Tips for wide range devices

The question is: how to write code that will handle different RIM OS, carriers and device models? In code that will depends on available/deprecated API, in workflow about handling carriers features and characteristics of device.

First of all, read How To – Develop applications for different BlackBerry Device Software versions and BlackBerry smartphone models

Wide range RIM OS support

StackOverflow – Which BlackBerry OS version to target for? – to be short, my choice is RIM OS 4.5

Tips for 4.7 – 4.6 – 4.5 – ? support:

• navigation, use accelerometer and touchscreen, but don’t forget about trackball and menu
• borders, there are no BorderFactory in 4.5 and earlier
• background, there are no Background in 4.5 and earlier
• transparency, there is no Graphics.setGlobalAlpha(alpha) in 4.5 and earlier
• multimedia, different formats are supported on differen OS and phones

See also
Blackberry – How to add border to BasicEditField?
Setting background and font colors for RichTextField, TextField
Skinning Blackberry Application
What Is – Supported audio formats
Support – Playing audio pauses Media app on BlackBerry CDMA smartphones
How To – Record Audio on a BlackBerry smartphone

Carrier support

I have no statistical information about BlackBerry carriers. But lets see what are those carrier features we can meet:

• if we use carrier network resources, carrier controlls all network configuration. That means on ex. we may have no UDP, max. transfer file size about 3 Mb, and we will have to config APN settings
• also, carrier and device combination defines what GPS type is accessible. And for Verizone, there is a special signing process to access GPS.

See also
What Is – Restricted ports
What Is – Network Diagnostic Tool
How To – Determine when to route data
What Is – Different ways to make an HTTP or socket connection
How To – Specify APN information for a direct TCP connection
What Is – Best practices for designing GPS applications for BlackBerry CDMA smartphones
What Is – The BlackBerry smartphone models and their corresponding GPS capabilities
What Is – Verizon GPSSettings signing requirement

Different devices

Things which may help support set of devices:

• use flexible, elastic UI elements, change size and layout according to screen size
• use several graphic resources sets of different size
• control font type and size
• before use camera, check if it’s available

See also
What Is – Compatibility mode on touch screen BlackBerry smartphones
What Is – Image formats used in BlackBerry applications

Building several RIM OS

There are preprocessor directives, but I prefer to use BB Ant tools, copy/delete all platform version diff (code, resources) and target appropriate rapc directory from build task.

See also
How To – Use the preprocessor