the
spanker-sheet falls. The hurricane was raising havoc with Riley's
mustache. Having blown all over his face, it looked as if the only way
to quiet it would be to put it into a plaster of Paris cast. He finally
pulled himself clear of the sheet, exclaiming:
"Be Hivins, and wasn't that a close call—"
Just then Swanson came running aft and reported that the
martingale guy had carried away on the flying-jibboom. It was then
that my heart sank within me. I knew what to expect. Dismantled,—
then to perish at sea!

CHAPTER XXVIII
The Master Returns
The thought of our dead captain came to me, of what his will would
have been in this crisis of life and death, and I paused to wonder
why he had not rested until he was assured that I would not carry
his precious treasures back with me. Did he expect this situation,
and doubt my ability to cope with it? Action followed thought, and I
ordered the second mate and the crew forward to see what could be
done with the martingale guy.
Still the humor of the moment appealed to me. As Riley left the
poop he shouted, "Be the Holy St. Patrick, it has blown the buttons
off me oilskin coat." There was no question about its blowing, but it
was also possible that his snakelike position on the spanker-sheet
had something to do with the lost buttons.
It was now past noon. None of the crew cared to eat, preferring the
wave-swept deck to anything the cook had to offer. The murderer
who pays for his crime on the gallows and enjoys his ham and eggs
on the morn of execution may be happy indeed, but this does not
apply to the sailor. When there is a life and death battle on with the
elements, he is there to grab the one last chance if there be one. If
not, he prefers a watery grave to claim him with his stomach empty.
The seas kept coming larger, and every time one would break and
spend itself on the decks I thought it would be the last, and that she
could not arise. But she shook herself clear as she climbed the
waves; then again the sea, and again the dread.
I could not leave the poop nor the two men at the wheel. A wrong
turn at this howling, raging time, would mean quick despatch to the

land of no awakening. Sometimes even the helmsmen grew afraid,
but a word of encouragement sufficed to quiet them.
While I was standing to windward of the men at the wheel, watching
her every move as she was pitched hither and thither on this crazy
spiral sea, she shipped a green sea that shook her from stem to
stern. It was with great difficulty that she raised her black hull to the
raging storm again. I shouted to the men at the wheel. It was too
late. She had broached to with the stern sea on the beam, and the
beam sea right ahead.
Then the beam sea submerged her, and by it I was carried across
the poop deck, and found myself held under the wheel-box, with
both legs pinned in a vise-like grip by the tiller, which extended
forward of the rudder-head. Although dazed and strangled by the
terrible impact of the water, I managed to twist the upper part of my
body towards the wheel and to murmur, "For God's sake keep her
off."
My weakened voice was lost in the tempest. There were no ears to
hear my pleadings. The men at the wheel were gone. Gone, indeed,
to a watery grave, and perhaps the others also. With me it would
not take long. Just another raking like the last one, and then the
finish. Again the cook's words echoed louder than the raging storm,
"Do we finish here?"
As I lay there pinned to the deck, too helpless to even call aloud,
and as it seemed waiting, waiting, for the executioner to spring the
deadly trap, I was conscious that the door of the companion-way
had closed with a bang so terrific that it sounded above the storm. I
twisted my head and shoulders around to see if I dared to hope.
There before me stood the Hindoo stowaway. He did not notice me
lying there pinned under the wheel-box, nor could I manage to
attract his attention.
With opal eyes glowing green and fiery red, he sprang to the wheel,
and with magnificent strength pulled on the spokes till they

screeched louder than the storm as they were dislodged from their
oxidized fittings. Harder and harder he pulled on the wheel. He
didn't even notice the seas breaking over him. The mysterious thing
about him was that he seemed to know what he was doing. He was
keeping her off before it.
In doing this he removed the tiller from my legs. At last I was free.
As I struggled and crawled to the weather-rail for support, the
Hindoo shouted in clear and ringing tones, in true seamanlike
fashion, looking neither to the right nor left, but straight ahead, as if
staring into a land-locked harbor. He repeated his order for the
second time in a high tenor voice:
"Get an axe out of the donkey-room and cut away the lee martingale
guy. Your flying-jibboom is gone overboard and is still held by the lee
guy. It is plowing a hole in the port bow."
I knew but one law. The law of self-preservation. My arms were
locked tight around the stanchion that supported the weather-rail.
That quick command of the Hindoo brought me sharply to the
realization that I was not yet given that quick despatch to the land
of nowhere, but was still in the flesh, and very much alive. My first
rational thought was, "What in Hell is the Hindoo doing at the
wheel?" My pride as a sailor resented the affront put upon my ability
as a sailor by a stowaway who was daring to assume the command
of my ship, and daring to issue orders to me.
Letting go my hold on the stanchion, I cautiously made for the
Hindoo helmsman. While in the act, she shipped another drencher. I
was carried off my feet and washed away to the lee scuppers. But I
managed, by some interposition of Divine Providence, to fasten my
arms around the mooring-bitt, thus saving myself from an angry and
cruel sea, which seemed to delight in playing with me as a cat does
with a mouse, only to swallow me up in its fathomless depths.
Once again she wrenched herself free of the mad swirl and her stern
went down until we were in a valley between mountains of water. I

realized as I looked up at the bows which seemed to be towering
above me, that the flying-jibboom, like a clipped wing, was missing.
Like a flash I wondered how the Hindoo knew that the jibboom was
gone.
As her stern ascended high into the air, I jumped for the wheel and
with an exclamation of joy I shouted, "God in Heaven, the Captain!"
There he stood beside the Hindoo. The dead Captain. The same
heavy mustache covered the lower lip. The same fiery eyes that
knew no defeat. He was looking straight ahead with muscle-set
jaws. He appeared as if in the flesh and ready as of yore to battle
with the elements.
Then, like a flash, he vanished, and the Hindoo stood alone, pulling
and tugging on the wheel with his supple arms.
He spoke, and his usually high-pitched tenor voice rang out
piercingly clear. "Cut away your jibboom, you have no time to lose.
Have no fear."
I knew that her former Captain was in command of the ship, and
that his masterly seamanship wrought through the Hindoo. I crept
forward with new courage to do his bidding.
Huddled together beneath the forecastle-head stood what remained
of the crew, who seemed not to know that two of their number were
gone. The second mate was praying, and helpless from fear to be of
any use in handling the schooner. Riley had his three-inch sailor's
rope fast to the windlass with one extra turn around his body. He
was taking no chances. Swanson was the only one without fear.
When I called for a volunteer to cut away the flying jibboom he
made for the axe and rushed onto the sea-swept forecastle-head. As
the schooner arose high in the air, he swung over the lee bow and
with one stroke of the axe cut away the hemp lanyard that was
holding the massive spar from its freedom.

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