A developer's-eye view of smartphone platforms

Smartphone programming is booming. The little leash that lets your boss reach out and ruin your time off is turning into a platform of seemingly infinite possibilities. It's more than just iPhone applications that simulate a glass of beer that drains as the accelerometer measures the amount of tilt. The new smartphones can act as a wallet, a personal shopper, a personal trainer, and a source of endless amusement.

The bad news is you're going to need to cool your jets and take a few breaths. While every good programmer looks at a smartphone and sees a machine that can run rings around yesterday's desktops, not everyone has the same vision. The phone companies, the ones that own the towers and deliver your inspired bits to the general Internet, don't see your dreams. They worry that your totally awesome idea is going to totally flood their network with packets and shut out everyone else. They know that the infinite loop you forgot to debug is going to drain batteries. They're afraid that you'll find some clever way to cut them out of text-message profits. They're sure that you just want to spam someone, anyone, because now you can do it with a cell phone while you buy milk.

[ See InfoWorld's guide to the best mobile devices and Test Center reviews of the iPhone 3G, T-Mobile G1, BlackBerry Storm, BlackBerry Bold, Palm Treo Pro, AT&T Fuze, and HP iPaq 910c. ]

There's no point in thinking about it too much. If you want to write code for the iPhone and enjoy the wonderful playpen that Apple built for us, you're going to have to play by their rules. If you want to write for the Google phone, your life will be a bit freer, but you'll need to remember that they've got a kill switch and the power to destroy your dream. The good old days of peeking and poking around in memory are gone. The word "root" won't come through your fingers unless you decide to run up the pirate flag, void the warranty, and live forever outside the civilized world, where updates are supposed to work.

Strategies

To understand the world of smartphone programming, I waded up to my ankles into six major platforms: the iPhone, Google Android, RIM BlackBerry, the Palm OS, Windows Mobile, and Nokia Symbian. I downloaded the development kits, wrote a few lines, and spoke with some programmers who have waded in a bit deeper. Limiting this survey to six platforms was still difficult because it leaves out some good opportunities, like the very open OpenMoko and the cross-platform power of the Java Micro Edition, a version of Java that runs on a number of phones.