BlackBerry developers that rely on a simulator for app development, listen up, because you need to read this! The latest simulator release for BlackBerry 10 brings a heap of new improvements, features and core apps, taking development one step closer to using a physical device.

In the latest BlackBerry 10.1 simulator release we now offer the ability to select which form factor you want to launch the simulator with. In this release, we support the layout for both the Z10 and Q10 devices. No more need to download multiple simulators! You’ll see these boot options listed as follows:

1. BlackBerry 10 All-Touch [1280x768]
2. BlackBerry 10 Keyboard [720x720]

Once the boot option is selected, you’ll notice some handy tool tip information during the simulator boot up screen. These tips will highlight new features as well as suggestions for maximizing simulator performance. Additionally, the simulator adds support for multi-touch input where developers can simulate up to 10 individual touch paths. For example, you can simulate using a two finger pinch and zoom. For more details, check out the documentation for simulator gestures.

The simulator controller joins the new feature party with added support for automatic simulator connection, incoming and outgoing phone call simulation, and mouse mode selection for controlling touch events. If your application supports incoming phone calls, you can test this by sending a call from the simulator controller. The incoming number will be detected by your application. For all the details on what is available in the simulator controller, check out the documentation.

Now let’s talk about what applications come with the simulator out of box. Previously, we supported a basic set of core applications including:

• BlackBerry Hub
• Contacts
• Calendar
• Browser
• BBM
• BlackBerry World
• Phone
• Settings

Today, we have added a whole bunch more; including support for social connect accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Evernote and LinkedIn. These new apps include, but are not limited to:

• Calculator
• Facebook
• File Manager
• Games
• Help
• Maps
• Pictures
• Remember
• Smart Tags
• YouTube
• Weather

So, what are you waiting for? Grab the latest simulator download and get started using all these great new features today! For additional information, please see the release notes.

One of the problems with implementing hardware acceleration on the Android runtime is that the graphics driver assumes it’s running closer to the hardware than it actually is; the player must know of a method of uploading its compositor’s data directly to the hardware. Normally this can be done via a method like glTexImage2D, which is actually implemented as a fallback method in Android. For optimal performance however, the compositing architecture would have to make use of direct buffer access through its gralloc module. The trick is in giving Android the right hooks into the Mesa3D driver that allows it to go around the regular conventions. With a bit of finesse and a lot of work, the BlackBerry 10 simulator now has a fully hardware accelerated Android runtime.

How To: Enabling hardware graphics acceleration

Current simulators have 3D acceleration enabled by default. To check whether acceleration is enabled, open your Virtual Machine Settings in VMWare Player and in the Display tab check “Accelerate 3D graphics” as seen here:

Demonstration

In the following video, you’ll see the difference hardware acceleration can make in the Android runtime:

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

As demonstrated in the video, there is a drastic improvement of boot time. Boot time dropped 294 seconds, to 26 seconds, a 1130% performance increase!

1130% Performance Improvement in Boot Time

Given that boot times are largely dependent on I/O speed, we’ll next demonstrate how CPU-centric operations are impacted by virtualization, which should give us an idea of how real-world applications would be impacted.

Benchmark: Dhrystone

The following benchmark is based on Dhrystone 2.1 test suite. The test system was an Intel Core i7, quadcore 2.8ghz machine running VMWare 4.0.4 under Windows 7. Five billion iterations were run per target. The “HW Virtualization” column had the Preferred Virtualization engine in VMWare set to “Automatic”, whereas the “No Virtualization” column had the Preferred Virtualization engine set to “Binary translation”, with acceleration turned off.

1140% Performance Increase

This correlates almost perfectly with the difference in boot speed, approximately one order of magnitude, or 10x. I’d like to note however, this isn’t precisely fair, given that binary translation may be accelerated even on machines without explicit virtualization acceleration. Though it does go to demonstrate just how powerful the technology can be.

How To: Enable Virtualization

While not a new technology, virtualization does not exist on all hardware. If you have a desktop PC made in the last 7 years, chances are your CPU has it.  However, if you’re developing on a laptop, you’ll have to refer to your chip maker’s user manual, or have a look online for whether your CPU supports the technology. It is likely you will have to turn virtualization on in your motherboard’s BIOS. Refer to your motherboard’s manual for instructions on how to do this.

Once you’ve enabled virtualization on your motherboard, check your Virtual Machine Settings in VMWare, and under the Processors section, confirm that the Virtualization Engine is set to Automatic, and “Disable acceleration for binary translation” is unchecked, as seen here.

The BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet simulator v2.1 beta includes a new tool to help you work with the simulator: the Simulator Controller. You can run the Controller by executing the controller file located in the controllers sub directory, which can be found within the simulator installation directory. Once you have it up and running alongside the simulator, click on the Connection menu, choose Connect and enter the IP address of the simulator.

The Simulator Controller allows you to simulate rotating and tilting the simulator as well as simulate GPS locations. You can configure a single GPS coordinate or a route using a GPS NMEA data file. We’ve also included some sample NMEA sample data files located in the controllers\nmea directory.

The Simulator Controller coming in the upcoming update for the BlackBerry® 10 Dev Alpha simulator adds some additional features, including the much-requested ability to control the zoom level of the simulator to allow its entire window to fit on your screen. Here is a rundown of all the elements you can control:

• Control Device Orientation – Set Roll, Pitch and Yaw, Tilt on Z Axis and rotate about the X, Y or Z axis
• Control Illuminance and Proximity Sensors
• Set battery charge level, health, temperature and toggle charging on or off
• Set the device PIN
• Simulate GPS Location – Simulate either a fixed location or movement using NMEA data files
• Simulate NFC Tags
• Control Device Zoom level

For more information, refer to the BlackBerry Simulator documentation.

Today we are releasing a beta of BlackBerry® Tablet OS 2.1.0 for developers to test their applications with. Developers can test using devices or a simulator, and there are some items that I think will be of particular interest.

The WebKit implementation on BlackBerry Tablet OS continues to keep pace with the latest updates to the WebKit project. There are numerous updates included which keep the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet at the forefront for Tablet Browsers in the market, as seen by our HTML5 Test Score (391 and 10 bonus points).

This latest score at html5test.com is a bit out of date, but I’m sure that won’t last long once you’ve got your hands on the beta. The beta is an improvement of 18 points and 1 bonus point over 2.0.1, most due to the inclusion of the FileSystem API.

There are three major enhancements to the Android™ Runtime in 2.1.0:

• Each Android app will now run in its own window. This greatly improves the user experience and consistency among the other application runtimes.
• Access to the Camera hardware is now supported for Android apps, allowing many more application types to work on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet.
• In-App Payment is now supported through the BlackBerry Payment SDK, so Android applications can include virtual items for sale in their applications.

But wait, there’s more!

There are a couple other items I noticed that I think will appeal to some developers. Full device encryption is now supported, so that the whole device and personal partition can be secure. If you develop an application that deals with sensitive personal information, you may want to include a suggestion to your users that they turn this feature on. Finally, there is a minor update I noticed which developers asked for and will be well received: screenshots are now saved in lossless PNG format. That should help quite a bit when you want to promote your application and add screenshots to the BlackBerry App World™ storefront.

For those of you wandering around the rest of the BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1 beta, you’ll notice a few extra enhancements geared towards end users such as:

• Portrait support for Email, Calendar and Contacts
• Improved folder support including IMAP folder support

The other 2.1 features will come full steam when the new OS is commercially released. The 2.1 Android SDK will be released in beta coinciding with the OS release, and the 2.1 Native SDK will be posted next week, with an update to the Adobe® AIR® SDK to come shortly after.

As with any OS update, use this beta period to test your apps now, so that they will be in full working order when the official release comes out.

Head to the website to download the new simulator (for Mac or Windows) and whitelist your device to receive the beta.

As noted during BlackBerry DevCon Americas, there would continue to be BlackBerry smartphone releases based on BlackBerry® 7 OS.  Today we’re pleased to provide you with a new developer tool to prepare for this: the BlackBerry® 9220 smartphone simulator.

We have a new simulator available for download on our simulator download page, or you can download it directly using this link:

• BlackBerry 9220 smartphone simulator

Alongside the launch of the new simulator, we have also opened up the BlackBerry App World™ storefront to allow you to start posting your applications for sale. Many applications designed for the BlackBerry® 9300 smartphone series should be easily ported to this new device with little to no change in the application.

We encourage you to test your applications as soon as possible using the new simulator, and then navigate to the BlackBerry App World vendor portal to post your applications for the BlackBerry 9220 smartphone running BlackBerry® 7.1 OS.

The BlackBerry 9220 will support Bluetooth® 2.1 and include the following profiles:

• Headset Profile (HSP)
• Hand Free Profile (HFP)
• Address Book Integration using AT commands or OBEX (Object Push)
• Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP)
• Dial-Up Networking (DUN)
• Bluetooth Stereo (A2DP / AVRCP)
• Serial Port Profile (SPP)
• Secure Simple Pairing (SSP)
• A/V Remote Control Version 1.3
• Bluetooth Message Access Profile (MAP)

BlackBerry 9220 – Device Info

• 320 x 240 resolution, 164 dpi
• Application Icon size: 46 x 46 pixels
• Memory: 512 MB Internal Persistent Storage, 512 MB RAM
• 2 MP Camera, 5 X digital zoom
• QWERTY keyboard
• Networks: EDGE, GPRS, GSM
• FM Radio
• Wi-Fi® 802.11 b/g/n
• Mime Type: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9220; en-GB) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.316 Mobile Safari/534.11+

BlackBerry 9220 – Multimedia Capabilities

Today at the BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 conference, the Native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook (“NDK”) left beta and ‘went gold’ for general availability. The NDK allows developers take full advantage of the power of the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet when developing apps. The NDK includes support for C/C++ POSIX library and compliance, device events like gesture swipes and touch screen inputs, access to code management systems using industry standard Eclipse CDT (C/C++ Development Tools) and advanced debug and analysis tools. QNX® Momentics Tool Suite, an Eclipse-based integrated development environment, is also included. It provides memory profiling, application debugging, and memory usage statistics to help developers debug sophisticated programs.

For the v1.0 release, we’ve kept the NDK lean and mean. APIs have been provided for the sensors on the device, as well as OpenGL ES 2.0. For sound, we’ve brought OpenAL along. For performance, POSIX threading. For portability, POSIX compliant APIs are included as well.

Additionally, the simulator team has been able to provide an OpenGL ES 2.0 environment to test out your 3D games. This means that our simulator makes use of your development platform’s hardware acceleration for 3D. As the NDK simulators mature, more and more features will be included as we are committed to providing developers the best tools possible.

The NDK is here, and it’s the start of a new and exciting episode for BlackBerry PlayBook tablet application development. If anyone has feedback they’d like to share, our doors are always open – don’t hesitate to engage with us on social media channels or the BlackBerry Developer Zone.

Download the Native SDK for BlackBerry Tablet OS

How will you be using the new NDK in your application development?

Recently we introduced a new family of BlackBerry smartphones running the new BlackBerry 7 OS. To coincide, the BlackBerry 7 SDK went gold to support these new product launches. We’ve seen strong adoption of the new tools for BlackBerry 7 smartphones. We have also seen many existing applications ported over to these new BlackBerry 7 devices.

To enable developers to start testing and optimizing their BlackBerry applications for two upcoming smartphones, we are now releasing a beta of the new BlackBerry simulators, and encourage you to check out BlackBerry® Developer Zone for more information. In addition, we have opened up BlackBerry App World to enable vendors to start posting their applications for sale in time to be included for consideration in launch activities for both of these upcoming devices. To be fully prepared for launch, it is important for BlackBerry developers to note the following two key items and how you can get ready for launch:

1. Re-Posting Your Apps in BlackBerry App World for BlackBerry 7: BlackBerry App World vendors are encouraged to test their applications as soon as possible using the new BlackBerry 7 SDK, and then return to the BlackBerry App World vendor portal to post their applications for sale for the new BlackBerry smartphones.

2. Preparing Now for New Screen Sizes and Resolutions Supported by BlackBerry 7: BlackBerry 7 is designed to retain binary compatibility with our BlackBerry® 6 OS platform, and is also designed to support a variety of new screen resolutions and screen sizes that may require some developers to update and re-compile their existing applications. These new smartphones will also support new screen sizes and resolutions so we have posted new information on what screen characteristics will be supported by BlackBerry 7 along with these new smartphone simulators to emulate each of these different configurations.

New Screen Characteristics Supported by BlackBerry 7 and New Simulators for Testing

One new BlackBerry smartphone will feature a 360 x 480 all touch interface. Application developers will likely find that their BlackBerry® Torch™ 9800 smartphone builds will run on this new BlackBerry smartphone without change.

The second upcoming BlackBerry smartphone will feature a 480 x 360 touch + keyboard interface. Application developers will either need to add touch support to their existing BlackBerry® Bold™ 9700 smartphone apps, or modify their BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone builds to account for landscape being in a vertical orientation.

We have now posted the new BlackBerry 7 smartphone simulators to emulate each of these form factors and screen resolutions. The associated simulator model numbers for the two simulators are 9380 and 9790. With these new simulators, you can now start testing your BlackBerry 7 applications on these new smartphone form factors.

We thank you for your ongoing support and we trust that this new information will help you get your apps fully tested and posted to BlackBerry App World in time for the upcoming BlackBerry smartphone launches!

Web Standards and Embracing the Web

As we’ve been pushing forward with BlackBerry® WebWorks™ and embracing the web on the BlackBerry® platform, we’ve made some important moves. First, we brought WebKit to the BlackBerry platform, which now powers our browser on both the BlackBerry® Tablet OS and the BlackBerry smartphone OS with fantastic web standards support and wicked HTML5 capabilities.

We’ve also been iterating quickly on the BlackBerry WebWorks platform both for smartphones and tablet, bringing new functionality to web developers. Last year we made BlackBerry WebWorks an open source project on GitHub™ and, while we continue to pick up steam on GitHub, we have been bringing more of our daily development out into the open. The collaborative and open approach that we’ve been taking with our API documentation on GitHub is an indicator of how we’ll be operating moving forward with the project’s source code.

Understanding what Web Developers want

With each of these steps, we’ve been listening to our partners and the web development community to understand their needs from a technology and tooling standpoint. We kept hearing from the community that if the development of BlackBerry WebWorks applications could be as simple as developing a website with a traditional desktop browser it would make things MUCH easier than launching simulators and compiling code. It would also be SUPER COOL and AWESOME!

So, where we are going?

This is where tinyHippos and the Ripple Emulator becomes an important piece of the puzzle. Being able to point to a website (local or remote) that’s running your BlackBerry WebWorks application and emulate the entire BlackBerry WebWorks environment without having to compile your code or launch a simulator provides a similar experience to desktop browser development. This also means that you can use any editing tool that you like for your web content, and pick any web server to serve up your BlackBerry WebWorks application for testing. Then making changes is as simple as editing your source code and pressing refresh in the Ripple Emulator.

We also believe that one of the major advantages of HTML5 and web development is the promise of portable code and cross platform compatibility. This is why multiple platform support is currently available in the Ripple Emulator.

While the current implementation of the Ripple Emulator is excellent, we feel that we can take this capability and evolve it even further. Currently the emulator is implemented as a Google® Chrome™ plug-in, which has its benefits, but also brings with it common browser limitations that don’t allow for full BlackBerry WebWorks emulation.

Below you can find the functionality you will be able to expect from the Ripple Emulator as it evolves:

• Downloadable light weight emulator running on your desktop like a standard browser with integration into any tool that can have a browser registered (i.e. Eclipse™ & Visual Studio™)/li>
• Fidelity rendering and JavaScript® compatibility with the actual BlackBerry WebKit browser/li>
• Embedded Web Inspectorsupport for debugging/li>
• Ability to build and sign your app
• Ability to load your built application on a device simulator or actual device for final testing

Out with the Old and In with the New

In the spirit of openness, we want to let the community know that with our concentration on the new Ripple emulation environment we will be retiring the BlackBerry WebWorks plug-ins for Visual Studio and Eclipse.

These plug-ins will continue to be available for download in BlackBerry® Developer Zone until October 19th, 2011. There will be no new releases of the plug-ins, and they will only remain compatible with version 2.0 (and earlier) of the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for BlackBerry smartphones. Further, we will end support for these plug-ins on December 31, 2011.

Migration path from using the WebWorks Plug-Ins

To ease the transition from the existing Visual Studio and Eclipse plug-ins, we have created a developer’s guide for migration. This article outlines alternative tools and also provides documentation and scripts to continue to use Eclipse and Visual Studio without the plug-ins.
The scripts provided aren’t just useful for those who continue to use Eclipse and Visual Studio for BlackBerry WebWorks development, but are also valuable for anyone building BlackBerry WebWorks applications using any IDE or authoring environment.

In Summary

We have lots of cool stuff that you can start using today, as well as many new enhancements on the way… hey, I just made a rhyme. Let us know if you have any questions in the comments!

For all you hard-working developers out there, the BlackBerry® Smartphone Simulator is an essential tool: it enables you to run BlackBerry® smartphone applications on your computer. The BlackBerry Smartphone Simulator includes the BlackBerry native applications that are typically available on BlackBerry smartphones, and enables you to load and test your own applications. You can even simulate and test various connectivity and state changes – definitely useful when you’re trying out a new app! When you use the BlackBerry Smartphone Simulator to perform testing, you might need to simulate additional BlackBerry services; the BlackBerry® Email and MDS Services Simulator Package are available for this purpose.

In short, the BlackBerry Smartphone Simulator allows you simulate all the aspects of the BlackBerry smartphone including battery conditions, network conditions, SD Card, GPS capabilities and more. In this post, I will briefly describe how to simulate some of the functionalities of the BlackBerry smartphone. Before we go further, let’s quickly recap where you can find the latest BlackBerry Smartphone Simulators. All the most up-to-date BlackBerry simulators can be found at the BlackBerry Smartphone Simulators page under the Developer Resources section of the website. You can also head here for the complete instructions on installation details, and you can find more detailed information on the BlackBerry Smartphone Simulators at the BlackBerry Documentation site.

How to Simulate Battery Conditions

1. On the Simulate menu, click Battery Properties.
2. Set one of the following options:

How to Simulate Network Coverage

The BlackBerry Smartphone Simulator can simulate various states of network coverage, from a strong signal to a very weak signal. The BlackBerry Smartphone Simulator can also simulate a loss of network coverage.

Add a network

1. On the Simulate menu, click Network Properties.
2. Click Add.
3. Type the network properties in the dialog.
4. Click OK.

Set the network signal strength

1. On the Simulate menu, click Network Properties.
2. Select the network you want to simulate from the Networks list.
3. If you want to edit the network properties, click Edit and type new values. Click OK.
4. Select or clear the In coverage check box.
5. Move the Signal strength (RSSI) slide bar to set a value. The signal strength can be between -120 dBm and -40dBm.

How to Simulate a Media Card

The BlackBerry Smartphone Simulator loads and saves the media card image to < session_name >*.sdcard in the working directory, unless you have set the /sdcard=< path > option. When the simulator starts, it loads the media card image for the BlackBerry smartphone profile. If no image exists or you have specified /clear-sdcard, the BlackBerry Smartphone Simulator will create a new media card image when the simulator starts. The size of the media card image is 32MB, unless you specify otherwise using /sdcardsize=< size >. In this case, you must clear the existing card image using /clear-sdcard to create a new card with the specified size. If a media card image exists, its size will be retained even if you specify a different size using the /sdcard-size command.

The BlackBerry Smartphone Simulator inserts the media card within the BlackBerry Smartphone Simulator unless you specify /no-sdcard-inserted.

Change the media card

1. On the Simulate menu, click Change SD Card.
2. Complete one of the following tasks:

How to Use Hotswap with the BlackBerry Simulator

Hotswap, the ability to reload an application on to a running simulator without having to stop and start the simulator, is now part of the 5.0 BlackBerry Simulator.

BlackBerry Smartphone JDE 5.0

In JDE 5.0, you need to change your Simulator preferences. Toggle the “Reuse Simulator” checkbox to on. (If the Reuse Simulator checkbox is grayed out, that simulator is not compatible with Hotswap.) Then, when debugging your application, you can change the code at any time and redeploy it without restarting the simulator by going to Debug > Restart or pressing Shift-F9.

BlackBerry® Java® Plug-in or BlackBerry® Web Plug-in

No changes are needed – you no longer need to close your simulator. While the simulator is open, simply make changes to your code and press debug – it will automatically redeploy the change to the running simulator.

Do you have any questions or comments about using the BlackBerry Smartphone Simulators? Please leave a comment and let us know!