The year 2010 was a great year for Blackberry Application Development with broking news on the several stunning new additions to the Blackberry world, highlights being Open GL, 5.0 API library and Widgets. In the year 2013, Blackberry has announced the native support for Bluetooth Smart Ready on Blackberry 10 joining the race of Android and iOS devices.
The Blackberry 10 devices will be able to work and communicate with many of the Bluetooth Smart accessories available in the market today. The Bluetooth Smart devices use low energy and help to save on the battery life on both the smart phone and connected devices. The Blackberry 10 devices will have support for both the old Bluetooth protocol as well as the Bluetooth LE system. This means the Blackberry will support all kinds of new Bluetooth Smart accessories and developers can also get a chance of creating apps with the new Bluetooth LE and tools that are available within the Blackberry NDK.
Smart Ready a key enabler of seamless connectivity between Bluetooth Smart devices when tightly integrated into the Blackberry 10 platform helps Blackberry developers to easily incorporate Bluetooth Smart functionality into the Blackberry 10 applications.
"The new Blackberry 10 smart phones are Bluetooth Smart Ready enabling developers to create apps and interfaces for new mobile experiences," said Suke Jawanda, Chief Marketing Officer of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group.
The Blackberry is well positioned to showcase the innovation of Bluetooth that enables:
- Leveraging the wide range of Bluetooth smart devices for Blackberry application development.
- Developing Blackberry 10 apps with Bluetooth functionality to deliver innovative user experience.
- Providing a broad range of support for various Bluetooth profiles in Blackberry 10 with a highly secure and robust set of APIs in the native development kit.
- Blackberry 10 implements AES-CCM cryptography and privacy features to ensure the customer’s data is safe and secure while their smart phone is connected to the Bluetooth Smart device.
- Blackberry 10 platform follows strict standards for security in compliance with Bluetooth SIG defined requirements for Bluetooth Smart and Smart Ready devices.
- The Bluetooth Smart enables devices to communicate with one another through short, highly efficient data transfers with low power requirements that helps preserve the battery life of both the smart phone and Bluetooth Smart devices.
- The Bluetooth Smart Ready devices can seamlessly link with the Blackberry 10 smart phones by leveraging the Bluetooth 4.0 specification and GATT-based architecture which offers the developers a framework to create graphical user interfaces for a wide range of data gathering sensors.
The interconnectivity opens the whole new and exciting world for the application developers to create mobile computing apps for consumers like ionic development and in vertical markets that integrate seamlessly and securely with the myriad of Bluetooth devices. The mobile developers can explore the new and interesting use cases for Bluetooth Low Energy by using the development tools available within the Blackberry 10 NDK and start developing the mobile apps for Blackberry 10 devices.
