Porting of Android apps across other mobiles O/S

[Sri Jaganathan]

I have a questions:
Once an app is written in Android, how easy it is to port it to phones using other O/S (like Symbian, iPhone O/S or BlackBerry)?


(edited to remove an unwanted question)

[Devender Thareja]

Hi Sri,

The example you have provided is simply a web application and it should work on all devices. This is not an Android app. Android app is written using Android SDK.
Similarly Blackberry has its own Java based SDK. You can architecture your app to reuse most of components but GUI part will probably need to be rewritten.
Iphone SDK is not Java based, hence there will very little re-use of work done on other devices.
I don't have knowledge of Symbian.

Thanks.

[Sri Jaganathan]

Hi Devender,
Thanks for that.

Sorry I should have noted that qstn #2 is not an example for qstn #1. Will edit the post now. Thanks.

Devender Thareja wrote:Hi Sri,

The example you have provided is simply a web application and it should work on all devices. This is not an Android app. Android app is written using Android SDK.
Similarly Blackberry has its own Java based SDK. You can architecture your app to reuse most of components but GUI part will probably need to be rewritten.
Iphone SDK is not Java based, hence there will very little re-use of work done on other devices.
I don't have knowledge of Symbian.

Thanks.

[Flaviu Simihaian]

Symbian uses a Python-driven GUI for the S60 but it is still unclear how flexible and acomodating it is. My guess is it will not be easy to transfer an application from Android to Symbian.

[Ed Burnette]

Unless it's a Web application you'll need to rewrite it for each platform.

There *are* ways to run Java ME applications on Android, and this technique is used for some of the apps in the Market. See:

http://www.microemu.org (used by Tower Bloxx)
http://microemu.blogspot.com/2008/11/running-java-me-applications-on-android.html

http://www.netmite.com/android
http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f3/j2me-midlet-app-runner-emulator-out-6129

http://www.poliplus.com/android.htm
http://www.mobilemediaconsult.com/2007/11/j2me-running-in-google-phones.html

However a native application will always give the user a better experience. Compare the native iPhone version of Tower Bloxx and the Android port to see what I mean.