[Wilsonia Goldens]

For Discussion here is what I received from one app developer:
"Most of our apps will need to be purchased again for Z10/BB10. The reason for this is that the application isn't the same. It took us 5 months and 4 developers to port all our apps to BB10.


PlayBook is primarily a landscape device but the BB10 (Z10) is primarily a portrait device. Also although higher resolution, the screen-size is small. Some of the applications had to be redone from scratch and therefore we have listed them as separate apps from the PlayBook versions. The features of the application is the same as the PlayBook versions but the interface has been changed to suit the device. We had to spend almost the same (and in some cases more) development effort as with the original apps to have these ported to BB10.


I hope you understand that supporting development of these apps on two completely different orientations and screen sizes takes considerable amount of development effort.


Thanks & Regards,


KP
Find us On: Web: XLabz Technologies Private Limited - Product Development, Flex Platform Consultancy, Mobile Application Development, Flex, RIA Applications, Mobile Learning, mLearning. Flex Consultancy, India - Flash, Flex, iPad, AIR, XLabs, iPhone | Facebook: www.facebook.com/XLabz | Twitter: www.twitter.com/XLabzTech"

[coolpowers]

Yeah, it's going to be a case-by-case basis. I hope people don't throw developers under the bus if they choose to have two different apps even if it seems like it would be easy to just build for each device. Likewise I hope developers aren't tempted to "double dip" if they realize they didn't have to do much work.

For my part, as primarily a games developer rather than app developer, BB10 on the PlayBook should make my life easier. There are small differences in the APIs (such as Scoreloop) that make my code more complex than it needs to be. Most of the work is dealing with different aspect ratios (which is something all BB10 devs are going to have to deal with given that the next full touch BB10 phones will be 1280x720 instead of 1280x768) and making sure assets look their best at different resolutions.

[Wilsonia Goldens]

given that the next full touch BB10 phones will be 1280x720 .

So what is this next touch screen phone that you are talking about?

[coolpowers]

Hasn't been announced, but it's long been known to developers (imagine that? A company that actually gives its' 3rd party developers advance warning about.. anything!) that the standard BB10 sizes are 1280x720 for full touch and 720x720 for QWERTY models, except for the Z10, presumably because they didn't want devs to have to recode everything after handing out 1280x768 Dev Alpha hardware.

From last August: Standardizing on Screen Resolutions for BlackBerry 10 devices �BlackBerry Developer Blog

Major, major kudos to BlackBerry for being so clear about this.

[Thunderbuck]

Hasn't been announced, but it's long been known to developers (imagine that? A company that actually gives its' 3rd party developers advance warning about.. anything!) that the standard BB10 sizes are 1280x720 for full touch and 720x720 for QWERTY models, except for the Z10, presumably because they didn't want devs to have to recode everything after handing out 1280x768 Dev Alpha hardware.

From last August: Standardizing on Screen Resolutions for BlackBerry 10 devices �BlackBerry Developer Blog

Major, major kudos to BlackBerry for being so clear about this.

You shouldn't get too hung up on exact resolution; it's aspect ratio that's more important. The rumored 5" "Aristo" is supposed to be 1080p resolution.