10 new levels for Starbeams

Z10Starbeams has been expanded to 160 levels in BlackBerry World and the Windows 8 Store.

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.

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Who is still using the PlayBook?

The BlackBerry PlayBook has been largely abandoned since the update to OS 2.1 in October 2012, but there still remains a sizable number of users on the platform. Following last week’s release of version 4.9 of Xploding Boxes, I looked at downloads of the app by PlayBook users to get a feel for who is still using this tablet.

There was quite a bit of a shift in the user base from a year ago, when I last looked at the data.

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The majority of users (53.2%) are from the United States and Canada, with a plurality of users from the Great White North. The PlayBook has had outsized popularity in Canada since day one, so this is no surprise.

The one demographic that has increased significantly since last year is the number of users from Latin America. The region accounted for 16.5% of all users with Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil all individually exceeding 1% of the user base.

These statistics are generated from PlayBook downloads of the popular strategy game Xploding Boxes, from March 17th, through March 23rd. Data was collected by BlackBerry World at the time of download.

Projectile Physics app updated

IMG_20140321_092617The Projectile Physics app has been updated to version 2.1 for both Android and BlackBerry 10. This update is largely a maintenance release, adding better stability for Android 4.x devices and cleaning up some inconsistencies on the BlackBerry version of the app.

About Projectile Physics

This app is a projectile physics calculator designed to solve for all of the components of a typical projectile motion problem. The app solves for both the vertical and horizontal components of the distance traveled, the constant acceleration, the initial and final velocity, as well as the time. These factors are solved for in real time in order to help you get back the factors of the equation quicker.

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Update to Xploding Boxes

cropXploding Boxes has been updated to version 4.9 with ten brand new levels. Additionally this update also includes a redesigned (and larger) menu button for the Android versions of the app.

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 a one time 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.

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BBOS distribution still flat

The classic BlackBerry OS distribution has gone largely unchanged over the past month with OS 7 still having less then half of the overall market share.

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This data was collected by BlackBerry World for downloads of the free BlackBerry strategy game Pixelated. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of February 2013 through the end of February 2014, and does not include BlackBerry 10 or PlayBook devices.

Majority of users on 10.2.1

The month of February showed the majority of BlackBerry 10 users running the newest release of the operating system. As has historically been the trend, users of the Stuff I Need app have been quicker to upgrade than users of Pixelated.

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The Stuff I Need checklist app saw 76.7% its downloads from users on OS 10.2.1 which means that it has already caught up to where 10.2.0 was just two months ago. Pixelated users were a bit less likely to upgrade, with only 57.3% of users on the newest OS. Still the upgrade cycle is encouraging as after just one month BlackBerry 10.2.1 has gotten an adoption rate that is better than what BlackBerry 7 has managed to get in two and a half years.

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 February 2014.