When I got the Bold 9700 it ran OS 5.0 and this was pretty intuitive when compared to the Symbian OS-based Nokia smartphones which I had in the past, however the update to OS 6.0 really unlocked its true potential (and showed its limitations). Now that I have turned the Bold 9700 off for the last-ever time I thought I would share my top 5 apps available from BlackBerry App World.

QuickPull 5

Sometimes simple apps are the best, and that’s why I regard QuickPull 5 as one of my top 5 favorite apps for BlackBerry. This app is completely free and it allows you to reboot your BlackBerry very easily, what’s best is that you can easily schedule reboots, which is great as a restart frees up memory and clears your device’s caches – which in-turn increases performance. I schedule a restart every morning before my working day and the amount of memory it frees is noticeable.

Daily Crossword

Finding a good game for BlackBerry smartphones isn’t always easy, however one game which I have had installed since the beginning is Daily Crossword. The app is pretty self-explanatory, but what I like about it the most is the fact that each crossword is challenging and the app itself works very well with the optical trackpad sensor and QWERTY keyboard – each day a new crossword arrives, which means I tend to do a crossword each night before bed.

Opera

BlackBerry OS 5.0 and OS 6.0 both feature a pretty impressive default browser, but if you use the web more than the average user you will find it quite basic in terms of intuitively – that’s why I recommend Opera to BlackBerry users, not only does it feature web compression technology to increase page load speeds etc, but it has a great layout and the speed dial home page allows for very quick and easy navigation to your most frequently visited web sites.

crunchSMS

I ignored the great reviews which crunchSMS received for a long time, but then I thought I would try it out and I never looked back. It gives your SMS conversations a new-look thanks to speech bubbles, but best of all when you receive a message it shows up on your home screen – which saves a lot of time and effort and allows you to quickly reply. The right-hand side of the image below shows this in more detail.

ESPN Goals

A few months ago an app showed up at BlackBerry App World which sounded too good to be true for football fans (soccer) – this is ESPN Goals and it allows you to watch highlights from English Premier League matches quickly after they happen. It works over 3G pretty quickly, but that’s because the video quality isn’t amazing, but still it is great if you want to catch up with all of the latest action from the EPL.

Other Great Apps

The above apps are my favorites, but there are some other which shouldn’t be overlooked. The early Facebook and Twitter apps were way behind similar apps for other platform, but the last few releases have brought them up to standard, that said the Bold 9700′s display size and resolution does restrict things quite massively. If you like the ESPN Goals app you should also check out the Sky Sport Football Score Centre, some other apps which I have found handy include Google Maps, Uptime, Tube Map, One Touch Flashlight, ScreenShot, Bubble Burst Free and Hotel Tycoon – all of which can be found at the BlackBerry App World.

What other apps would you like to see added to this article?

An article on Emirates 24/7 is reporting that the move has proved very popular with BlackBerry owners with one saying he had downloaded eighteen applications already. The most popular applications so far have been social media and games.

Ian Thorpe a marketing manager in Dubai couldn’t understand why it took RIM so long, as the market is one of the company’s most lucrative. There has been a lot of activity on Facebook and Twitter following the news, and points to the devices big popularity in the country.

The service is open to both du and Etisalat users, with Etisalat saying ‘The store is available for all BlackBerry smartphones with a trackball, track pad or touch screen running BlackBerry OS (device software) 4.2OS or higher’.

Owners can get the BlackBerry App World straight to their device by going to blackberry.com/appworld or mobile.blackberry.com. Once users have created a user ID they can choose from almost 250 gaming apps, and over 100 IM and social networking applications amongst those available.

As Simon over on the intomobile.com website reports, the Angry Farm game – which is now available to download for $4.99 via BlackBerry App World – has players slinging various farm animals at unsteady buildings, in an effort to get them to collapse on top of the victims inside.

Each animal behaves in a different way when flung through the air, so players have to aim appropriately depending on which animal they’re slinging. According to the appworld.blackberry.com website, the “Angry” animals include a goat, a hen, a pig and a cow.

If players click the trackpad or touchscreen while the angry cow is in flight, it will accelerate to an attacking speed. Meanwhile, if players click the touchscreen or trackpad while the angry hen is in the air, it will split into three angry birds. As for the angry pig, he bounces like a super ball.

You can view a trailer for the new app below this post. Do you own a BlackBerry smartphone? If you do, will you be downloading the Angry Farm game?

The app is free (here), however it is only for UK residents, to run the app you must be running OS 5.0+ on the 9520, 9550, 9700 or 9800, the download itself is just 11kb in size.

Once installed you should be able to watch BBC TV programs from the last 7 days on your smartphone, however I would make sure that you are connected to a WiFi hotspot beforehand as it could result in a large data charge from your carrier.

I currently have the BlackBerry Bold 9700 and have installed OS 6.0.0.344, at the moment this OS version doesn’t seem to be supported, therefore I will have to wait until developers roll out a newer version of the app which supports the Bold 9700 running this particular OS release.

Have you installed the BBC iPlayer App on your BlackBerry? If so are you impressed?

Source: IntoMobile

Cellmania posted a note on their website confirming the takeover which stated “Our team has joined RIM’s global organization and will continue to bring our expertise in application storefront development to the BlackBerry platform.”

Although RIM have acquired the rights, Cellmania said that it would continue to support their existing clients. However, details were not released.

This solution could tie to BlackBerry App World, for which RIM released to compete with Apple’s App Store and the Android Market in April 2009. A new version of App World has recently been released with a number of new features including ‘Top Free,’ ‘Top Themes,’ and ‘Recently Updated.’

Source: PC Mag