NullPointerException on phone?
A few nights ago, I decided to install the software that came with my phone for IR connectivity.
Decided to also download a sample app. I ended up finding Tetris. I installed it, and after I quit the game, it threw an exception.
If I wasn’t a programmer, I’d probably just ignore it.
But as a programmer, I noticed that my phone would display: “Application error” and then pressing on “Detail” would provide the following: “java/lang/NullPointerException”.
My first reaction was, “huh? Why is it / and not .?”
However, i’m sure others who would know nothing about programming, and have never come across a Null<something>Excetion would probably either think “what the heck!?”.
Or just dismiss it as long as the app worked the next time they tried it.
Or perhaps for the extreme case, the user may delete the app. (A programmer/IT type would probably try reinstalling at this point. And the programmer would try to decompile/debug it!).
As for myself, as much as I’d like to decompile the Java app running on my phone using something like this (i’ve tested it on one of my uni projects last year), I don’t have the time to decompile and go through it to find out where the NullPointer is happening.
Actually, it’s probably not too hard to work out. It only ever happens when i’m exiting the application.
Yes, I would probably write something for my phone (Nokia 6610) if it was running the Compact Framework.NET, or perhaps I could take some time to learn the Java required for my phone.
Perhaps what is needed is for someone to write something like MONO but for the Symbian OS (which most mobile phones run…).
Well, maybe not MONO, but a Compact Framework version of it.
Perhaps there is already something out there like that, just I haven’t seen it yet.
The comments in this blog post are an interesting read…