Essentially, the BlackBerry smartphone simulator was designed to mimic a BlackBerry experience without actually having to use an actual smartphone device. The smartphone simulator is an impressive piece of technology. By installing the application on your computer, you will be granted a view of any BlackBerry device model of your choosing.

The simulator view will have the look and feel of the device, but on your desktop. You can even interact with the image as you would a real device; this includes access to the device’s already-existing apps, its trackwheel, trackball, and keyboard, and its communication features, including phone, e-mail messages, and Internet browsing.

As if all of that weren’t impressive enough, the smartphone simulator can also be used as a platform on which your apps can run. This means that they will be able to make network connections, store data, and handle e-mail messages. Aside from being able to test your own apps as well as simulate and test connectivity, the simulator also includes all of the device applications that are usually available on a typical BlackBerry.

When using the smartphone simulator to perform tests, developers may need to simulate e-mail or BlackBerry MDS connectivity, which is why the MDS simulator and e-mail simulator are available. After your app is compiled and developed, you can test it on the BlackBerry device. The first step usually involves setting the BlackBerry Java Development Environment in order to use the smartphone simulator. The simulator will then run the application code as an actual BlackBerry device. This ensures that the simulator is providing an accurate environment for testing how your app will function on a smartphone device.

After your app has been tested, you can then confidently install the app on a BlackBerry device. Keep in mind that if your app uses signed APIs, you may need to utilize code signing keys. Once your app has been installed, you can finally launch your application to test it for functionality, and most importantly, performance. If you encounter problems during this final phase, you may need to attach the device to the BlackBerry integrated development environment (IDE) and utilize the debugging tool to go through your app code step by step.

BlackBerry E-mail Simulator

Simply put, BlackBerry’s e-mail simulator is intended to send and receive messages between the smartphone simulator and a message app (such as Microsoft Outlook) or POP3 and SMTP servers. Keep in mind that a BlackBerry enterprise server is not required for this particular simulator.

Naturally, as a developer, you want your apps to run without any problems. Unfortunately, this isn’t always realistic. Utilizing BlackBerry’s device simulators can help you find problems and solutions and give you the assurance you need to develop highly successful applications.