Mobile Application Development Environment

To set up a Test Environment require :

• Hardware
• Operating Systems
• Software that need to be tested
• Other required software like tools(And people who use it)
• Data configuration
• Interfaces to other systems and communications
• Documentation like user manuals/reference documents/documents guides/installation guides.

Mobile application development is the process by which applications are developed for handheld  devices such as personal digital assistants, enterprise digital assistants or mobile phones.  These applications are either pre-installed on phones during manufacture, or downloaded by customers from app stores and other mobile software distribution platforms. 

Platform which support devices from multiple manufacturers :

Java ME: This platform generally produces portable applications, although sometimes device-specific libraries exist (commonly used for games), making them non-portable. It is often used to provide simple applications on feature phones.

Symbian Platform : Designed from the start for mobile devices, the Symbian platform is a real time, multi-tasking OS specifically architected to run well on resource-constrained systems, maximising performance and battery life whilst minimising memory usage. The Symbian Foundation maintains the code for the open source software platform based on Symbian OS and software assets contributed by Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, and Sony Ericsson, including the S60 and MOAP(S) user interfaces.

Android : Android is a Linux-based platform from the Open Handset Alliance, whose 34 members include Google, HTC, Motorola, Qualcomm, and T-Mobile. It is supported by over 34 major software, hardware and telecoms companies. The Linux kernel is used as a Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL). Application programming is exclusively done in Java. The Android specific Java SDK is required for development although any Java JDE may be used.

.NET compact framework : Used primarily for applications on Pocket PC/Windows Mobile devices, although it is now being extended to Android devices.

BREW: Used for deploying applications on CDMA devices (but also supports GPRS/GSM models). Distributed via a Brew Content Platform.BREW provides complete control of the handset and access to all its functionality. However the power provided by native code with direct access to the handset APIs, has caused the BREW development process to be tailored largely towards recognized software vendors. While the BREW SDK (Software Development Kit) is freely available, running software on real mobile hardware (as opposed to the provided emulator) requires a digital signature which only be generated with tools issued by a handful of parties, namely mobile content providers and Qualcomm themselves.
 

Platform for a single manufacturer's devices 

BlackBerry :Supports push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, internet faxing, web browsing and other wireless information services as well as a multi-touch interface. It has a built-in QWERTY keyboard, optimized for "thumbing", the use of only the thumbs to type. The BlackBerry devices soon took a dominating position on the north-American smartphone market. Also important for BlackBerry are the BES (Black Berry Enterprise Server) and the Mobile Data System (BlackBerry MDS).

iPone OS : The iPhone and iPod Touch SDK uses Objective C, based on the C programming language. Currently, is only available on Mac OS X 10.5 and is the only way to write an iPhone application. All applications must be cleared by Apple before being hosted on the AppStore, the sole distribution channel for iPhone and iPod touch applications. However, non-Apple approved applications are released to jailbroken iPhones via Cydia or Installer.

Execution environments : 

Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian OS and iPhone OS support typical application binaries as found on personal computers with code which executes in the native machine format of the processor (the ARM architecture is used on many current models).  Windows Mobile also supports the Portable Executable(PE) format associated with the .NET Framework.  Both Windows Mobile, Palm OS and iPhone OS offer free SDKs and Integrated Developement Environments to developers.  Machine language executables offer considerable performance advantages over Java.