A unit converter is something handy to have on your PDA or smartphone. However, I couldn’t find any free, useful unit converter for the Blackberry smartphone; all I managed to find were J2ME generic converters that don’t blend in with the Blackberry’s user interface and are in general a pain to use.

Thus, here is BerryUnitConverter; it is, indeed, a Blackberry Unit Converter. All it does is convert between different units of measurement. It’s written specifically for the Blackberry so it won’t work on generic J2ME phones; if you need a converter for your J2ME phone, I suggest Abiro Unit Converter. Also, it requires a Java-based model. It’s been tested on Pearl (81xx), Curve (8300) and Storm (95xx) models but should work on the Bold as well. Warning: if you have a 4.1 device (the 8700 series, for example) you need to go down the page to the Installing section and download the 8700-specific version.

BerryUnitConverter is free software, released under the GNU GPLv2. Source code is available a bit further down the page (under “source code”). You will probably need the Blackberry JDE in order to successfully build from source code.

History

BerryUnitConverter 1.0

• Initial release

BerryUnitConverter 1.1.1

• Add “swap” menu option to quickly swap origin and destination units. Did you ask to convert feet to meters when you meant the opposite? swap will do just that.
• Add film industry-related conversions.

BerryUnitConverter 1.2

• Added torque and speed conversions.

BerryUnitConverter 1.2.1

• Fixed bug with conversions for ounces and stones.

BerryUnitConverter 1.3

• Added data conversions
• Compatible with the Blackberry Storm (95xx) and OS 4.7.

BerryUnitConverter 1.4

• Added force conversions
• Compatible with the 8700 series and OS 4.1 (you need to download the specific version; it’s feature-equivalent so you’re not missing out on anything).

BerryUnitConverter 1.5

• Fixed some inaccurate conversions
• Added some new units.

BerryUnitConverter 1.7

• Added new units.

Units

BerryUnitConverter 1.7 knows about the following units:

• Data
  • from bits to terabits and tebibits
  • from bytes to terabytes and tebibytes
• Force
  • Newtons
  • Kilonewtons
  • Kilograms force
  • Pounds force
• Torque
  • Newton-meters
  • foot-pounds
  • inch-pounds
  • Kilogram-meters
• Speed
  • Miles per hour
  • Kilometers per hour
  • Miles per second
  • Kilometers per second
  • Meters per second
• Weight
  • Kilogram
  • Carat
  • Pennyweight
  • Gram
  • Miligram
  • Pound
  • Stone
  • Ounce
  • Arroba
  • Quinta
• Temperature
  • Fahrenheit
  • Celsius
  • Kelvin
• Length
  • Kilometer
  • Meter
  • Mile
  • Inch
  • Centimeter
  • Millimeter
  • Micrometer
  • League
  • Rod
  • Yard
  • Foot
  • Hand
• Volume
  • Liter
  • Cubic meter
  • milliliter
  • Gallon
  • Quart
  • Pint
  • Fluid Ounce
  • bushel
  • Fluid Arroba
• Area
• Pressure
• Power
• Film industry (enabling you to see how many feet of film a 50-second clip would take, or see how many frames will fit in a meter of film)
  • Feet (of film)
  • Frames
  • Meters (of film obviously)
  • seconds

Installing

Point your Blackberry browser to this link (goes to http://www.tomechangosubanana.com/berryunitconverter_files/BerryUnitConverter.jad) and it should install over the air (OTA).

This should work on all devices from Pearl and 8800 to Storm. If it doesn’t, please let me know.

If you have a 8700 series device, you should download this link instead (goes to http://www.tomechangosubanana.com/berryunitconverter_files/BerryUnitConverter-8700.jad.   A separate version is needed because the 8700 series is, for some reason, not JAD-compatible with the 4.7 JDE which works with all other Java-based devices.

Finally, if you wish to download the COD file and perform a desktop install, you can get it (BerryUnitConverter.cod)  with your desktop browser (use BerryUnitConverter-8700.cod instead for 8700-series devices with OS 4.1.x). You will also need this (BerryUnitConverter.alx).

Files

File	Description
BerryUnitConverter.jad	BerryUnitConverter – Over The Air install, most devices
BerryUnitConverter-8700.jad	BerryUnitConverter – Over The Air install, 8700-series devices
BerryUnitConverter.cod	BerryUnitConverter – For desktop installation, most devices
BerryUnitConverter-8700.cod	BerryUnitConverter – For desktop install, 8700-series devices
BerryUnitConverter.alx	ALX file for desktop install – all devices (you need both this file and one of the COD files listed above).
berryunitconverter-1.7.tar.gz	Source code (tarball).

Source code

Source code for the latest release is available ( berryunitconverter-1.7.tar.gz – 8kb tarball). This includes the project files as well as the icon and all necessary java source files for compilation.

Our git repository is also available for you to clone (http://tomechangosubanana.com/berryunitconverter.git). I welcome patches for improvements, changes and new unit definitions. To fetch a copy of the repository just install git and do:

git clone http://tomechangosubanana.com/berryunitconverter.git

To do

Things I’d like to do with the app include:

• Swap origin and destination units with a single click/menu option.
• Remember the last performed conversion
• Modify my conversion model to support time conversion and base conversion (currently I can only convert units which can be represented linearly).
• Implement a help function (if only I could find a reference for Blackberry help APIs).
• Implement non-decimal conversions for instance to convert to days, hours, minutes and seconds; or meters to feet and inches, useful to convert people’s height.
• Implement film industry units: convert between feet, frames, and minutes/seconds (this last one depends on non-decimal conversions).

Contact me

Bug reports, feature suggestions and contributions, and requests for additional units are welcome. Email me at roadmr@entropia.com.mx. or contact me through this form.