BlackBerry Cool

3rd party apps that do the same thing that the native apps do for free. Here is what will make this product suck.

It will suck if they…
-Use tiny icons to “give more functions” on the screen. making touch screen with big fingers impossible.
-Link to their own servers where my personal information will be stored/sorted/filtered/re-distributed for my “convenience”.
-Don’t include a theme to match their new look and feel so that the rest of the phone looks as good as they say their app will.

What do I not like about the storm? It took me two weeks to fully become integrated into the storm. Otherwise I love it and think people who use it and say “it’s not good because i spent a week with it and it’s not my iphone” didn’t give it the time it deserves.

BTW I’m not slower typing on the storm then on my old curve. I’m about as fast now. It was just a learning curve.

Paul;

Those are great comments. As a member of the Blinding Rain Team, this is exactly what we have hit at: Larger buttons, great display that takes advantage of the hi-rez screen the Storm has to offer. As far as what you may have experienced already is that there are a lot of apps out there now that a little more than a web-app that serves up in a browser-like experience.

With our app, that experience will be different. While it grabs data from outside, it is designed to be as closly integrated into the native apps of the Storm as possible.

Keep tuned for more details, screen shots and more informaition this next week on the web site: http://www.blindingrain.com

My biggest gripe with the storm is that it crashes/reboots on me all the time. Sometimes it does it in the middle of a call. There are even some times a battery pull doesn’t seem to snap it out of its funk and I’ll have to do 2-3 before it’ll boot up. When it works, I love it… if it doesn’t settle down when the new OS is released (later this month… *crosses fingers*) I’m going to return it as defective and try another unit.

As for the apps, I REALLY like apps that integrate themselves both into and with other portions of the phone. I like that navigation software can add a “navigate to” option in other apps, I like it when apps can pull contact info from my phonebook, etc. I don’t want to have to retype any info I don’t have to… why on earth there isn’t an “insert email address” option on the keyboard I have no idea… I must have typed it 100 times so far.

I also don’t like it when location-sensitive apps don’t have any info for my town. I live in one of the five largest cities in my state… why do some apps (Poynt) recommend stuff in completely different towns yet miss the (not new) businesses a couple miles away?

My biggest gripe with the storm is that it crashes/reboots on me all the time. Sometimes it does it in the middle of a call. There are even some times a battery pull doesn’t seem to snap it out of its funk and I’ll have to do 2-3 before it’ll boot up. When it works, I love it… if it doesn’t settle down when the new OS is released (later this month… *crosses fingers*) I’m going to return it as defective and try another unit.

As for the apps, I REALLY like apps that integrate themselves both into and with other portions of the phone. I like that navigation software can add a “navigate to” option in other apps, I like it when apps can pull contact info from my phonebook, etc. I don’t want to have to retype any info I don’t have to… why on earth there isn’t an “insert email address” option on the keyboard I have no idea… I must have typed it 100 times so far.

I also don’t like it when location-sensitive apps don’t have any info for my town. I live in one of the five largest cities in my state… why do some apps (Poynt) recommend stuff in completely different towns yet miss the (not new) businesses a couple miles away?

My biggest gripe with the storm is that it crashes/reboots on me all the time. Sometimes it does it in the middle of a call. There are even some times a battery pull doesn’t seem to snap it out of its funk and I’ll have to do 2-3 before it’ll boot up. When it works, I love it… if it doesn’t settle down when the new OS is released (later this month… *crosses fingers*) I’m going to return it as defective and try another unit.

As for the apps, I REALLY like apps that integrate themselves both into and with other portions of the phone. I like that navigation software can add a “navigate to” option in other apps, I like it when apps can pull contact info from my phonebook, etc. I don’t want to have to retype any info I don’t have to… why on earth there isn’t an “insert email address” option on the keyboard I have no idea… I must have typed it 100 times so far.

I also don’t like it when location-sensitive apps don’t have any info for my town. I live in one of the five largest cities in my state… why do some apps (Poynt) recommend stuff in completely different towns yet miss the (not new) businesses a couple miles away?

My biggest gripe with the storm is that it crashes/reboots on me all the time. Sometimes it does it in the middle of a call. There are even some times a battery pull doesn’t seem to snap it out of its funk and I’ll have to do 2-3 before it’ll boot up. When it works, I love it… if it doesn’t settle down when the new OS is released (later this month… *crosses fingers*) I’m going to return it as defective and try another unit.

As for the apps, I REALLY like apps that integrate themselves both into and with other portions of the phone. I like that navigation software can add a “navigate to” option in other apps, I like it when apps can pull contact info from my phonebook, etc. I don’t want to have to retype any info I don’t have to… why on earth there isn’t an “insert email address” option on the keyboard I have no idea… I must have typed it 100 times so far.

I also don’t like it when location-sensitive apps don’t have any info for my town. I live in one of the five largest cities in my state… why do some apps (Poynt) recommend stuff in completely different towns yet miss the (not new) businesses a couple miles away?

My biggest gripe with the storm is that it crashes/reboots on me all the time. Sometimes it does it in the middle of a call. There are even some times a battery pull doesn’t seem to snap it out of its funk and I’ll have to do 2-3 before it’ll boot up. When it works, I love it… if it doesn’t settle down when the new OS is released (later this month… *crosses fingers*) I’m going to return it as defective and try another unit.

As for the apps, I REALLY like apps that integrate themselves both into and with other portions of the phone. I like that navigation software can add a “navigate to” option in other apps, I like it when apps can pull contact info from my phonebook, etc. I don’t want to have to retype any info I don’t have to… why on earth there isn’t an “insert email address” option on the keyboard I have no idea… I must have typed it 100 times so far.

I also don’t like it when location-sensitive apps don’t have any info for my town. I live in one of the five largest cities in my state… why do some apps (Poynt) recommend stuff in completely different towns yet miss the (not new) businesses a couple miles away?

This company needs to spell check its website. Dissapointed? If you expect to sell this application, you should really run a spell check and content check. Also, you are building apps for the storm, so why are implying that it is a frustrating phone to own: “You see, we started as frustrated users, not with the Storm, but with…” This distracts from your mission.

That said, this seems like a useful application and if my phone wasn’t busy freezing and restarting itself, maybe I could use it. I agree that it’s frustrating that I have to constantly retype things and copy paste to get info from one place to another. Poynt often misses addresses of existing places (and I’m in nyc, come on!) or it will return the address and not give me option to map the location. It would be great to have a restaurant review and directory app that’s convenient, available at one touch, and plays well with GPS navigation on bbmaps (so I can get directions, not just map the location). I also am frustrated with how many clicks are required to get from the phone book to the phone call.

Mash, I agree with you about the phone application. This is the worst phone application I’ve ever seen. It’s a 5 or 6 button action just to get a call out from your address book, this is ridiculous! Big Fail on the phone application.

I always thought, how hard is it to make it work like the previous keyboard style BB’s, meaning, on the Storm if you press the convenience button that brings up the keyboard, start typing a name and it instantly starts narrowing down your address book just like it does on all the other BB’s, once you narrow the list and see your contact, click it and it calls them, or at least brings up the “call which number” pop-up.
Attempting this now, only brings you to the phone application, where you have to start from scratch again and most of the time locks up the phone.

My other gripe related to this is, when you do finally find the name you want to call in your address book, you would think that on a touch screen phone, that you could just click the address book entry to call that person, but oh no, not the case, clicking the name only brings you to the “view contact” screen where you have to click the menu button and then click on the tiny “call work” or “call mobile” link. This is a touch phone, when you find the item you need, the default action should be to click on the screen, not find the name, highlight it, and then hit the green call button. This is a big FAIL.

Is there a way for a 3rd party app to improve this?

I completely agree with you, Damian. The Storm phone book is a huge fail. I think the lack of efficiency in the phone book has made me slightly more antisocial, haha. I just saw the video for Blinding Rain’s application. It looks great, but I wish it would optimize using the phone book on the storm. When I want to call Bob, I should be able to click on Bob and just call the number I usually reach Bob on. I don’t want to pick through every phone number Bob can be reached at every time I need to call him. Same goes for SMS.

For those that have used/tested this app:
I like the directory and phone number look up features, but can the addresses be used in GPS navigation? More specifically, can I say starting point “where I am” and ending point, the address of the place i just looked up, without out having to copy/paste the address? Also if there is anyway to build in a restaurant review look up on yelp, citysearch, zagat, etc, that would be amazing. I have yet to see a way to look up a quality restaurant quickly and within walking distance of where I am on the storm without using more than one application.

I could really use a phone book app for my bb8330 please help me with this I have #s I gotta lpopok up all day long it’s annoying really I need something qwik and easy to look up #s easly….

Interesting read. There is currently quite a lot of information around this subject around and about on the net and some are most defintely better than others. You have caught the detail here just right which makes for a refreshing change – thanks.

Seems as though BlackBerry are trying to compete with Apple’s iPhone, and with the news that Apple sold 8.7 million iPhone handsets in Q4 of 2009, BlackBerry have got a long way to go!