RIM outs details on Blackberry Runtime for Android Apps

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RIM outs details on Blackberry Runtime for Android Apps

If you are one of the few that went out and purchased a Blackberry Playbook and have been waiting with some modicum of patients for the Android app support promised to land new details have surfaced. Sadly, the news isn’t very good. RIM engineers have noted some things that will be unavailable when you run Android apps on the Playbook.

The features that will be unavailable on apps include Live Wall paper, which isn’t that bad since that feature sucks battery life like a frat boy on a bender. Other things that are lacking in the compatibility layer on the Playbook may be more of an issue depending on the app you are using. Nothing built using the Native Development Kit will work on the Playbook.

Apps that contain only App widgets won’t work and neither will apps with more than one activity tied to the launched. Any items that need Google Maps, in-app billing, and the Android text-to-speech engine or the cloud-to-device messaging will not function. Will your favorite apps work under these restrictions.

[via Thinq]
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  • Lynxy

    Wow this sucks. Could RIM’s development team really not get this stuff working? How sad. Guess its a good thing I’ll never own a Blackberry.

  • Anonymous

    I’ve been telling people about these extremely predictable limitations ever since this compatibility was announced. You can’t rip Android apps out of the Android framework without losing a lot of functionality because they aren’t standalone silos like most of the apps on competing platforms.

  • Ron

    I’m new to android. I’ll be picking up my first one this weekend when the Samsung Galaxy II comes out. I have a Blackberry playbook, but since I’m so new I have no idea how bad this actually is. Would this lack of functionality apply to a high percentage of apps? Do only certain types of apps use the functions that won’t work?

    • Anonymous

      Mostly games, they use native dev kt for performance. And quite a lot of games use in app billing. So yes, this sucks. But, I am ok, I dont like BB anyway.

  • Anonymous

    This really sucks for RIM. They’ve already lost so many developers to Android and iOS. A few companies we deal with have already suspended all Blackberry App development due to the lack of consistency between different handsets. I own an Asus Transformer Honeycomb tablet and I find it hard to put this thing down. Seems like RIM is slashing the price of it’s tablets just to get it in the hands of consumers. They should follow HP and set the price to $99. That seems to be the sweet spot for new Tablet devices!

  • adzgunnin123

    blackberry is shit, Android is the best, you can put in memory cards and all that shit, but iOS and Blackberry are just dicks

    • Kusarininja

      old thread I know, I can’t stand Blackberry phones myself but all of the Blackberry phones I have seen so far have been able to take a memory card, not just android phones. I love Android and recently upgraded from a Galaxy S to Galaxy S3 and love it :)