BlackBerry App World: All it's cracked up to be?
No joke, this application greeted me when I first ran BlackBerry's App World.
(Credit: CNET/Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt)It's well past midnight here at CTIA 2009 and I have fought sleep to test out the new BlackBerry App World, the much ballyhooed 'rival' to the iPhone's App Store. As of 1:30 a.m. PDT, it has 11 social networking applications, 89 utilities, and 163 games. The BlackBerry App World is spinning on, but although I enjoy its layout, it's having a hard time living up to the hype.
First, I am emphatically not a fan of RIM's decision to tether all its BlackBerry users to PayPal as its payment processor. I see the logic behind it--PayPal is unified, while carriers are not, and many business users and prosumers who own BlackBerrys will already have PayPal accounts. I just don't like it. The real problem is, I just don't like PayPal, and I resent having had to sign up again just a few months after extricating my bank account and credit card number from PayPal. The PayPal chapter of my life will be yanked back open, at least if I want to use BlackBerry's App World. And I most definitely do.
Second annoyance: On a trackball device, you have to scroll through the entire end-user license agreement before the application will install. Thankfully, you'll only have to do this once. I had to do it twice, however, to load the storefront onto a Bold and a Curve, so it was twice the bummer.
Right now, the App World is operating on the BlackBerry Bold as I am post-midnight--sluggishly. It's definitely not as snappy as iPhone's App Store in the 3G performance department, and it's frustrating to stare at the green "loading" bar for long, fat seconds before a product page loads. Worst of all, the applications appear to only download to the device memory, completely ignoring my 8GB microSD card. I suspect this will lead to a lot of "incomplete memory" messages for a lot of folks.
That said, the first three applications downloaded fairly quickly and work like a charm. Even the PayPal portion of the process was painless, and I know the upshot is being able to reload all my free and purchased applications if I switch devices.
My advice to RIM is this: get the App World to spin a little faster and open up external memory for storing memory-demanding applications like games, and you'll have a profitable product that's also a win with your users. And do it fast.
Jessica Dolcourt reviews the latest and greatest smartphone apps, in addition to a healthy dose of Windows software. E-mail Jessica and follow her on Twitter.
Error starting net_rim_bb_appworld: Symbol 'ContentHandlerRegistrationHelper.moduleUpgraded not found.
No help via BB Support. Suggestions were scant and left wanting. No listing, yet, on CrackBerry.
This is a great idea; however, execution ... not so much.
-That is not a serious problem. I am not going to advertise it but there is an application that automatically stores data to your SD card, just check the major blackberry forums outside of RIM. Yes, you do have to buy it (at least the ones I've seen) but it is worth it.
"Second annoyance: On a trackball device, you have to scroll through the entire end-user license agreement before the application will install. Thankfully, you'll only have to do this once. I had to do it twice, however, to load the storefront onto a Bold and a Curve, so it was twice the bummer."
-Dude, you need some sleep...this sounds whimpy. But aside from that the paypal thing sucks, but then again since I imagine many here already conduct commerce on the web, I am not sure what is the big deal.
That aside, it seems to work well. Nothing fancy here but pretty nice. I agree with others who have used the iPhone. There is so much crapware for the iPhone that it denigrates the site. No such problem in App World so far. I just downloaded 4 free apps. Very nice!
-
by jeff-yee
April 6, 2009 3:39 PM PDT
- "Second annoyance: On a trackball device, you have to scroll through the entire end-user license agreement before the application will install. Thankfully, you'll only have to do this once. I had to do it twice, however, to load the storefront onto a Bold and a Curve, so it was twice the bummer."
-
Like this
Reply to this comment
-
(12 Comments)You don't actually have to scroll to the bottom of the EUL. Just press your menu button and hit "accept"