Blackberry NFC development

The history of BlackBerry phones and their operating systems can be described as quite eventful. For example, Blackberry changed the operating system’s architecture completely with the Z10 to QNX with a new API. A few generations later another reorientation took place and the operating system was changed to Android. In this article an overview about these developments and their implications is given.

NFC development under BlackBerry OS 7

Since operating system version 7 the NFC technology is supported by BlackBerry smartphones. The Smart Tags application which allows to read and write NFC tags is integrated directly into the operating system.

With the introduction of BlackBerry OS 7.1 the support for NFC was further extended. For example, the Smart Tags application supported new functions which allowed to write additional data types on tags. However, the Smart Tags application was only a rudimentary beginning for the usage of NFC with BlackBerry smartphones. If you want to realize your own ideas, it is necessary to develop your own application.

The BlackBerry Software Development Kit (SDK) offers a detailed documentation with a lot of examples. In the following we link a few informative resources which will help you to get started with BlackBerry NFC development.

NFC development under BlackBerry 10

With the introduction of BlackBerry 10 the underlying basis changed from a java-based system to the micro kernel system QNX. QNX applications are developed with C++ in a QT-based toolkit while using QML. The BlackBerry 10 platform defines native SDK interfaces which allow to react on NFC events and, thus make the usage of NFC tags a lot easier.

NFC development for present BlackBerry devices

Since the BlackBerry Priv BlackBerry relies on Android as operating system. Due to this fact, the NFC development follows the Android SDK. Therefore, our section about Android NFC development might be relevant for you.