Sunday, September 26, 2010

The incompatible issues of BlackBerry OS 5

Recently I realize that BlackBerry OS 5 has more and more incompatible issues with 4.x, usually a feature works on pearl, curve, bold (4.6), but does not working on bold 5.0, which is very disappointing.

Here I just make a list of incompatible issues that I found recently:

1. BACK key issue
In 4.x, the BACK key value mapped in MIDlet is 27, I tested on 8100/8300/8900, this key value is the same: 27. But I just found in Bold with OS 5.0, the BACK key is not mapped into MIDlet at all, the MIDlet can not get the BACK key event.

2. SMS send issue. When you launch the BlackBerry native Message application to send SMS using Invoke class, you can pre-populate with phone number and text message, it works in 4.x, but does not work on 5.0, it is a know issue of blackberry 5.0, the message body is empty. Please check this link for details.

3. Retrieving CellID issue. We know that using GPRSInfo we can get phone's Cell-ID, but in 5.0 you will get the wrong id if you use the same method, this is because for 3G network, you need to use different method, how complicated it is!

4. Icon issue, I found in OS 5.0, you can set the rollover icon the jad file, and blackberry will recognize it even if your application is MIDlet, but I found you need to use JDE 5.0 to build your app; if you use JDE 4.x, it does not work.

I feel disappointed about BlackBerry platform, since I feel 4.2 - 4.6 even 4.7, the OS are quite consistent with each version, but in OS 5.0, it seems this is a big difference with previous ones. If OS 5 look like this, how can we trust OS 6?

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