[GD-General] Cell phone games...Test on regular cell phone?

[Colin F. <cp...@ea...>]

2002 October 20th
Sunday

I just bought a Motorola T720 with Verizon as the
carrier.  The phone features a color LCD, and it
runs simple applications.

Okay, I'm really sorry for posting this silly
question to this list, but...

Can I write applications and run them on this 
phone with this carrier?

I tried to do my homework before composing this
post.  I did all kinds of Google searches.
But I'm just confused and dazzled by all the
marketing and news bytes, and my current impression
is that you can't just code your own stuff for
your own phone (with the T720 / Verizon combo).

Is this a phenomena that cell phone developers
face in general?  Carriers suppress development
for an otherwise standard device (phone)?

Do other carriers have a more open approach
to developing code for your own phone?

I don't want to become a development partner
with a carrier, and I don't have any ambition
to sell my application to the masses, and I 
don't care if the only way I can get my
code on to my phone is a data cable connected
to my PC.

Am I living in fantasy-land, with an out-moded
mindset that happens to think that the latest
wave of information-gathering applications and
services is just insane (MSN/Passport, RealOne,
MediaPlayer7.1, etc), and proprietary methods
to access your own property requires licensing
and partnerships with "The Man" (Microsoft,
Verizon, Sony, Nintendo, Yahoo!, RealNetworks)?

Anyhow, I'm practically barfing less than 24 hours
after signing up with Verizon with a Motorola T720
mobile phone...  I have to pay $6/month to a
third-party company, upload my personal photo's
to their servers, just to get pictures on to
my own damned phone!  (This fee does not include
the "air time" or general Internet access fee,
which are perfectly reasonable charges.)
To my knowledge, there is no way to get ringer
sounds that weren't produced by third-party
partners of Verizon, mostly costing money.
Really, the biggest thing is the apparent inability
to download your own applications to your own
phone.  So, instead of at least having the option
of developing games and exchanging them for free,
what you are offered is what you get.  If a
giant corporation (EA, THQ, etc) doesn't 
write that handy game or app for your Verizon phone,
you're screwed!

Someone tell me I'm wrong about uploading your
own apps.  Someone tell me that it's easy to get
the necessary SDK (for the T720) and use a data
link cable to basically run whatever I want,
making whatever sounds and graphics I want.

I can return the phone within 14 days from today
with very little cash loss.  After that point I
might as well try hard to forget that the T720
is an awesome piece of hardware...And maybe I'll
even face regret when I see other people with
even cooler phones (with digital cameras) that
are totally open to development and really 
basic, basic operations -- like picture display.

I can't help it.  I know I should have studied the
service a bit more, but I never expected something
as insane as having third parties handle every little
aspect of your phone recreation for money.
I wrote an e-mail to Verizon saying that this was
basically as insane as being charged to open files
on your own hard disk on your own personal computer!
Just image having to transmit all of your files
on your hard drive to a third party, just so you
could access them on your desktop computer, and
there was a fee for this "service"?!

Man, this is so messed up!  Sigining up for an
MSN "Passport" just to do other basic things
with my phone also left me feeling compromised.
I try to get used to "progress", trying to
ignore the lengthly EULA's, profiles, cookies,
daemons, applets, kiosk mode pop-up windows,
fake e-mail, spam, fees, plans, endless voicemail
menus, inability to opt-out of any marketing,
and basically NO guarantee of any privacy about
the CD's or URL's you consume, ever...
But I can't.  I wonder how corporations in America
reached this unprecedented level of information-
gathering with no regard to privacy, and resorting
to extremes of licensing and protecting products
with proprietary and secret interfaces, connectors,
protocols, languages, etc.

I'm sorry that my question degenerated in to a massive
critique of the software industry and giant corporations.
Maybe someone can cheer me up with a statement like:
"It's easy to develop for the Motorola T720,
and carriers can't stop you!  Go for it!"

--- Colin
cp...@ea...