RIM announces a Blackberry Java SDK v7.0 Beta

SMARTPHONE MAKER Research in Motion (RIM) has announced that its Blackberry Java software development kit (SDK) v7.0 is now in Beta and told developers what to expect from its Bold smartphones.

Only a month after revealing its Bold 9900 and 9930 smartphones running the Blackberry 7 operating system (OS), RIM is offering developers the chance to test their apps using its Java SDK v7.0.

Available in Beta, the SDK gives developers simulation tools to test their apps for the Bold 9900 and 9930 smartphones. RIM also said in a blog post that Blackberry App World is open for submissions, so developers can start uploading their apps.

The Blackberry Java Plug-in for Eclipse and the Blackberry Java Development Environment now support RIM's latest OS. The SDK release includes new APIs like support for smart tag reading and writing and secure element (JSR 177) access for mobile commerce and loyalty apps.

RIM also took time to tell developers what to expect regarding its Near Field Communications (NFC) enabled Bold smartphones. As well as laying out the specifications and features for developers, RIM said the User Agent for the Bold smartphones supports Mozilla 5.0, Apple WebKit 534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version 7.0.0 and Mobile Safari 534.11+.

Blackberry Webworks has been updated to support Blackberry 7, comes with a better Javascript compiler and makes use of the HTML5 integration in RIM's latest version of its OS. µ