Weather Beautiful is a new app for BlackBerry 10

April 24, 2015 Eric at Ebscer

Weather Beautiful is a simple weather app that displays stunning photography of your surrounding area. In addition to the current temperature and weather conditions, the app also allows you to scroll down for a full weekly forecast.

The background images for the app feature landscapes taken in the area surrounding your current location. These pictures update every fifteen seconds in order to show you more views.

The app can be downloaded for free from BlackBerry World for all BlackBerry 10 phones.

Links & Information

BlackBerry, BlackBerry10, Weather Beautiful

Classic Camera app updated to version 1.1

April 20, 2015 Eric at Ebscer

The Classic Camera app has been updated to version 1.1 in BlackBerry World. This new version of the app gives phones with physical keyboards the ability to also capture pictures by using the spacebar. Additionally, users now also have the option to give the camera an audible shutter noise. By default this is turned off, but users can activate it through the options screen that can be accessed from the swipe down menu.

About Classic Camera

On the newest versions of BlackBerry 10, the default camera app no longer allows you to capture a picture by simply allowing you to tap anywhere on the screen. So the Classic Camera is a third party camera that restores this behavior. Additionally there are options on the bottom of the screen to quickly toggle the flash, camera, and image ratio. After capturing an image a preview will appear in the lower left corner that can be tapped to preview or edit the most recently taken photo.

Links & Information

BlackBerry, BlackBerry10, Classic Camera

Head Words updated to version 1.2

April 14, 2015 Eric at Ebscer

The Head Words game has been updated to version 1.2 in BlackBerry AppWorld. This new version adds the Candy category, and made some adjustments to the tilt sensitivity of the game.

About Head Words

Head Words is a native (Built for BlackBerry approved) multi-player guessing game similar to Celebrity, Hedbanz, and Heads Up. After selecting a category, one player places the phone on their forehead while the other players give clues. With one minute to guess as many words as possible, the player can tilt the phone down for each correct answer, or tilt the phone up to pass. At the end of round a word list will show what was guessed right and wrong. The swipe down menu provides an option to turn the sound on or off.

The game includes five categories for free, and the option to purchase access to nine additional categories for a dollar each.

Links & Information

BlackBerry, BlackBerry10, Head Words

Use of 10.3 exceeds 50%

April 8, 2015 Eric at Ebscer

With OS 10.3.1 rolled out for most users over the course of an entire month the majority of users have upgraded to the newest version of BlackBerry 10. 54.3% of Pixelated users, and 67.2% of Stuff I Need users were running a version of OS 10.3 in the month of March.

While much better than BBOS, this is actually a bit slower than the roll out of OS 10.2.0 and 10.2.1 was a year ago. Holding BlackBerry back is the fact that a good number of carriers have still not rolled out the update. For developers, the need to maintain support for OS 10.2.1 isn’t yet gone.

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 March 2014 through the end of March 2015.

BlackBerry, BlackBerry10, Statistics

OS Statistics for the traditional BBOS

April 6, 2015 Eric at Ebscer

Use of BlackBerry 7 now accounts for 56.5% of the traditional BBOS marketshare. This small increase mostly came at the expense of OS 6.

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 March 2014 through the end of March 2015, and does not include BlackBerry 10 or PlayBook devices.

BlackBerry, Statistics