Actually, when I said "midlet manager", that's what I meant, just a full java VM for PPC. Most Cingular PPC phones seem to come with one pre-installed, but Verizon phones don't, for some reason (leastwise my Samsung i730 didn't). Because of this, Verizon PDA phone customers have been largely locked completely away from downloading or installing some great mobile Java apps like Opera Mini, Gmail app, etc.

That's why I was so excited; for a while it felt like everyone with a PDA phone could download, install and use Opera Mini and Gmail BUT ME, and simply because I chose a PDA phone from Verizon.

For comparison, Verizon just released the xv6800, otherwise known as the HTC Mogul. On Sprint's network, it runs java using this same Esmertec Jbed JVM, but Verizon's version doesn't have it preinstalled for some reason.

So, twcowdery, if you don't have a JVM on your phone, install this one and there's a good chance it'll be all you need to run Java midlets. Note however that some Java developers have discovered unsettling problems related to compilation with Esmertec's Jbed JVM, however. (I've never had it fail compilation on me yet, but I'm not running homebrew java apps, either. Your mileage may vary.)

a_lazy_dude, that had me stumped; as well as I can tell, it installs straight to the \Windows\folder; I don't have anything that would let me analyze the Start Menu\Programs shortcut that the cab installed, when I open \Windows\Jbed.exe directly, it comes up, so I'm thinking that's what you're looking for.

I went through the bundled HTML help page (again in \Windows\), but I couldn't find anything on running midlets from a command line. But, I did find this ((MY) MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH: now, you can use Opera Mini as the system-level Web browser! - xda-developers) which seems to be EXACTLY what you're looking for-not just running Opera from a shortcut, but actually making it the main system default web browser to boot.


-J