Picking a Blackberry JDE version

Question

I am new to Blackberry programming and starting my first app soon. I believe I will be supporting OS 4.5 and higher, but now need to decide which JDE to use. I want to support the most amount of phones as possible, which is why I would guess 4.5 and higher is a good cutoff. Can anyone make suggestions of what JDE is best for features and support? I know that is very subjective. Is there a site even that lists the features of each JDE to make a good decision?

Answer 1

Below there is a list of embedded simulators for JDE versions.

JDE 4.0.2

5790 6230 6280 6710 6720 7100g 7100r 7100t 7100v 7100x 7210 7230 7250 7280 7290 7510 7520 7730 7750 7780

JDE 4.1.0

7100g 7100r 7100t 7100v 7100x 7250 7290 7520

JDE 4.2.0

8100 8100 - TMobile US

JDE 4.2.1

7130 7130e 8100 8700 8703e 8707 8800

JDE 4.3.0

8120 8130

JDE 4.5.0

8100 8110 8120 8130 8300 8310 8320 8330 8700 8703e 8800 8820 8830

JDE 4.6.0

9000

JDE 4.6.1

8900 8350i

JDE 4.7

9500 9530

JDE 5.0

8900 9000

Answer 2

If you can, I'd go down to 4.3 as the cutoff. There are still a lot of devices out there running 4.3. There aren't too many things that the 4.5 API can do that 4.3 can't, so you don't really gain much by setting your minimum level at 4.5. I wouldn't go lower than 4.3, unless you want really ugly fonts!

Keep in mind that even if you pick 4.3 as your base version, you'll still need to create a separate build for touchscreen devices (Storm) using the 4.7 because that's where the touch APIs were introduced.