Saturday - December 23, 2006
Why BREW Sucks
I recently switched to a feature-phone in place
of my Treo 650 when I moved from Sprint to Verizon because Verizon wouldn't let
me have a Treo without spending at least $70 a month on a plan with minutes that
I couldn't share with Sarah. So until Verizon has some more reasonable pricing,
I'm sticking with feature-phones. Unfortunately on Verizon this means I have to
deal with BREW,
or Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless. It's similar to J2ME, but different in
several way, most notably that users can't write and deploy BREW applications to
their own phones. For me, this is extremely frustrating because I would like my
phone to be able to do most of what I did with my Treo, but it lacks the tools.
If it supported J2ME I could at least try to create what I want, but BREW
prohibits all attempts. I realize this fits in with Verizon's goal of
controlling my phone, but it doesn't make me very happy, to the point that if I
could afford it I would switch to a Treo even with the overpriced service. But
for now I'll make due and hope that Verizon comes up with something
better.