Mobile Platforms

For work purposes I am currently carrying two phones- a Blackberry and a Palm 650. I like both of these OSes, although the Palm OS does crash quite a bit. I've also been testing a couple of mobile GIS applications running on Windows Mobile 5. We're trying to figure out where to go next with it- RIM, Symbian, Linux (iPhone), etc.

While I like RIM and Palm OS, with a edge to RIM, Windows Mobile is completely unappealing to me. The main plus from a development standpoint is that it is relatively standard across devices. However, this is easily eclipsed by the usability, the memory consumption, and the way in which closing most programs doesn't close them- it just hides them. The stability varies pretty widely across devices, but it's about on the level of Palm OS.

I am still waiting for the mobile OS that implements virtual memory paging (with an SD card as the pagefile holder). It might be slower, but the RAM is so easily consumed in simple apps, it would enable a variety of applications that just don't work now. I know, you just have to wait a couple of years and it will all change, but right now it's a very tough decision if you want to figure out which mobile OS to develop on.

Now, some might say- why not just do mobile friendly web applications versus applications? For a lot of applications, you need more interactivity than the limited browsers on the phone provide. For others, the constant lag is the impediment. Overall, it's an area of potential, but limited to only the simplest applications today.

However, the mobile device is where some of the virtual machine technologies can really come to bear. In particular, Java Mobile Edition is pretty widely available, even if the apps look as out of place as they often do in Desktop OS land. So, you can do a Java app and get a reasonable percentage of phones to work, although they all seem to implement slightly different profiles.

Now we have the Apollo, Silverlight, JavaFX model of what are in reality enhanced web browsers that build UIs out of things other than HTML. JavaFX mobile is one picture of how things could go in that direction, where the environment could provide all of the basic phone functions, in addition to providing a decent programming environment for content delivery. Of course, I am not sure how much of that is really one thing, or if it's a set of technologies that Sun is lumping under one banner.

Anyway- let's say I have an opportunity to port one of these mobile GIS apps to a platform or OS- which way should I go?