Andrey Butov

The web browser provided by BlackBerry simulators is a fairly accurate representation of what your users are running on their BlackBerry devices.

While it’s always advisable to test native client applications on a real device prior to shipping the product, as a web app developer, you can get a good understanding of how your application will act on a BlackBerry, without having to purchase a real device.

Downloading the simulators

RIM offers a wide variety of simulators for you to choose from. If you’re not sure which to choose, I would recommend the following selections:

BlackBerry Torch, 98xx

This is one of the most popular models in today’s BlackBerry market, and has one of the largest screen resolutions. The BlackBerry Torch also features a touch-screen, and the ability to flip from portrait to landscape mode.

BlackBerry Style, 9670

The BlackBerry Style is RIM’s current flip-style phone. While not as popular as some of the other models, it has a unique screen size. If you need to reach as wide an audience as possible, it wouldn’t hurt to test your web application on this simulator.

BlackBerry Pearl, 81xx

The Pearl was the first consumer-targeted BlackBerry. While they have lost popularity as of late, plenty of BlackBerry users are still walking around with these models. The Pearl has a long-and-thin form-factor, with a resolution of 240×260.

BlackBerry Curve, Bold, or Tour

While the BlackBerry Torch has recently gained popularity, most BlackBerry owners of the past few years would have one of these three models. The Curve, Bold, and Tour share a similar form-factor. With the exception of recent models, these devices do not have a touch-screen, and they do not allow the user to switch from portrait mode to landscape mode.

Your web application may behave differently depending on the version of the operating system running on the device. When choosing simulators, it’s a good idea to select a wide range of operating systems.

A good “older” model would be a simulator running RIM OS 4.2. As I’m writing this, the newer simulators will be running RIM OS 6.x.

Downloading the MDS simulator

To test your web application on a BlackBerry simulator, the simulator’s web browser needs to be able to connect to the internet, and for that, you will need to run the MDS simulator first.

The MDS simulator allows the BlackBerry simulator to connect to the internet. You can download the MDS simulator as part of the BlackBerry Email and MDS Services simulator package.

Testing your web application on the simulator

Start with installing both the MDS simulator and the phone simulators you’ll be testing on.

It’s worth noting that although the BlackBerry phone simulators are Java-based, and require Java to be installed on the computer to run, they will only work on Windows machines. The simulators also tend to behave strangely on 64-bit systems.

At Antair, we do our simulator testing on 32-bit Windows XP hosts, running as virtual machines.

Once installed, start the MDS simulator. All it will do is open a terminal window and dump some startup output. If an error comes up, you can look at the output information for a clue. Otherwise, you can just minimize this window.

Now, start one of the BlackBerry phone simulators.

You should be able to launch the web browser and type in the URL of your web application.

The settings and options presented by the web browser in the simulator, are the same options that will be available to your users. You will be able to test whether your web application works well with Javascript turned off, or cookies disabled, etc.