Develop Blackberry apps using native API or J2ME?

Question

We're about to build a Blackberry application but would love some input on whether to implement using J2ME (MIDlet based) or Blackberry native (UIApplication).

I understand some of the tradeoffs. J2ME will be more flexible if we want to port the app to other devices. RIM has better support for Blackberry native.

The place I'm still lacking information, though, is on the UI side. We want to build an app that has a great user experience, and one that looks like other apps BB users are accustomed to. Can we do this if we go the J2ME route?

Apologies for the somewhat subjective and less technical nature of the question.

Answer 1

I've tried it both ways - building a pure MIDP app to run on BlackBerry and non-BLackBerry platforms and building a separate BlackBerry app (often using much of the same business-logic and networking code as the MIDP app). Definitely go the BlackBerry native route.

It's all about the BB UI classes. They'll give you the ability to (among other things) respond to the different type of menu events (trackball and menu key), respond to BB specific key codes, if you're interested in the Storm take advantage of the orientation sensor and touch support. Plus they're a much richer set of UI elements to work with. You can build up a lot (but not all) of what they do in pure MIDP, but end up customizing so much of it for each platform that you won't save anything in the end. Starting with the BB UI and customizing saves a lot of time and effort.

Even in gaming applications, or for applications where you're custom drawing all your components, you have better access to the BlackBerry graphics APIs and get better performance going the BlackBerry native app route. And you still have better detail about input events.

Finally there are some nice lifecycle things you can do with BlackBerry native apps, like pushing to the background, or auto-running on system startup that you can't do with MIDlets, which may be of interest depending on your application.

Also think about market - if you're planning on supporting BlackBerry right away, and then maybe other MIDP platforms down the road, it's usually a better plan to execute the best you can on your initial platform. There probably won't be much of a reason to port to MIDP later if you don't succeed on BlackBerry first.