With the upcoming (and much anticipated) release of the BlackBerry Q10, Android developers can now target the first qwerty-keyboard device to be released on the BlackBerry 10 mobile computing platform. The even better news for developers is that they can also port their existing BlackBerry 10 Android apps running on the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to also include support for the BlackBerry Q10 within the same release build.

While the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps has a built-in screen manager which will scale the application to the screen size of the device, it’s always best to build your app specific to the device you are targeting to ensure it looks presentable to end-users.

BlackBerry Z10

For developers, the key difference between the BlackBerry PlayBook, BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 would be in regard to screen sizes. The all-touch BlackBerry Z10 features a resolution of 1280 x 768 (15:9) on a 4.2-inch, 356 PPI screen. Android resources are pulled in from the res/drawable-xhdpi project folder.

BlackBerry Z10 screenshot: 1280×768 background image from res/drawable-xhdpi/device.png

BlackBerry Q10

The BlackBerry Q10 boasts a 330 PPI screen but with a resolution of 720 x 720 on a 3.1” screen (1:1 aspect ratio). When targeting the BlackBerry Q10, Android developers can leverage the res/drawable-small-square project folder.

BlackBerry Q10 screenshot: 720×720 background image from res/drawable-small-square/device.png

BlackBerry PlayBook

In addition to the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 models above, the BlackBerry PlayBook also supports Android apps. With a 7” screen resolution of 1024 x 600, this qualifies the BlackBerry PlayBook as an mdpi device pulling in resources from the res/drawable-mdpi project folder.

BlackBerry PlayBook screenshot: 1024 x 600 background image from res/drawable-mdpi/device.png

ADT Project Structure

Both the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 support icons with a size of 114 x 114 pixels (BlackBerry PlayBook: 86 x 86 pixels) which should be placed within their respective res/drawable project folders as well. Within the same Android project you can target both of the BlackBerry 10 form factors within the same release build by following these standard Android best practices.

Single Android project structure for BlackBerry Z10, BlackBerry Q10 & BlackBerry PlayBook

You can repackage your Android APK to the BlackBerry BAR file format using the new v1.5.2 SDK, and test/debug using device simulators for the BlackBerry Z10 (BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha B), BlackBerry Q10 (BlackBerry Dev Alpha C) and BlackBerry PlayBook  tablet available within our Android tooling page. Other pages which you should find useful would be our documentation page for the BlackBerry Plug-in for ADT and the Android API Support page.

BlackBerry World Submission

After testing your Android application and repackaging it into the BAR file format, you can submit your app to the BlackBerry World storefront via the following steps:

1. Log into the vendor portal
2. Select Manage products
3. Add a new release
4. Set ‘supported devices’ appropriately based on BlackBerry Q10, BlackBerry Z10 and/or BlackBerry PlayBook support for your app. If the app supports more than one device you can choose to select multiple devices for the same release build (BAR file). On the contrary, you can also upload specific file bundles (BARs) for each BlackBerry 10 device.

Supported BlackBerry 10 devices within the BlackBerry World vendor portal

With the successful launch of BlackBerry 10, we now turn our attention to letting developers know what to expect from the BlackBerry 10 SDK when it comes to the BlackBerry Q10. Up until the BlackBerry 10 launch event, details on this device had been much like those of the majestic Yeti. But fear not, all details on the device have now been revealed and we’re ready for you to start testing apps on the device.

I’m very happy to announce that we now have updated versions of the BlackBerry 10 SDKs available for download. The main purpose of these SDK updates is to ensure that the development runtimes have proper support for the physical keyboard and screen size and to provide simulators so that developers can start testing their applications on the 720×720 screen resolution.

The details of the SDK additions are posted on the online roadmaps for each of the runtimes. The focus of these SDK updates is not on net new functionality, but instead around updates needed to support the 1:1 form factor, and screen resolution, allowing you to easily build a single application for both the full touch and physical keyboard devices. We’ll also be performing demonstrations, sessions and labs at BlackBerry JAM Europe to show you how to provide a single application for both the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 devices with very little effort. In fact, in most cases your app will simply work right out of the box, but you can also easily make Q10 specific tweaks to your application using our built in framework additions.

This release brings with it an updated Q10 Simulator, but no SDK OS update for the BlackBerry Dev Alpha testing devices. The SDK update is specifically targeted at providing testing support using the BlackBerry Q10 simulator and BlackBerry Dev Alpha C testing devices (which are currently only available in the hands-on lab sessions at BlackBerry JAM Europe).

There’s updated SDK downloads for Native and AIR, as well as on-device updates for the Android and BlackBerry WebWorks runtimes. So grab the latest Simulators and SDK downloads to start testing your application for the BlackBerry Q10!

With the BlackBerry 10 launch event just around the corner, we’re also making an update available for the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha A and B testing devices. That’s right – on January 30th we’ll be providing an updated version of the BlackBerry 10 SDK and OS for the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha A and B testing devices. This SDK and OS upgrade will be delivered in the same manner as the previous target OS version, as an available target OS update in the Momentics IDE and as an OS upgrade for your BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha testing device. Please check out the details from the previous blog post on how to download the latest target OS from within Momentics, and how to upgrade your BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha OS.

Just like the previous target OS update, this one brings simply a newer version of the BlackBerry 10 SDK OS but with a slight twist. This January 30th update will also include the BlackBerry Hub, phone, and BlackBerry Maps applications. Adding these three new applications will go further to help developers test their end-to-end integration with core BlackBerry 10 applications.

So get ready for the launch event next week, and also prepare your development environment and test devices for an update.