Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones" • Hacker News Board

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#341

Post by bserge » Fri, May 21, 2021, 5:57 AM UTC

umeshunni wrote: post #231

ingenieroariel wrote: post #212

I worked on a J2ME app that needed to access location on phones without GPS, I was in touch with the operator and got a list of cell ids with lat, lon. With that I created a daemon in Symbian that would query the cell id and open up a socket server to give it to the J2ME app. With that we developed an app to request a taxi service, but none of the taxi companies wanted it. Some of the complaints were: 1. GPRS data pl…

To be fair, all 3 of those are valid complaints. #1 was true all the way till ~10 years ago when 3G became popular. #2 is still true is most 'urban' areas. People just take their phones with them when they get out of their cars. #3 is interesting - I think some regions had tried to ban mounting phones on the dashboard, but at this point, they must have given up

GPRS was a godsend as it brought the always-connected, pay-for-data usage that we all know nowadays.

The precursor, HSCSD, was ridiculously expensive because you paid by the minute.

If my memory is correct, there was also dial-up on mobile/GSM (well, I used something before I had a phone that supported HSCSD), which was interesting, but quite useless at the time.

Also, #3 makes little sense seeing as there were already cars with built-in satnav, and you had to look down, which is worse than a phone on the windshield.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#342

Post by bserge » Fri, May 21, 2021, 6:01 AM UTC

catblast01 wrote: post #327

surfsvammel wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is me guessing: This sounds like before turn-by-turn navigation was possible. If they had to approximate location via a set list of cell ids, then that doesn't give very precise location data. Also, back then, I am guessing, there where not as good map data available, especially not that would fit in a phone. I would also think that this was before synthesised speech was really possible to do on a phone. The wor…

Is everyone here too old to remember MapQuest or CD based car navigation systems? Apparently. We had decent turn by turn in the 90s. In the US mapping data was heavily derived mostly from public Census TIGER data, which had flaws but was good enough.

Just recently I had to explain how that thing works on an old car. In the end, my advice was to just slap an Android phone/tablet on the dashboard and forget the stupid CD satnav :D

They also had a backseat DVD player with (shudder) analog video input. The quality was atrocious!

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#343

Post by spoonjim » Fri, May 21, 2021, 6:24 AM UTC

I got a bit sad when I thought of a generational talent like Carmack porting Doom to a Nokia or whatever but then I realized that everything he’s invented has been by trying to wring every drop of performance out of hardware.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#344

Post by tylerc230 » Fri, May 21, 2021, 6:34 AM UTC

ayyy wrote: post #339

tylerc230 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a company that allowed you to play along with jeopardy on your brew/Jme device in real time as you watch the show live on tv. You could compete with your friends in real time, leaderboards, chat etc. The company eventually went under but I can’t help but think if it had been ported to iOS when it came out it would have been a hit. I’ve still never seen any technology like it.

At the time, "second screen" was the term I heard used for those types of experience. The only prominent example I can think of these days is kahoot, which is only sort of the same idea.

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the phrase "second screen". It was going to be big thing until people realized that no one wanted to look at 2 screens at once.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#345

Post by Hydraulix989 » Fri, May 21, 2021, 6:47 AM UTC

tylerc230 wrote: post #344

ayyy wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the time, "second screen" was the term I heard used for those types of experience. The only prominent example I can think of these days is kahoot, which is only sort of the same idea.

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the phrase "second screen". It was going to be big thing until people realized that no one wanted to look at 2 screens at once.

FWIW I do this all day at work now :)

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#346

Post by Rerarom » Fri, May 21, 2021, 6:55 AM UTC

bserge wrote: post #341

umeshunni wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, all 3 of those are valid complaints. #1 was true all the way till ~10 years ago when 3G became popular. #2 is still true is most 'urban' areas. People just take their phones with them when they get out of their cars. #3 is interesting - I think some regions had tried to ban mounting phones on the dashboard, but at this point, they must have given up

GPRS was a godsend as it brought the always-connected, pay-for-data usage that we all know nowadays. The precursor, HSCSD, was ridiculously expensive because you paid by the minute. If my memory is correct, there was also dial-up on mobile/GSM (well, I used something before I had a phone that supported HSCSD), which was interesting, but quite useless at the time. Also, #3 makes little sense seeing as there were alrea…

> there was also dial-up on mobile/GSM

Yeah, it was called CSD. HSCSD was high-speed CSD.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#347

Post by toyg » Fri, May 21, 2021, 6:55 AM UTC

zerocrates wrote: post #265

zepearl wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Confirming #2: I live in Switzerland (low crime rate etc...) but I would not even dream of leaving my phone visible in the car. Btw. in the 90' I used to detach each-single-time that I parked the car the front panel of the car's radio to then carry it with me (leaving the storage box in front of the passenger seat open, to show that I didn't just put it in there) to discourage people from breaking into the car to ext…

The detachable faceplate for anti-theft reasons was (is?) a very common feature for aftermarket radios/head-units/whatever in the US. Built-in ones have just increasingly moved to not being a discrete, accessible, interchangeable component, another way around. I still remember when my dad had bought an aftermarket tape-deck-only radio, a Sony I believe, well into the era of the ubiquitous CD player (he just wanted a…

Italy, mid-80s, early summer. My primary school organises a day trip to a city nearby. During the trip, a classmate from a “difficult” background ends up getting slightly hurt, banging his head against a wall. When we eventually get back to our hometown, his parents don’t come to pick him up, and somehow that means everyone else has to wait on the bus. Eventually, his dad shows up, drunk and high (on heroin, we’ll found out later) with a car radio under his arm - and everybody knows he doesn’t have a car, he’s literally just stolen it…

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#348

Post by pjmlp » Fri, May 21, 2021, 7:10 AM UTC

m45t3r wrote: post #256

pjmlp wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Bluetooth issues - Camera is hit and miss, even after the renewed API - Apps randomly killed on the background - Intents that don't launch as expected - NDK debugging that cannot attach to the server running on the device - Unstable GPGPU drivers - Keyboard handling - Perfectly working code that needs to be rewritten just because Yeah so much better than J2ME.

You know, even if you're right we still see much more issues in iOS. For example, a simple Xcode minor upgrade can randomly break some flows. > - Perfectly working code that needs to be rewritten just because This issue is much more frequently on iOS than Android, since iOS deprecates features much faster and there is no compatibility layer between versions.

Except on Android that happens on the same Android version across devices.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#349

Post by pjmlp » Fri, May 21, 2021, 7:14 AM UTC

moshmosh wrote: post #182

pjmlp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you miss it, just try Android, contrary to Google arguments against J2ME, the fragmentation experience is kept unchanged.

It's not as bad as it used to be. The "drawers full of devices", all terrible and broken in unique ways, gave me flashbacks to the Android 2.x days.

They are still quite actuall,

https://pamartinezandres.com/running-android-tests-on-cloud-...

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#350

Post by f6v » Fri, May 21, 2021, 7:20 AM UTC

The thrill of playing games on my Siemens phone was something I haven’t experienced since. There was just something mind blowing about this small device, considering I had a PC with a CRT display back then. The sheer size difference between those two devices showed how far the technology has gone.