Converting APK to BAR and deploying it to BB10 device

As you might know BB10 device support Android application. But to install Android application on BB10, first you need to convert .apk file to .bar file.

I already have install BB10 NDK (Native Development Kit ), so I did not struggled with installing certificate file and setup the signer. BB10 NDK installer and IDE did that for me.

You will also need android sdk installed on your pc, before you begin. You can find detailed instruction here at BlackBerry Development site.

Following are few steps that I often use to convert APK to BAR file.

1) export ANDOID_HOME varible

export ANDROID_HOME=~/android_sdk/sdk/

2) Verify if APK file does not you unsupported APIs.

 ./apk2barVerifier ./ANDROID_APPLICATION.apk 

3) If your APK does not use unsupported APIs then you can go ahead and covert APK to BAR to test on your device.

./apk2bar ./ANDROID_APPLICATION.apk -d DEBUG_TOKEN_FILE 

4) Install BAR file to development device.

Following will deploy all BAR files under test folder to device.I find this method easier.

./batchbar-deploy ~/Desktop/test 169.254.0.1 DEVICE_DEVELOPMENT_PASSWORD

Or you can deply individual BAR file using following command.

 ./blackberry-deploy -installapp -package ./BAR_FILE.bar -device 169.254.0.1 -password DEVICE_DEVELOPMENT_PASSWORD

Once testing is done, you can use blackberry-signer command to sign BAR file and publish it on App World. But I did not tried it my self. I just wanted to install one android app on my BB10 and my device is always on development mode so I just used BAR files with Debug token.

Un-boxing BlackBerry Limited Edition Red Z10

Last week I received Limited Edition Red Z10 device. I was waiting for it for quite long time and finally received it last week.

Following are Un-boxing of the device. The box is quite different than box in which Dev Alpha device came.

Box came with a Device, an USB cable, Power adapters compatible with various countries' standard and a headphone.

Behind the battery there is slot for micro SIM and There is also slot for micro SD card, you don't need to remove battery to change micro SD card.

It has hardware button to control volume and play pause key in middle and on other side there are slots for micro USB and micro HDMI port.

Its take some time for complete boot up, once it boots up and initial set-up is complete it offers a introductory tutorial for its gestures based interface.