Poynt is probably the best LBS app for BlackBerry. Currently, the app lets you find local businesses, movies, restaurants, events and people. The app gives you the relevant information you’re looking for, and with driving directions, interactive maps and contact information, Poynt connects you with these places.
The Xobni BlackBerry app does an excellent job of organizing your contacts and saving you time finding and sending emails. The app seamlessly integrates with your email and the above video demonstrates a typical time-saving task with their application.
Here at the BlackBerry Developer Conference we got a sneak peek at the upcoming Xobni app for BlackBerry. The app features a ubiquitous search bar that is seamlessly integrated into your mail, contacts and social networks. The app gives you a great deal of data about each contact including basic contact information as well as updates from that contact’s social networks. The app will also show you possible connections from within these networks.
One of the most impressions features is the way Xobni organizes your contacts across all your email services. The Xobni demo showed how easy it is to take a common name, for which there could be tens of entries, and efficiently move between the Xobni app and your email. Also, for those names which could have multiple entries, Xobni uses a ranking system that means your most interacted with contacts are at the top.
Xobni isn’t currently available but it looks like they are very close to a launch. Stay tuned because this app looks great.
The T-Mobile BlackBerry Gemini 8520 is slated as a low-end BlackBerry Curve, and it will definitely suit the intended market. While Power Users are going to yawn, early Pearl owners are going to want to upgrade to this device, especially because we’ve heard it’s going to come in some beautiful colors.
Before reading this review, as usual it’s not a commercially available device and therefore may not be the device you pick up from T-Mobile.
The 85xx Series Devices
The BlackBerry 8520 is a new-generation Curve and while the xx20 is the only device in the series so far, it surely won’t be the last. In the coming months (year), we can expect a rollout similar to that of other BlackBerry devices. The BlackBerry 8510 will have GPS and the 8530 will be CDMA.
About the OS
The 8520 that I’m using is running OS 4.6.1.227, which seems to be the consensus around other sites who have got their hands on the device. While OS 4.6.1 is decent, it isn’t the OS 5 that we’ve all been waiting to use. Because this is a pre-release device, it could possibly ship with OS 5, which would be a dream come true. Click through to continue reading a review of the BlackBerry Gemini 8520
* – Preview incoming e-mails/alerts
* – Open inbox, reply, forward, mark as read and delete e-mails right from the popup
* – Open inbox, reply and forward SMS right from the popup
* – Disable popups until backlight dims or for a certain time right from the popup
* – Customize order of messages (Oldest first, Newest first)
* – Only show popups for messages from contacts you have in your phonebook
* – Customize positioning of the popup (”System Default”, “Bottom of screen” or “Stretch to the borders of the screen”)
* – Customize position of the button bar (left, right, top, bottom)
* – Automatically turn on backlight when a message comes in
* – Auto-dismiss popup after specified time
* – Disable popups while in the messaging application
* – Disable while device is locked so you will not be flooded with popups after unlocking
* – Disable popups while backlight is on
* – Show contact photo and customize its size
* – Customize font sizes
* – Integrates with SmartAlerts (coming May 2009) for absolute control which messages trigger popups and which don’t
