Skip to main content

BlackBerry App World Leaves Beta

The latest version of RIM’s BlackBerry App World has left beta, enabling developers to offer BlackBerry applications for $0.99 and $1.99—just like iTunes and Android market—as well as enabling customers to purchase apps using major credit cards. With carrier support, users may also be able to purchase apps with carrier billing: buy the app, and it becomes a line item on the next cell phone bill.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

The new version of BlackBerry App World also offers new ways to find applications, including new tabbed sections for applications lists: users can scroll and swipe quickly through the top 25 items in categories, including new apps, latest updated apps, and top paid adds.

Recommended Videos

RIM has also integrated BlackBerry ID into BlackBerry App World, making it easier for BlackBerry owners to transition to a new device: with a BlackBerry ID, they can easily tap back into apps and items they bought via BlackBerry App World, no re-purchase necessary.

RIM says BlackBerry App World users should already be receiving upgrade notifications.

Geoff Duncan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
BlackBerry’s latest revival attempt crashes before launch
BlackBerry Key2. Credits: BlackBerry official.

Just weeks after announcing that it would definitely launch a new BlackBerry-branded phone in 2022, OnwardMobility has announced an immediate shutdown. The company will no longer be making a new Blackberry phone, and the future of the storied brand in mobile technology again appears bleak.

The Texas-based company had acquired rights to use the BlackBerry brand for mobile in 2020, with a phone initially planned for launch in 2021. When that didn't pan out, the company also announced that it was still on track, but it would just take a little bit longer. With supply chain issues affecting companies as large as Samsung, it was understandable that a small startup would be unable to make headway.

Read more
BlackBerry is better off dead
BlackBerry Key2 LE Hands On

I haven't seen anyone use a BlackBerry since my freshman year of high school. In fact, I thought the BlackBerry had already died by the time everyone got their hands on the iPhone and/or an Android smartphone in 2011 and I was shocked to learn that the minuscule PDA-like device was still around last month when the company that shares its name decommissioned calling and messaging services for the classic models and rendered them useless. Its death was confirmed when OnwardMobility lost the rights to the BlackBerry name despite its attempts to resurrect the brand with the BlackBerry 5G, which suffered multiple delays in 2021.

Despite being one of the most popular mobile devices in the 2000s next to the T-Mobile-exclusive Sidekick, BlackBerry didn't survive the smartphone era, even though it triggered the advent of smartphones starting with the iPhone. Given its PDA-esque design, it wasn't suitable enough to be turned into a smartphone — or, at the very least, the culturally accepted definition of a smartphone: All touchscreen, no physical QWERTY keyboard. Because of its failure to adapt to the growing smartphone market dominated solely by touchscreens, not to mention the lack of updates for the newer, surviving models — like the BlackBerry Key2 — the BlackBerry as a device is better off dead for all intents and purposes.

Read more
ClipDart is an on-demand barber app aimed at people of color
ClipDart founder, Kyle Parker.

It’s funny how we can take certain things for granted, like haircuts. Over the course of more than 50 years of living in different cities, different neighborhoods, or even visiting different countries, not once have I ever worried about whether I could find someone who could cut my hair the way I liked. Then again, I’m white.

But if you’re a person of color, it can be an entirely different experience. That’s what Kyle Parker discovered when he left his hometown of Chicago in 2013 to attend Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, population 9,031. While 24% of Grinnell College’s students identify themselves as people of color, fewer than 10% of residents of the city of Grinnell would say the same of themselves.

Read more