Posted on June 23, 2010, at 5:00 PM .
The OS 6 theme by WJD Designs was by far one of the best OS 6 themes available. The theme has recently been pulled from the Mobihand network in response to action by RIM legal and is no longer available.
This is bad news for a few reasons. For one, killing the OS 6 theme by WJD Designs sends a message to all theme developers that you could at any moment be at the mercy of RIM’s inflated and unfocused legal team. Second, it sends a message to the users that regardless of whether or not RIM will be able to support their device with OS 6, you may not be able to purchase a theme that tries to effectively mimic the UI and style. Third, it shows RIM’s legal and marketing departments are totally uncoordinated at the detriment of the organization at large.
Imitation is the highest form of flattery, and RIM should see the success of the OS 6 theme as a compliment. What if the company took the complete opposite approach and invited WJD Designs to help create an official OS 6 theme that would be given free to all users who do not have a device that can support OS 6? Not only would the entire community be appreciative, but you would be sending a message to theme developers that if you create something the community loves, you will be rewarded.
Continue reading ‘RIM Legal Kills Popular BlackBerry OS 6 Theme by WJD Designs’
Posted on June 18, 2010, at 12:21 PM .
The original BlackBerry Pearl 8100 was a breakthrough device. It was the first BlackBerry to sport a camera as well as being the first trackball-controlled device. It was obvious upon its December 2006 release that RIM was taking aim at the Nokia feature phone market with a new breed of consumer-friendly devices.
Since then, the BlackBerry Pearl has been a regular character in the cast of top 10 stateside-sold smartphones. Usually priced at around $100, the BlackBerry Pearl form factor is a proven product line that, thanks to the Pearl 3G, can no longer be labeled entry-level.
Continue reading ‘Review of the Rogers BlackBerry Pearl 3G 9100′
Posted on June 17, 2010, at 5:25 PM .
We have seen a lot of BlackBerry 6 in action and it looks like a lot of visual improvements for the end user. But what about developers? Will OS 6 bring anything new to help them create rich and compelling apps? The answer is “yes”. OS 6 comes with some awesome new APIs for developers to leverage to make great apps for BlackBerry. Lets take a look at what OS 6 will allow you to do.
Graphics
The graphics in OS 6 are going to be a leap beyond OS 5. There are animation APIs in OS 6 that allow you to animate nearly everything and it’s all optimized natively. OS 6 comes with OpenGL ES 1.1 3D graphics for all devices with supporting hardware (CDMA). OpenGL ES 1.1 builds on the existing 1.0 support and allows for multitextures, automatic mipmap generation, improved rending and more. OS 6 will also come with OpenVG 1.1, which is the 2D equivalent of OpenGL.
Continue reading ‘What BlackBerry OS 6 Means for Developers and Super Apps’
Posted on June 14, 2010, at 11:54 AM .
We have a lot of free unofficial World Cup 2010 BlackBerry themes just in time to cheer on your favorite team. The World Cup 2010 themes were developed by Catalyst Multimedia, members of ID-GTF, a Blackberry theme developers community in Indonesia (GTF is short of Garage Theme Factory). These themes feature:
- 4 nice looking wallpapers
- Customized underlay application screen button
- Customized battery meter
- Customized signal meter
Uploading these themes was a lot of work so if any of the links are broken, make sure to tell us in the comments and we’ll fix them.
To install the theme, click on the link for your device and download the zip file. Then, make sure to read this guide to installing a theme JAD file on your device.
Continue reading ‘Exclusive and Free World Cup 2010 BlackBerry Themes!’
Posted on May 26, 2010, at 2:44 PM .
The BlackBerry Bold 9650 is basically the Tour 2, but rebranded and launched as a Bold series device. The story seems to be that when the “Tour2″ was leaked soon after the launch of the original Tour, users started to complain about an update being worked on so soon after the original device was launched. The sentiment at the time was a slight resentment at the fact that Tour owners just bought a device without WiFi, and here was a new Tour with WiFi and a trackpad (something all Tour owners would have loved). In response, RIM seems to have changed the branding of the device over to a Bold, and probably pushed a Tour update down the pipe. Regardless of the branding, this is a Tour in my opinion, but I’ll refer to it as a Bold for SEO purposes.
Continue reading ‘Review of the BlackBerry Bold 9650 from Sprint’
Posted on April 27, 2010, at 12:25 AM .
Tomorrow, co-CEO Mike Lazaridis will give a general keynote, where we expect him to talk about the 9650, 9100 and hopefully a little about BlackBerry 6 and the WebKit browser. It’s going to be a great session and we’ll have coverage from the ground to report.
Today, Mike Lazaridis gave an amazing speech to analysts during Capital Markets about how far the company has come and where the platform’s strength’s lie. To be honest, as someone who writes about BlackBerry every single day, I’ve had my fair share of doubts and frustrations with the platform. Lazaridis’ speech did a lot for my enthusiasm and optimism about the platform, and after reading this summary/impressions post, I think you’ll feel the same.
Continue reading ‘State of BlackBerry: Mike Lazaridis’ Speech and Where We Stand’
Posted on April 17, 2010, at 4:33 PM .
Today, RIM sent out a notice to all App World vendors that they are taking an additional 10% revenue cut from developers, in order to fund “support the expansion into new markets and to allow for additional billing models.” Previously, RIM allowed developers to keep 80% of the revenue they earned, and this has just been changed to 70%.
This has given developers yet another reason not to make great applications for BlackBerry. Currently, Apple allow the developer to take a 70% cut of the revenue, but they offer a convenient way for consumers to purchase apps, and their store is embedded on every single iPhone sold. While RIM said they’ll be implementing credit card billing, this only brings them a little closer to the portal that Apple provide, and therefore they should offer the developer a higher cut to account for their lack of distribution.
For a platform that is in desperate need of more developers, this was a very silly move on RIM’s part. Click through after the jump where we have a copy of the letter sent to developers.
Continue reading ‘Bad News: RIM Take an Additional 10% from BlackBerry Developers’
Posted on April 16, 2010, at 9:33 AM .
This was a slower than usual week on BlackBerryCool but there are still some gems lying around. In apps, we saw some awesome updates from some old favorites such as Gym Technik, Druglord Wars 2, Cortado and Tvider. There are also some newish players to the scene such as Kik, who launched a very nice chat client which will soon come with video support as well. The Pearl 9100 has been making the rounds with a T9 and QWERTY keyboard, which should be great for sales in the European markets. We’ve also seen some interesting news on the wire, including a report that BlackBerry usage is the highest during the weekday compared to iPhone.
Continue reading ‘BlackBerryCool Roundup for the Week of April 12th’
#chirp
