14 DAY TRIAL // Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion is gearing up for the launch of its new BlackBerry 10 operating system, and is providing developers with more resources for their upcoming applications for the platform.
Committed to offering a rich set of mapping APIs for the OS, the company has included support for all Cascade developers out there in the latest SDK update for BlackBerry 10.
Some app builders have already had the chance to get a taste of the new APIs, and the new release builds on the feedback provided by them, RIM notes.
In the video embedded below, you can have a closer look at what BlackBerry 10 Cascades MapView is all about from the handset vendor’s perspective.
Through MapView, developers will be able to enjoy beautiful map tiles out of the box, along with basic interactions like pinch-to-zoom and drag-n-pan.
“You can also drop push pins for POIs and show bubbles to present more details about a POI. Better yet, both the pin and the bubble can be fully customized to represent your own branding. Although these cover the basic needs for most of us, anything with Cascades has to be a bit more special,” RIM explains.
The MapView also comes with APIs that enable “tilting and rotating the map in a 3D space,” pushing the idea of mapping on RIM’s platform one step forward.
Devs will be able to connect these features with the gyroscope and the compass packed inside the smartphone, thus coming up with augmented reality apps in no time.
“In fact, that’s exactly what I did in the CustomMapView sample app. The sample demonstrates the full power of MapView as of today and will be kept up to date as we add more features to our SDK. Please feel free to fork this in GitHub and contribute back,” RIM continues. The company also notes that MapView in Cascades should provide a nice range of new possibilities to developers. Those who will get the new functionality for a spin are encouraged to provide feedback on the experience they have.
