BlackBerry 6.1 is coming out this summer. However besides the API’s that correspond to new hardware elements such as NFC and the magnetometers, there have not really been much in the way of news of what this new OS will provide to developers. The following is what I hope to see.
- Integrated Payment and Advertising SDKs – While it was needed in order to get these SDKs released earlier, having to bundle the Advertising and Payment SDKs with your application is inefficient. Given that RIM has included a form of the Payment SDK in the PlayBook ActionScript SDK makes this seem likely.
- Regular Expressions – The reason BlackBerry does not currently have RegEx support is based off of the way it evolved out of J2ME. However given how standalone (and useful) regular expressions are, RIM should find a way to add these APIs. There is no reason to think that the core J2ME is ever going to be updated to include this.
- Simplified StreamConnection – Having to choose between wi-fi and cellular connections is still more complex then it should be. I would like to let the OS choose how to download the data, instead of having to pick and choose connections manually.