With yesterday’s release of the BlackBerry Bold 9900 on T-Mobile, RIM is finally offering a touchscreen device on all 4 of the major wireless carriers in the United States. (Actually on all 5 US carriers with the 9850 already released on US Cellular). This is an important move for RIM as their previous touchscreen phones were carrier exclusives (the Torch on AT&T and the Storm on Verizon).
This address a serious problem that RIM was having in the United States. With Verizon (until recently) not getting any new devices in over a year and a half, and the 9800 only being available from AT&T, the market share of BlackBerry has been decreasing. In other countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom RIM has had released the touchscreen 9800 on all carriers, and instead saw their marketshare rise. Neither of these countries is all that different from the US culturally or economically, so the difference is most likely due to the availability of touchscreen BlackBerrys.
Now that RIM has their carrier situation figured out in the US, they should see their marketshare increase in the region.
Twinkle has been updated to version 3.1 in BlackBerry AppWorld. This new version improves stability to BlackBerry Messenger, and network connections.
About Twinkle
Twinkle, which has recently been featured in BlackBerry AppWorld, is a simple application that allows you to set and keep track of upcoming and past events. Twinkle will tell you how far away an event is, and allows you to send events to and from your BlackBerry’s native calendar, or to your friends on BBM. Twinkle gives you the ability to add and edit events, lets you keep track of how soon something is, or how long it has been since an event, and to search for all of these events through BlackBerry’s universal search. In recognition of this deep integration with the device, Twinkle was named a Regional Selections Winner in the 2010 BlackBerry Super Apps Challenge.
New in Version 3.1
There is very little in this version that looks different, but significant changes have been made in the program itself to ensure that sending events through BBM is more reliable. New features that were added in the recently released version 3.0 include sharing over BBM, and multi-language support.
The new BlackBerry Curve line up includes the 9350, 9360, and 9370. All of these devices run BlackBerry OS 7 and from day one will be supported by all Ebscer apps that have supported earlier versions of the Curve series.
I am now officially scheduled to attend BlackBerry DevCon in San Fransisco this October. This will be my first time at this event, and am looking forwards to it. For everyone who will be there, I would be more then happy to find some time to talk to you.
RIM is currently testing a new version of BlackBerry AppWorld which makes a few changes to how apps are featured. One of the featured applications in this beta, is our own Twinkle which recently reached version 3.0 itself.
What is even more interesting is the way then new version of AppWorld features a few “categories” of apps as well. As such Twinkle is actually featured twice, because it can also be found under the “BBM Connected” group of apps that take advantage of the BBM SDK (as Twinkle now does).
The biggest change in version 3.0 is the separate games category which contains its own featured apps, and top 25 list.
Liar’s Dice has been updated to version 1.3 in BlackBerry AppWorld. This new version adds support for the recently released OS7 devices, and also adds integration with the native options menu, for users of all devices.
About Liar’s Dice
This is a classic dice game of strategy and deception in which seeing only your own dice you must bet on the combined dice in play without getting caught in a lie.
The object of the game is to catch your opponent (the computer) betting too high. Bets are placed on both your own dice which you can see, and your opponent’s dice which are hidden from you. You begin each round by making a bet. The computer then has an opportunity to either call your bet a lie, or to bet higher then you. Then it is once again your turn to call your opponent’s bet or to bet even higher. This continues until eventually a bet is called. Then if the bet is too high the caller wins, or if the bet is not a lie, the bettor wins the round.
The game has two main game modes. The “High Score” mode is the default mode, points are awarded for each round, and the first to gain a given number of points wins. The amount of points that the game plays to can be selected from the options page, allowing for shorter or longer games.
The second game mode is an “Elimination” mode in which the loser of each round loses one dice for the following rounds, and the last player with any dice left is the winner. This game is more dynamic as there are a different number of dice in play each round. Additionally these games in this mode typically play faster than high score games.
The Morse Code app in BlackBerry AppWorld has been updated to version 1.1. This new version adds support for the new BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930, and the Torch 9810. In addition this update also adds the option to change the font within the application.
About Morse Code
This app will take your text, and translate it back to you in Morse Code. Any text can simply be entered, and then by pressing the “Play Morse Code” button, can be turned into an audible Morse Code signal. The application also allows you set the volume, as well as the speed of the playback in words per minute.
The only drag here is that we had to accept not one, but two incredibly long license agreements before enabling that feature. In fact you’ll be scrolling through pages and pages of legalese just about every time you try doing something new on your handset. That results in, needless to say, a somewhat unpleasant user experience.
Involving lawyers does not make for a good user experience. Removing a lot of the legalese, would be a very easy way to help RIM improve their end product.
Version 3.0 of Twinkle has been released through BlackBerry AppWorld. This version adds the ability to share events with friends through BBM, multi-language support for English, Spanish, & Dutch. As well as adding integration with the native BlackBerry options screen, and native support for the higher screen resolutions of the new OS 7 devices being released this week.
About Twinkle
Twinkle, which recently celebrated its first birthday, is a simple application that allows you to set and keep track of upcoming and past events. Twinkle will tell you how far away an event is, and allows you to send events to and from your BlackBerry’s native calendar, or to your friends on BBM. Twinkle gives you the ability to add and edit events, lets you keep track of how soon something is, or how long it has been since an event, and to search for all of these events through BlackBerry’s universal search. In recognition of this deep integration with the device, Twinkle was named a Regional Selections Winner in the 2010 BlackBerry Super Apps Challenge.
BBM support
New in version 3.0 is the ability to share events with your friends on BBM. You just select an event, and then choose to “Share Event” from the menu. Then select who you want to send the event to. If your friends do not yet have Twinkle on their BlackBerrys, you can send them a download invitation through a sharing button on the app’s about page.
Language Support
Data from June 2011 showed that despite only being available in English that 9.2% of Twinkle users actually had Spanish as their first language. Another 3.2% of users had their primary language as Dutch. As a result both of these languages were added as options in this version of Twinkle. When the app is first run it will detect the native language on the device automatically. After that the user is free to change it anytime they like from the options page.
Other new features
Version 3.0 also includes integration with the native BlackBerry menu option page. As a result all of the options within Twinkle can also be edited from the Third Party Apps section of the BlackBerry options page. Gray was also added as an additional background colour option for events. It may be a boring colour, but sometimes you have boring events.
Updates were also made in order to better support the higher screen resolution of the recently announced BlackBerry 7 devices such as the Bold 9900/9930, and the 9810, 9850, and 9860 Torch models.
This morning I am off to the BBM Hackathon in New York City. I am honestly not sure what will be going on the next few days, but I am confident that it is going to be fun. To everyone else who will be there I look forward to hanging out with you.
BlackBerry OS usage in July was mostly unchanged from last month. Use of OS 6 was up to 29.9% while use of OS 5 or higher was up to 87%.
I would expect a big bump in both of these numbers next month, as they begin to be propped up by the sale of OS 7 devices.
This data was taken from downloads of the popular BlackBerry strategy game Pixelated. Data is from the beginning of July 2010 through the end of July 2011.
There is an improvement in battery life when it comes to overall talk time. The improvement in the hours of music playback supported is an even larger. But when it comes to standby time, the numbers actually go down. This pattern also holds when comparing the 9650 to the 9930, or the 9780 to the 9900.
With standby time still being almost a fortnight, I highly doubt that anyone is going to complain, but it shows RIM is doing something different under the hood. This is not a case of RIM just throwing in a larger battery, but rather them taking a new approach to power management.
On RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook webpage, they have a number of quotes about the tablet. The quotes are from BRG, Engadget, Wired, Gizmodo, and myBlackBerry user D Vader. Somehow I feel that they let their standards drop a bit on that last quote.
The Binary Clock application has been updated to version 1.1 in BlackBerry AppWorld. This free app displays the time as a binary coded decimal, with the hours, minutes, and seconds of the day displayed in a colour of your choice.
New in Version 1.1
The update adds support for the recently announced BlackBerry 7 devices including the 9810, 9850, 9860, 9900, and 9930. Also the app now integrates with the native BlackBerry options menu, so you can change settings from there if you wish.
How to read
A binary coded decimal can be read with each column added up with each light worth (from top to bottom) 8, 4, 2, and 1, and the column on the left being worth 40, 20, and 10. For example the time in the above image would be 16 hours, 9 minutes, and 25 seconds.
The use of carrier billing continues to grow at a rapid pace. Use of this option has increased every single month after it was introduced, and in June accounted for 31.7% of all purchases.
This data is generated from the dollar amount of purchases of all Ebscer applications over the given month.
