Qt or Java ME for a media application with maximum compatibility?

[roguel6]

Hi,

I don't know if this is the right place for this message. We want to develop a media application compound of a web view and an offline mode, where you can play media files downloaded previously.

I wonder which option is better for this kind of application if we want the maximum compatibility with old devices. I have seen this page:
http://www.forum.nokia.com/Devices/

and the answer seems to be Java, but I have heard that the compatibility difference is not too big between these two ways.

What could you recommend to me from your experience? Is Java ME enough for this kind of application?

Another point it is that I have Java experience, but not C++.

Thank you.

[petrib]

Java works on Series 40 an S60/Symbian based phones. Qt works only on select (newer) Symbian based phones (and one maemo based model, where it works better than on any Symbian based model at the moment).

maemo (and proably MeeGo, too) doesn't (and won't) support Java (at least not by Nokia), so Qt is the way to go there (but there's only 1 maemo phone on the market so far, and the only one that has been on the market for the last 1.5 years), so I wouldn't worry about that too much.

For non-Nokia compatibility: Java would be good for porting the code to Android (no Qt for Android), and BlackBerry (no Qt for BlackBerry). For porting to iPhone, there's no Java or Qt, so it'd be a rewrite. Samsung's bada is C/C++ based, but no Qt, but bada based phones probably supports Java, too. There is a version of Qt for Windows Mobile, but not for Windows Phone 7 (and I'm not sure if there ever will be). Many Windows Mobile/CE based phones come with a Java VM, but no Java for Windows Phone 7, as far as I know.

Outside those platforms, Java (J2ME, JME) is fairly well supported.

With Java, however, there are device/platform specific differences, so there's no "write once, run everywhere" magic bullet, but you need to do device/platform specific versions of your app, even if you use Java.

[roguel6]

Thank so much for all the summarized information. Very useful!

Finally, we decided to use Qt and no support series 40 for this download feature. Nevertheless, they can access to the web page with the default browser.

Regarding non-nokia devices, we are going to develop specific versions. I was asking for the maximum compatibility between nokia devices.

Anyway, this information is very useful to have a complete vision of these platforms. Thanks again!