Programming Tutorials

What is J2ME?

By: Emiley J. in J2ME Tutorials on 2006-12-09  

J2ME is the short form for Java 2 Micro Edition. J2ME is meant for tiny devices such as mobile phones, TV set top boxes, Vehicle telematics, pagers, PDAs etc. 

There are many differences between J2ME and other Editions of Java. The reason being the target devices of J2ME are very much different from the Computers.

Some of the main differences between computers and the J2ME devices are:

• Limited processing power
• Limited system memory
• Limited storage capacity
• Small display
• Less Battery power
• Limited connectivity to internet

J2ME was designed with all these above considerations. The J2ME compliant device manufacturers include the miniature version of the JVM in their devices, which is very light weight and suitable for these small devices. This JVM enables the execution of small Java programs which are called midlets. These midlets since they are nothing but Java programs (a little bit different) make these devices very powerful. 

The J2ME applications can be used to do many useful things. A few of the capabilities of a J2ME program are:

• Making UDP connections back to the server or communication between two devices.
• Making HTTP connections back to a HTTP server to make rich applications
• Making Socket connections
• Bar Code scanning
• Bluetooth programming
• and many other programs limited only by your imagination.

J2ME or JavaME is slowly being replaced by other technologies such as Android and therefore if you are serious about learning to code for mobile phones you should start learning about Android or Apple's Swift language. Or the recommended and easier method is to use a hybrid mobile development platform such as React Native so that you can write single code and run on both android and ios mobile phones.