Mobile Phone games

Mobile phones have become more than just communication devices. They are increasingly being used for recreation purposes mainly by utilizing them to play games. The video games played on the mobile phones are called mobile phone games and are played on ordinary mobile phones, Smartphone's, PDAs and handheld computers. The video games played on specialized handheld video game systems like PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS do not fall under the category of mobile phone games.

Mobile phone games are played using the technologies present either in the device itself or available through the networks like on short text messages (SMS), multimedia message (MMS) or GPRS location identification. The non-networked applications simply use the device platform to run the game software or the embedded software. The games may be installed using a cable or available through the mobile operator. Mobile phone games are usually downloaded through the mobile operators’ radio network. In some cases the mobile phone games may be present in the handsets at the time of purchase. Sometimes the mobile phone games may be made available through Bluetooth, infrared connection or memory cards also.

Mobile phone games are developed using various platforms and technologies. A brief overview of software commonly in use today is as follows:

• Windows Mobile: It is a compact operating system having many basic applications like Microsoft, Win32 and API. The devices supporting this platform for mobile phone games are Pocket PCs, Smartphone's, Portable Media Centres and on-board computers pf some automobiles.
  
• Palm OS or Garnet OS: This is an embedded operation system initially developed by Palm Computing, Inc. owned by US Robotics for usage in Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). Garnet OS is the current licensed version from ACCESS.
  
• Symbian OS: It is a proprietary operating system designed for mobile phone games designed by Symbian Ltd. It is a descendant of Psion’s, EPOC and runs exclusively on ARM processes.
  
• Adobe Flash Lite: It is a lightweight version of Adobe Flash Player, a software application for mobile phone games published by Adobe Systems. Other devices that can support this mobile phone games application are Chumby and iRiver.
  
• NTT DoCoMo, Inc.: It is a mobile phone operator of Japan providing mobile phone games, phone services, video phone, i-mode, and mail services.
  
•  DoJa: This is Java environment supporting profile specification for i-mode and mobile phone games for DoCoMo. This is based on JavaME, CLDC, API, defined in Java Community Process (JCP).
  
• Sun Microsystems, Inc.: It is a multinational vendor. Its products include servers and workstations based on its own SPARC processors. For mobile phone games it uses Java Platforms, Micro Edition or Java ME. Other technology includes NFS. But it is inclined not to provide free binary implementations of its Java ME runtime environment for mobile phone games and other mobile devices and relies on third parties to provide their own. Its Java ME source code for mobile phone games is licensed under the GNU General Public License and is released under the project name phoneME.
  
• BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless: It is an application development platform created by Qualcomm for mobile phones supporting mobile phone games.  BREW is a software platform that can download and run small programs for playing mobile phone games, sending messages, sharing photos etc. The main advantage of BREW platforms is that the application developers can easily port their applications between all Qualcomm devices.
  
• WIPI (Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability): It is a middleware platform used in South Korea, which allows the mobile phones of all manufacturers or carriers to run Internet applications and download mobile phone games.

Mobile phone games are generally single player games with artificially intelligent opponents. But multiplayer functionality can be achieved in some cases through infrared, Bluetooth, GPRS, 3G, WiFi, AI, MMS and Wireless LAN.