At Java One, I purchased the “conference gadget”, a SavaJe Jasper S20. Since it supports most of Java SE, I thought I’d check out whether a competent Java developer who knows nothing about mobile issues could make it do anything interesting. It’s kinda cute, and it’s an OK phone on my local GSM network. However, the software development pack runs only on Windows. It’s got a camera and shoots video, but when I plugged the USB into my Mac, the Mac said “unable to use that disk” and then crashed a few seconds later. I have never had a USB device fail like this on any computer before. Also, the phone’s preferences menus are lame and limited, so on the screen, I can’t keep the network operator name from over-writing the Date/Time display. Finally, my network provider requires some slightly odd GPRS settings (e.g. funny DNS port numbers) and the phone doesn’t have a way to set those, so I can’t connect. I reported this on the SavaJe developer forums, and some badly-programmed bot pretending to be a “SavaJe Developer Services Engineer” mindlessly pointed me at the directions to the phone’s GPRS setup screen, when I’d specifically stated that that screen didn’t do what I needed. SavaJe might turn out to be a good idea, but they’re doing their best to cover that up. [Update: As of sometime over the weekend, an actual human seems to be having a look at the situation, over at the SavaJe developer forums. So let’s see...] [Update: Got a nice email from Larry Kaye, Manager of Developer Services over at SavaJe. Very to-the-point; yes, they know about most of my issues, are working on them. That’s all anyone can ask for in a bleeding-edge developer-release product. Will report further.]
