If you are curious to see what the Blackberry 10 device is all about, or you need to support it, then the simulator is probably a good choice. This is available free of charge from the Blackberry web site.
The simulator usually has a more advanced version of the OS than currently available, as it is designed to help developers get ready for the new OS.
At the time of writing this means 10.2.1 which includes the Android emulation feature.
System Requirements
Due to the installer Blackberry use, you need to have JAVA installed on the workstation.
It also requires VMWARE Player or Workstation.
Installation
The default location during the install is in My Documents. However if you decide to install it somewhere else, then you should run the installer Elevated. After installation the permissions can be out, so give Users full control to the directory where the VM is stored.
The virtual machine installs with the network set to NAT mode by default - I prefer it to be connecting directly, so change the configuration before booting the VM.
Use
It is a little slow to load, and do ensure that you have the latest video card drivers and a machine with Hardware virtualisation support enabled in the BIOS. However once loaded and you get your head around the "swiping" with the mouse, it is very quick.
Once you have it loaded, don't forget to change the keyboard and language settings. I also found the time zone was wrong and the clock was six hours wrong as well, despite "automatic" time sync being enabled.
Application Installation
You can access the Blackberry App World, you can also use third party App Stores, such as the Amazon App Store. However if required you can also sideload applications. There are various methods to do this, one of the easiest is to use a Google Chrome Extension, which is discussed here:
http://semb.ee/sideload
Exchange Connectivity
Of course as an Exchange MVP, one of the first things I wanted to try was connecting it to Exchange. This works perfectly, I was able to add it to my test Exchange 2013 server very quickly, and also to a test BES 10 server.
Downloads
The simulator is free to download, and can be found at this link:
http://semb.ee/bbsim
