Using Android version on Blackberry 10

[chilcotin]

One of the features of Blackberry 10 is that Android apps can be adapted rather easily to work on Blackberry 10. The best way to go (from a user standpoint) would be for DDH to simply port over the Android version of HanDBase to run as a BB10 app. Another alternative is to do a sideload of the Android version of HanDBase and run it on the Android emulation that is part of BB10.

I have been using HanDBase since the early Palm days. For security reasons, my firm has remained committed to the Blackberry platform. Could you confirm whether or not DDH will be doing a port of the Android client to run as a native BB10 app? If not, would you mind if we did a sideload of your Android app to run on the BB10 Android emulator?

Many thanks!

[dhaupert]

Hi,

Thanks for your post. The thing about Android apps running on BB is that one of two things can happen:

1. You can sideload the apps to run in the Android player.
2. We can port the Android build using the conversion tools they provide.

There is one caveat to both of these options- there can be no native code in your application. That is, many apps on Android are written solely in Java, but if they use C/C++ code (which we do, and many other high performance apps (games, video, etc), they cannot run via the Android player. The Android player only allows for apps written in 100% Java to run. So that's why you haven't seen HanDBase in the BlackBerry store thus far! If it could run there, we'd certainly add it!

That said, recently a customer was kind enough to forward me a thread on running apps that use Native code on the Blackberry using some complicated hacks- you have to get a developer ID tied to your device and you can build an installer that will let you run apps like ours on the BB10.1 and higher OS. Despite this being so difficult for customers, this was really excited news for me and I've been checking into this to see if there is a way to parlay this into a full scale release. I'll let you know what I find. In the meantime you can read more about this here:

http://www.qtness.com/blog/?p=239

Let me know if you give this a try!

[chilcotin]

Hello,

Thank you for your very quick reply. I did not know about the inherent difficulties of porting over the Android version to run on BB10. Alas, things are never as simple as they initially seem to be.

That was great news about the possibility of building on the information in the qtness blog thread. I am a somewhat rank amateur in this area and will not attempt to replicate the process he described. However, I am quite excited about the possibility of getting a version of HanDBase that would run on BB10. I have used Handbase on Palm, Windows Mobile, and pre-BB10 Blackberry. To be able to use my Z10 to continue with the many HanDBase databases that I created over the years would be marvellous indeed.

For what its worth, my Z10 has proven to be solid, reliable, secure, and fun to use. It may never regain the dubious honour of being the sales leader again but, for grown-ups, it just might be the best of the smartphones currently available.

Good luck, I hope that it all works out and that I can be one of, if not the first, early adopters of the BB10 version of HanDBase.

[Neil]

Hi,
Any update on putting Handbase onto the BB Z10 or Q10?. Unfortunately we are tied to Blackberry / Lotus Notes mail servers as a corporate solution but need to swap out 6 of our old BB OS-6 & OS-7 phones, but not lose the functionality we enjoy with Handbase in the process. We're even looking at MS Access as a solution we're getting so desperate, and having another old generation BB phone to keep Handbase running is just a bridge to far us.

[dhaupert]

Hi Neil,

Thanks for your followup. I wish the people at BlackBerry were as interested in this as you were- they've yet to email me back. In the years past they were always big help with respect to supporting us as we developed HanDBase. I have a hunch that they are strapped for staff now and that's why there are no responses from them.

As it stands now I would have no way to release the version as it needs special approval. So hopefully they will respond and I will follow up with them to see..