The BlackBerry is a smart phone targeting business users and is being developed by a Canadian company called Research in Motion (RIM). Unlike the iPhone and Windows mobile, the BlackBerry is not backed by a software giant such as Microsoft and Apple.
The BlackBerry operating system is not based on any existing operating system such as Windows or Apple. For much of its functionality such as scrolling, the operating system relies on a 1 dimensional wheel kind of a device. The operating system runs a popular software framework called Java, enabling it to run code not necessarily designed for the BlackBerry. The graphics of the operating system are very unimpressive but simple and straightforward. Some users like it because of the lack of useless eye candy while other users dislike it because it looks too old fashioned.
The BlackBerry provides much of the same applications as the iPhone and Windows Mobile phones. The BlackBerry has “push email” so that when the user receives an email, the phone is immediately notified. This differs from email systems for other phones such as Windows Mobile 5 which check for email periodically and it may take several minutes for the user to receive an email.
Developing for the BlackBerry is involved writing Java applications. Java is a very popular programming language and many development tools such as Eclipse exist for it. The development tools are higher quality than those for iPhone apps but are comparable or slightly worse than those for Windows Mobile.
The information in this research blog post will be useful in explaining what some of the pros and cons of the BlackBerry are. One of the main points to point out about the blackberry is the reliance on the scroll wheel. This should be emphasized in the paper in some way such as a larger quote or be bolded and/or underlined. Just like the other phones, the information about the operating system and application develop should go into paragraphs that simply discuss it. The applications available for the BlackBerry should go into a table to compare them against other phone type applications.
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