Maybe we should ask for gamma support in kvm-interest?
I think you should. It's already on my list of things to bring up with our Expert Group members; what I have in mind is:
graphics.drawImage(image, x, y, anchor, alpha);
Then you could vary the alpha with each redraw to do a corss-fade. Another thing on my list is:
graphics.setARGBColor(r, g, b, alpha);
graphics.setARGBColor(argb); // 0xaarrggbb
That's already in the Nokia UI API, so clearly easily implementable at least for Nokia

. And that would allow you (by setting colour to 0xaa000000 and filling a rectangle) to do the fade to/from black.
MIDP 2.0's support for transparency in PNGs states that you either support alpha fully, or treat anything other than full transparency as fully opaque. I'd like to propose the same principle for the possible wider transparency support MIDP 3.0 (e.g. the methods above) so that it wouldn't be too much of a burden for the least powerful phones. Otherwise the manufacturers might have to veto the whole thing. Would that be acceptable to you lot?