Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP)

Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) is a specification for the use of Java technology for mobile devices. In the context of software development, MIDP sits on top of the Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC).

Because MIDP is primarily used with CLDC, which is designed for highly constrained devices with limited CPUs, screen size, RAM, battery power and user interface, midlets are ideal for low-end cell phones.

Applications written with MIDP are normally designed for cell phones and PDAs. They are known as midlets.

Some commonly-used MIDP development tools include the Sun Java Wireless Toolkit and the Netbeans Mobility Pack.

In theory, applications written using MIDP and CLDC should have the ability to run on different Java ME-capable devices without any changes in their code, which is consistent with Java’s "write once, run anywhere" mantra. In practice, however, varying hardware specifications among devices, such as graphical display sizes/resolutions and user interfaces, force developers to make additional customizations.

MIDP 3.0, released in 2009, supports the following features (not an exhaustive list):

• Shared libraries for midlets
• Improved cross-device interoperability
• Improved UI expressability and extensibility
• Support of devices with larger displays
• High-performance games
• Auto-launched midlets
• Inter-midlet communications