Feature Story: BlackBerry Storm Smartphone

The BlackBerry® Storm™ smartphone is the first touch screen BlackBerry® smartphone from Research In Motion (RIM). It builds upon a variety of existing BlackBerry smartphone features and capabilities to produce a truly compelling touch experience. With the BlackBerry Storm smartphone, RIM has introduced a version of software (v4.7) that delivers a new set of APIs and capabilities for third party developers including:

1. Enhancements to the existing RIM User Interface APIs to provide support for touch and gestures, including proper handling of multi-touch events
2. Support for MIDP applications that leverage touch
3. Virtual keyboard APIs
4. Enhanced and open GPS APIs on all networks
5. Accelerometer APIs

In addition to the new API capabilities, your Browser-based applications will build upon the browser capabilities released in v4.6.0 including:

• Improved web page rendering including AJAX
• XMLHttpRequest
• JavaScript® 1.5
• CSS 2.1
• DOM L2 (including Core, HTML, Style, Events)
• HTML 4.01 (including Forms, Maps, Tables, Frames, Objects)
• Improved Native Attachment Download
• Support for downloading files via the browser

Key Features

• Screen Resolution: 480x360 (Landscape Mode) and 360x480 (Portrait Mode)
• Screen Type: Capacitive Touch Screen, Multi-Touch Support
• Virtual Keyboard: Full Keyboard (Landscape Mode) and SureType® (Portrait Mode)
• Networking: Global 3G Network Support (HSPA/EVDO Rev A)
• Memory: 1GB Embedded microSD™ card
• Autonomous and Assisted GPS Support (Assisted GPS dependent on carrier network support)
• Compatibility Mode (more info below)

For third party developers, one of the unique features of the BlackBerry Storm smartphone is its "compatibility mode" which provides an operating environment for existing 3rd party applications that are not implemented to support touch. This feature will automatically convert touch events into existing trackball events. When an application is executing in compatibility mode, a virtual keyboard will be shown at most times to mimic the physical keyboard on previous devices and will only be displayed in portrait mode. All applications that are compiled with a JDE prior to v4.7 will automatically use compatibility mode, but the user will be able to change this configuration setting at their leisure. Any applications compiled with JDE v4.7 or higher will automatically run in the standard configuration.
To get started in your development, visit the following Link to download the appropriate products.

BlackBerry official Site

Developer Tips and Tricks

In this segment of Developer Tips and Tricks, discover the top four items every developer should know about the BlackBerry Storm smartphone.
1. Handling Gestures and Screen Details
If your application simply leverages existing built-in BlackBerry User Interface components, your application does not need to be modified for the BlackBerry Storm smartphone to handle gestures and screen layout. The underlying UI Engine will automatically perform these operations for you. However, if your application leverages custom UI fields, you will want to enhance their implementation to handle touch events. More information on the different gestures and sample code on how to use them can be found in the BlackBerry Storm smartphone Development Guide.
2. Orientation and Re-Sizing Events
Similar to handling gestures and screen details, you only need to worry about explicitly handling these events if your application leverages custom UI fields and managers. It is important to understand that you can leverage the UI APIs on the device to explicitly indicate what types of orientation your application will support, giving you the ability to control the layout of your application. However, your application will likely need to handle re-sizing events regardless of the orientation to support the dynamic display of the virtual keyboard. It is possible to have the virtual keyboard shown at all times to minimize this work but the resulting end user experience is significantly degraded.
3. Virtual Keyboard
With the inclusion of a virtual keyboard, your application can control both the type of keyboard (Full QWERTY or SureType®) and its visibility (shown or hidden). The Virtual Keyboard API’s also allow developers to lock their keyboards into place when required. Similar to the previous sections, the virtual keyboard should be shown and hidden automatically for built-in UI fields and managers.
4. Networking Technologies
The BlackBerry Storm smartphone is an incredibly unique device with the inclusion of both HSPA radio and EVDO Rev A radio producing 3G download and upload speeds worldwide. The EVDO version of the product will leverage the EVDO network within North America and roam to HSPA when outside of North America. In contrast, the HSPA branded version will leverage HSPA in all regions and will not roam to EVDO. From a third party developer perspective, the usage of these different radio technologies is handled automatically by the underlying BlackBerry solution implementation and does not require any additional work or effort.