[scrapmetal58]

Hey everyone,

I'm not a developer, but I was on the BlackBerry Developer site and I checked out the unsupported Android APIs for both BB10 and Playbook OS. I noticed that BB10 has slightly fewer limitations, despite both having the Gingerbread runtime support. I've listed the differences - all Playbook limitations that are not listed as being unsupported on BB10.


Hardware Features

The following hardware features are currently not supported, and usually do not work with the BlackBerry PlayBook. If your app uses any of these features but you feel that it should still be functional on a BlackBerry PlayBook, before submitting your app to BlackBerry World, fully test it to ensure that your app's usability and functionality are not affected.

�No support for custom IMEs (virtual keyboards)

Playbook App Permissions

The following permissions are unlikely to have a detrimental affect on application functionality:

�KILL_BACKGROUND_PROCESSES

�REBOOT

Media Formats

Unsupported Network Protocols
The following network protocols are not supported for audio and video playback:
�RTSP (RTP, SDP)
�HTTP live streaming draft protocol
�HTTPS

Unsupported Core Media Formats
Audio
Format/Codec
FLAC
Unsupported Encoder/Decoder
Encoder/Decoder
Unsupported File Type
FLAC (.flac)


Just found it interesting. What do you, especially developers, think?

I also recall reading somewhere that the runtime will be updated to Jelly Bean.

Cheers!

[SifJar]

The Jelly Bean update is on the "road map" for the Android Player, but there is no announced date of completion, so it's pretty much a case of "we intend to update that some time, but probably not in the very near future".

As for the various changes, the first one seems to suggest custom Android keyboards are now allowed - that is a pretty nice addition, there are some great Android keyboards out there. Although I do see a few potential flaws with that: the first being a lack of continuity if you have a custom keyboard for Android apps, but of course are stuck with the BB10 stock keyboard in non-Android apps. On top of that, one of the reasons I assumed custom keyboards were blocked on the PB was a security concern: if you install a custom keyboard, it could have a secret keylogger in it or whatever. I guess if you install it from a trusted location, you should be OK though.

[scrapmetal58]

I think even getting the Android Gingerbread runtime from 10.1 would be a big improvement for the PlayBook. I assume that it wouldn't be that difficult to make the few updates, considering they've already done it for BB10. It would allow for quite a bit more apps to run on the PlayBook. I think if the community was asking for smaller update to the PlayBook, maybe BB would be ever so slightly more willing to do it.

ie. update flash to the version on 10.2.1, update Air, fix Facebook bugs (not even new features), update Android runtime to 10.1's level, bring swipe to delete, shift delete, and swipe down to switch characters to the keyboad (not even the BB10 keyboard), add a simple sharing framework to the browser (twitter, Facebook, email, maybe BBM and SMS via Bridge), allow phone calls via Bridge, and bring video and music to BB World. Just those smaller changes would make a big difference to the PlayBook. It would bring additional revenue via BB World through music and video purchases and through additional Android ports that have already been submitted for BB10. All of the above was already done on BB10. I know all about the end of support. I just purchased a PlayBook 4G and I love it. It does almost everything I want it to do. I'm still happy with it. I sometimes think that if I had a couple hundred grand, I'd go to BlackBerry and say I would pay for the developers to make these changes, even though I doubt it would cost that much. BlackBerry would have a bunch of beta testers right here. Ideally, Cascades support would be added...

Just some wishful thinking.

[djpailo]

An improve runtime was all that was needed. One final update to Jelly Bean back in June:

"Sorry, we couldn't bring you BB10 but we worked hard to port over the new runtime. This will be our final update".

That way, they'd have saved money from continued security support for a year, but everyone would have been happy.

As you state though, wishful thinking.