A MIDlet is an application that uses the

Mobile Information Device Profile Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) is a specification published for the use of Java on embedded devices such as mobile phones and PDAs. MIDP is part of the Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) framework and sits on top of Connected Lim ...

(MIDP) of the

Connected Limited Device Configuration The Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) is a specification of a framework for Java ME applications describing the basic set of libraries and virtual-machine features that must be present in an implementation. The CLDC is combined with on ...

(CLDC) for the

Java ME Java Platform, Micro Edition or Java ME is a computing platform for development and deployment of porting, portable code for embedded system, embedded and mobile devices (micro-controllers, sensors, gateways, mobile phones, personal digita ...

environment. Typical applications include games running on mobile devices such as

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

s with

J2ME Java Platform, Micro Edition or Java ME is a computing platform for development and deployment of porting, portable code for embedded system, embedded and mobile devices (micro-controllers, sensors, gateways, mobile phones, personal digita ...

support and

feature phone Feature may refer to: Computing * Feature recognition, could be a hole, pocket, or notch * Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob * Feature (machine learning), in statistics: individual measurable properties of the phenome ...

s which have small graphical displays, simple numeric keypad interfaces and limited network access over

HTTP HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

. The .jad file describing a MIDlet suite is used to deploy the applications in one of two ways. Over the air (OTA) deployment involves uploading the .jad and .jar files to a

Web server A web server is computer software and underlying Computer hardware, hardware that accepts requests via Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, co ...

which is accessible by the device over

. The user downloads the .jad file and installs the MIDlets they require. Local deployment requires that the MIDlet files be transferred to the device over a non-network connection (such as through

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is li ...

IrDa IrDA is a wireless standard designed for exchanging data using infrared (IR). Infrared ports for this purpose have been implemented in portable electronic devices such as mobile telephones, laptops, cameras, printers, and medical devices. The mai ...

, and may involve device-specific software). Phones that support

microSD Secure Digital (SD) is a proprietary hardware, proprietary, non-volatile memory, non-volatile, flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA). Owing to their compact size, SD cards have been widely adopted in a variety of port ...

cards can sometimes install .jar or .jad files that have been transferred to the memory card.

Platforms

Mainly MIDlet applications and games developed for

Series 40 Nokia Series 40 Platform, often shortened as S40, is a software platform and application user interface (UI) software that was previously used on Nokia's broad range of mid-tier feature phones from 2002 to 2014, as well as on some of the Vertu l ...

Series 60 The S60 Platform, originally named Series 60 User Interface, is a discontinued software platform and graphical user interface for smartphones that runs on top of the Symbian operating system. It was created by Nokia based on the 'Pearl' interfa ...

, Nokia Asha and Sony Ericsson Java Platform.

Emulation

MIDlet can run using

MicroEmulator MicroEmulator (also MicroEMU) — is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source Cross-platform software, platform independent J2ME emulator allowing to run MIDlets (applications and games) on any device with compatible JVM. It is writt ...

app on any desktop PC with JavaSE and on

Maemo Maemo is a Linux-based software platform originally developed by Nokia, now developed by the Free software movement, community, for smartphones and Internet tablets. The platform comprises both the Maemo operating system and Software development ...

. On Android devices via the J2ME Loader (MicroEmulator fork) application. Other J2ME emulators also could be used with or without some limitations.

Restrictions

Unlike a

Java applet Java applets were applet, small applications written in the Java (programming language), Java programming language, or another programming language that Compiled language, compiles to Java bytecode, and delivered to users in the form of Ja ...

, a MIDlet is limited to use of the LCDUI rather than the more familiar widgets of AWT and Swing. There are also restrictions on the size of .jar files and the number of concurrent HTTP connections based on the MIDP specification.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Midlet Java device platform Mobile software programming tools

Platforms

Emulation

Restrictions

See also

References