Rhodes 2.2 released! Bluetooth, calendar integration and Android cloud push

We are very excited to announce the release of Rhodes 2.2. Rhodes 2.2 now offers Bluetooth integration. You can communicate between smartphone devices with Bluetooth support, to desktops with Bluetooth and to external accessories. See the documentation on it in the Rhodes Developer Reference here.

Rhodes also offers calendar integration now. You can create calendar appointments on the fly from your device and store it in your local calendar and look up calendar events as well. There is documentation and code samples here.

Rhodes continues to be the only framework with support for sync (the ability to provide your app users with access to their data even when offline and disconnected) with its builtin (but optional) connectivity to our RhoSync server. RhoSync is the most scalable sync server on the market (because of its use of NoSQL). It is also the only sync server that uses native smartphone push APIs to perform push-based sync (resulting in near realtime data updates and low battery drain on the device).

With the introduction of support for Android cloud push our sync servers “only native push sync” advantage now extends to Android devices as well. This is especially exciting given that Android is the clear volume shipping leader amongst smartphones now. All other sync servers from first generation enterprise mobility players deploy their own parallel messaging/push infrastructure to achieve the benefits of pushed data sync, an unnecessary complexity since iPhone, BlackBerry, and now Android all have their own native push capabilities.

Its an exciting day to be a Rhodes app developer, particularly if you are building a synchronized data app and targeting Android.