The Mileage Tracker app for BlackBerry 10 has been updated to version 1.4 in BlackBerry World. This new version of the app allows you to have the option to sort entries alphabetically instead of just by date. The update also includes a number of other small improvements to make the app quicker and more efficient.
About Mileage Tracker
Mileage tracker is a free app designed to help you track the miles you drive on each trip for use on tax deductions, accounting, or employee reimbursements. Instead of keeping this information charted on your computer, it makes much more sense to be able to track this directly on your phone, which you normally would have with you in the car already.
Trips can be grouped into categories, and edited (or deleted) at a later date. Following a one time in-app payment you can export your data into an Excel compatible .csv format and a pretty (and sortable) .html format.
Runaway Trains has been updated to version 2.6 in order to add 10 new levels to the game, and bring the total number of levels up to 200.
About Runaway Trains
Runaway Trains is a colorful strategy game for all ages where you must route the trains to the proper station. Each level progresses in difficulty and presents an unique puzzle which you must solve by finding a way to guide the coloured trains causing a collision or running out of track.
This is done by touching the intersections to toggle the open path of the tracks. If at any time the trains crash or end up at the wrong station, you will have lost and have to try again.
BlackBerry 10 users are continuing to quickly adopt newer OS versions as the percentage of users running OS 10.1 is up significantly from last month. Below are the July stats for the Pixelated and Stuff I Need apps.
The numbers differ a bit between the two apps, but both show encouraging results. The Stuff I Need app had 88.5% of users on the newest OS version, while for Pixelated the number was 75.7%. With this rapid adoption of newer OS versions developers may want to consider dropping support for older OS versions as soon as next month. Even with little cooperation from Verizon, BlackBerry is doing a good job getting its users to upgrade fairly quickly.
This data was collected by BlackBerry World for downloads of the free strategy game Pixelated and the free checklist app Stuff I Need. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of February 2013 through the end of July 2013.
Last month I sparked some disagreement over on BerryReview when I suggested that the age of the keyboard was over. One month later, and the statistics from July show no reason for me to think any differently as once again the vast majority of BlackBerry 10 users have been keyboard free on the BlackBerry Z10.
While usage of the Q10 is up slightly from last month, there are still almost four times as many users on BlackBerry’s touchscreen only phone. The Q5 while far more popular than last month is still largely irrelevant to this discussion with less than 1% of the marketshare.
I highly doubt that we are ever again going to see a situation where the majority of BlackBerry phones sold have a physical keyboard. The keys are not going away, but they are no where near as important to BlackBerry’s future as most analysts would lead you to believe.
The data used in this chart was collected by BlackBerry World for downloads of the free checklist app Stuff I Need during the month of July.
The Stuff I Need app has been updated to version 2.1 in BlackBerry World. This version adds and an entry on the options page that allows you to adjust the font size of your entries, in order to make them larger and easier to read, or smaller so you can fit more onto a page.
About Stuff I Need
Originally conceived as a grocery list app, this minimalistic checklist app can be used to keep track of the stuff you need to get, or the stuff that you need to do. Items on the list can be edited (or deleted) by giving them a long press. Lists can be switched by pulling down on the tab at the top of the screen. This will expose a spinner that shows all of your current lists. New lists can be added by using the “+” button on the right side of the expanded tab. Making use of three or more lists requires the use on a one time in-app purchase.
The Rotary Phone app sends your BlackBerry back in time, and gives you a classic rotary interface from which to dial out numbers. There is even a setting that allows you to automatically dial out after seven or ten digits have been entered.
Xploding Boxes has been updated to version 4.6 in order to expand to 400 unique levels. The game supports BlackBerry phones both with and without touchscreens all the way back to OS 5.0 as well as BlackBerry 10, and the PlayBook, in addition to support for Android phones and tablets (including the Nook and Kindle), and also supports Windows 8 devices such as the surface.
About Xploding Boxes
Xploding Boxes is a strategy game for BlackBerry, Android, Nook, Windows 8, and BlackBerry 10 where the goal of the game is to start a chain reaction that will explode all of the boxes on the screen. Each level gives you a different number of touches, and requires a different strategy to solve.
The game itself, and the first 25 levels are available for free, while an in-app purchase can be used to access the rest of the levels for just $2.99 while maintaining your progress from the free levels.
C – Create new event E – Edit currently selected event Del – Delete currently selected event T – Scroll to Top of the list B – Scroll to Bottom of the list Space – Scroll down one page Shift+Space – Scroll up one page
The numbers for May were a little disappointing, but June found the majority of BlackBerry 10 users running the newest OS version. The two charts below show the percentage of BlackBerry 10 users running each OS version for the game Pixelated and the Stuff I Need check-list app.
For the month of June, both of these apps showed over two thirds of users running OS 10.1 on their phones. While adoption of the newest OS versions is lagging behind what we saw for the PlayBook, it is still far better then what we have seen on the old BlackBerry OS.
This data was collected by BlackBerry World for downloads of the free BlackBerry strategy game Pixelated and the free checklist app Stuff I Need. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of February 2013 through the end of June 2013.
Do you ever get the feeling that your BlackBerry 10 phone is too practical and too new? Do you feel like the term ‘dial’ has lost some of it’s meaning now that you can call numbers without having anything physically spun? Do you ever wish that you could go back to days of entering one number at a time? If so mount your BlackBerry to the wall and download the Rotary Phone app.
This app simulates an old school dial phone, and gives you a classy way to call your friends. There is also an option avalible through the swipe-down menu that allows the set the phone to automatically dial out once the number reaches 7 or 10 digits long in order to better simulate the old dial phones.
C – Create new item T – Scroll to Top of the current list B – Scroll to Bottom of the current list Space – Scroll down one page Shift+Space – Scroll up one page
The Mileage Tracker app has been updated to version 1.3 in BlackBerry World. This update to the free BlackBerry 10 app is mostly centered around improvements to the export options within the app.
New in version 1.3
When exporting it has always been possible to share the resulting file over email, but you can now share the file through other apps such as BBM, the built in Remember app, NFC, or Box. Also if you are exporting to both a .csv and a .html file you can now share both of them at the same time over email. There is also an option for exports to include the mileage total in the header when exporting a single category worth of data.
About Mileage Tracker
Mileage tracker is a free app designed to help you track the miles you drive on each trip for use on tax deductions, accounting, or employee reimbursements. Instead of keeping this information charted on your computer, it makes much more sense to be able to track this directly on your phone, which you normally would have with you in the car already.
Trips can be grouped into categories, and edited (or deleted) at a later date. Following a one time in-app payment you can export your data into an Excel compatible .csv format and a pretty (and sortable) .html format.
With sales of BlackBerry 10 phones closer to 2.7M in the quarter, my estimate had a margin of error of 87%. I would have considered anything less then 10% to be a success. Clearly I was no where close and some of my assumptions were wrong.
I don’t plan on giving up. I now have more data in order to help me make a better prediction for next quarter. Lets hope that the next estimate is closer to the mark.
Starbeams has been updated to version 1.2 in BlackBerry World and the Windows 8 Store. This new version adds 10 new levels and the BlackBerry 10 version also gets a swipe-down menu.
About Starbeams
The object of the game is to assign colors to each star in order to ensure that none of the stars are connected to another star of the same color. The game starts off easy, but quickly gets more complex, adding more colors and seven pointed stars that can not be changed.
New in Version 1.2
This versions adds levels 111-120 to the game. Additionally there is now a swipe-down menu that allows you to restart the current level or view the how to play information. Users of the Q10 or Q5 can also restart the current level by using the ‘R’ shortcut key.
The UI that BlackBerry introduced on the PlayBook, and continued on BlackBerry 10 calls for the support of a swipe-down menu where a user can swipe down from the top bezel and gain access to additional options for the app. The design in very good in theory in that it allows a dedicated menu area without consuming any real estate on the screen or requiring a dedicated menu button. However, far too few apps make use of this menu for consumers to expect it to be there.
I have written about this problem before. Over two years ago I noticed this problem on the PlayBook and the issue has only gotten worse since then. The Cascades framework instead encourages the use of an overflow menu, and even less preinstalled apps make use of the swipe-down menu.
Major apps such as the Browser, Facebook, and the search app do not have a swipe-down menu at all. Many other first party apps such as the Pictures app, the Videos app, the Music app, and the File Manager make only trivial use of the swipe down menu offering nothing more than a link to an external help file. (Couldn’t BlackBerry at least open these help menus as a card?) Even more interesting is the Calculator app that had a swipe down menu when BlackBerry 10 first launched, but as of 10.1 no longer has one at all.
Following BlackBerry’s lead, many developers (including myself) stopped using swipe-down menus. Following the current UI guidelines for Cascades almost every app will have some sort of an action bar making it trivial for developers to just place everything else in the overflow menu where it is much more discoverable by users. At this point I honestly can not recommend that anyone rely on the swipe-down menu as the only way to do anything in their app.
In version 5.1 of my Twinkle app (pictured) I am implementing a swipe-down menu in a Cascades app for the first time. Yet all three of the options there are redundant and are also available through the standard action bar overflow menu. At this time, this is the absolute most support that I am willing to give to the swipe-down menu. If BlackBerry wants this situation to change, they should seriously rethink their UI guidelines and what they are doing with their own apps…
The Mileage Tracker app for BlackBerry 10 has been updated to version 1.4 in BlackBerry World. This new version of the app allows you to have the option to sort entries alphabetically instead of just by date. The update also includes a number of other small improvements to make the app quicker and more efficient.
