Second Life on the mobile phone, soon

A Techmeme article informs us about a mobile gaming news that definitely deserves being featured here: according to this Reuters article , Comverse Technology, has created in the last 6 months an application that runs Second Life on Java-enabled mobile phones, along with other software that allows integrated SMS and instant messaging and the streaming of mobile video directly in-world.

To quote Steve Jobs, this is huge.

Although Raph Koster points us that the technology is probably based on taking snapshots of the Second Life environment and streaming those to the mobile client, I find it hard to believe. Although more difficult to develop, it is much more likely that the mobile client is actually rendering 3D Second Life models, with textures and all. Off course, such a mobile gaming client would be very resource consuming, and will probably run only on very powerful handsets.

The future will see how this goes. Given Second Life’s huge recent adoption rate, taking into account that the SL client has recently gone open-source, and since Comverse is in negotiations with various carriers, I guess in a couple of months time we’ll start seeing Second Lifers exploring their virtual domains on the go as well.

If you want to read more on the subject, take a look on Startup Squad and 3pointD as well, they have some very interesting insights on the scoop.