BlackBerry World is the portal for spending
money on BlackBerry 10. Here, you can get apps, music and movies - the most of
which are all available with a fee. Yes, there are plenty of free apps, but
you'll find a few of free things causing distractions to charged things here
compared to Google's Play Store, even Apple's App Store. And, being a new OS, it's
lacks app, in general.
There are a lot of heavy-duty products,
like Dropbox, Angry Birds Star Wars, Box, Foursquare and Hockey Night in
Canada. But, there are also a lot of missing apps, like Netflix and Hulu, media
apps that many smartphone users on other platforms use every day. (Kindle
doesn’t appear, but it's coming, says Amazon.) And, while many PlayBook apps
are available for download here, those that we tested almost essentially looked
terrible. Controls were often stuffed together to fit into the phone's display,
stacking on top of each other and often making the apps useless. In Apollo client
app, the terms of service was formatted to the extent that the
"Accept" button was off the bottom of the screen.
BlackBerry
World is the portal for spending money on BlackBerry 10.
Luckily, that shortage of apps does not
extend to the multimedia aspects of BlackBerry World. Plenty of premium music
is offered, though we found that the price here is often higher than elsewhere.
Unorthodox Jukebox from Bruno Mars is 11.99 USD here, or 1.49 USD per track, compared
to the price of 5.99 USD on the Amazon MP3 Store (which is 0.99 USD per track).
Similarly, it's 10.99 USD in iTunes (1.29 USD per track). Babel from Mumford
& Sons is 12.99 USD, compared to 9.99 USD on Amazon and 11.99 USD at
iTunes.
Fortunately, video content has more competitive
price. Taken 2 is 4.99 USD to rent here (4.98 USD on Amazon, 5.99 USD on
iTunes) or 16.99 USD to buy (12.99 USD on Amazon and 14.99 USD on iTunes),
while an episode of Modern Family is 1.99 USD to buy here, which equals to
Amazon and iTunes. But, it must be said that this content can only be
downloaded up to five devices, an unfortunate and seemingly out-of-date
restriction in these peaceful days of cloud-based media which can be download
whenever you want.
Available apps
While a world of apps is waiting for you in
BlackBerry World, there are many pre-installed apps, some of which is more
useful than others. Here are some highlights.
Browsers
A new mobile platform will have a unstably
start without a firm web browser, and luckily the one built into BlackBerry 10
is quite good, and we'll get what is possibly the early hallmark: it supports
Flash. Yes, this is one mobile browser that's happy to serve every annoying,
flashing banner ad it can find, along with the thousands of “annoying”
restaurant websites that create overcomplicated "experiences." That
Flash is disabled by default says a lot.
It's worth noticing that websites like Hulu
and Netflix have blocked access to their content, which dramatically reduces
the usefulness of this once-great mobile technology. However, we'd rather have
Flash with the option to disable it than not have it at all, and honestly, it
is here.
A
new mobile platform will have a unstably start without a firm web browser, and
luckily the one built into BlackBerry 10 is quite good.
Otherwise, the browser is a fairly
traditional experience, with a URL bar at the bottom holding concurrently as a
search field for Bing. A button to the left of it gives quick access to
bookmarks and history, while the vertical ellipsis on the right pops up a
context menu which offers buttons for things like accessing settings and
bookmarking the current page. It also allows access to the Reader mode, which
strips out all the pictures and ads, and gives you a simple look at the text on
the page. Unfortunately, there's no way to save that view for later offline
reading.
BBM
BBM is here, and have the very useful
(necessary at this time) addition of video chat. It adds on to the voice chat
feature that was included with BlackBerry 7. To start a voice or video chat,
just go to the messaging interface with that person and tap the icon in the
upper-right corner. Video chats are only possible to those who are also using
BB10, but you can perform a voice chat with users of older versions. At this
point, it's unclear if any network providers will allow this feature on a
mobile connection.
Being also new is a screen-sharing feature,
which could make mobile enterprise support become a much easier thing. When in
a video chat, users can choose to share what's currently on their display,
making collaboration or troubleshooting much easier - even when you're just
trying to do a digital crossword puzzle.
And, as we reminded above, BBM is
integrated into the BlackBerry Hub, so you can send and receive messages
directly in there.
Calculator
The modern calculator on the PlayBook, a
product of The Astonishing Tribe, was one of our favorite pre-loaded apps on
that tablet. The calculator app in BlackBerry 10 is much alike, offering the
same interesting color diagram and design. Typing and figures are counted on a
virtual paper tape, which can be torn and thrown into the virtual trash bin.
There's also an integrated unit converter and a useful tip calculator if you
really want to make sure your friends are contributing their part.
The
calculator app in BlackBerry 10 is much alike, offering the same interesting
color diagram and design.
Compass
Compass is another simple yet visually
attractive (and fun-to-use) app. This is just a floating compass that always
points north (thanks to the integrated magnetometer), but it seems very simple
and neat, which makes it an interesting thing to look at and as the compass
disk is floating freely, it's interesting to turn the phone around and see that
disk from the sides, or even the bottom. It’s not the most useful app here, but
you might love to use this to find your way rather than the default maps application.
Maps
In the era when maps and navigation are
becoming important parts of a mobile platform, the Maps app in BlackBerry 10 is
very practical. The features offered here seems to be weak in comparison with
Apple's mocked option in iOS 6. It's best to be compared to the basic options
installed by the carriers like VZ Navigator - especially since they were both
developed by the same company.
The
Maps app in BlackBerry 10 is very practical.
You can look up for POIs and look at a map
to see the position of a particular given contact and then get basic navigation
to that destination. "Basic" means no re-routing for traffic, no
satellite overview, no POI displays, no gestures to look around the map while
navigating and, if you lose your connection, the function can’t operate. The
app only works when you're online, not even save routes once you‘ve gone
through, so it’s the best for you to restrict your expeditions to areas with
good signal coverage.
Conclusion
It's hard to give a final judgment on an OS
that's just shown up after such a long period of nursing. Like Microsoft with
the former Windows Phone 7, basically, BlackBerry is starting from scratch
here, and that's a difficult thing when the two biggest competing platforms,
iOS and Android, each have millions of users stick deeply in their ecosystems,
users satisfied with the hundreds of thousands of apps from all major
developers.
Being a company, BlackBerry has been doing
a ton of manual work to make sure that app partners are lined up and ready to
deploy their products here, and indeed there's a lot of potential for
BlackBerry, but at this point, it's hard to imagine that potential overcome the
prestigious products offered by the rivals.
As a role of replacement for older versions
of BlackBerry OS, BB 10 is a huge step out of the dark ages of mobile OS
design. It's something that is intended for a modern, full-touch device but
still offers the focus to increase core productivity we think those who are
interested in BB will like. Does it have mass appeal? Yes, but we're not sure a
great available keyboard and some trick gestures are enough to supplant the
current kings of mobile devices.
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Advantage
·
Visual and powerful gestures
·
BlackBerry Hub assembles everything
·
Great stock keyboard
Disadvantage
·
Maps app feels incomplete
·
Hub can quickly become overwhelming
·
Limited quality of app selections
Verdict
·
BlackBerry 10 is faster, more visual and
modern than the outdated OS it replaces.
·
The slowness and the limited-quality app
selections makes it hard to be sold to those who used iOS, Android or Windows
Phone.
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