It is also the time for developers to sign up so they can port all those apps they have been working on for the iPhone and Android over to the RIM devices. Curiosuly, the folks at Blackberry’s app store are currently redirecting people away from the Blackberry store to competitors such as Handango and Handmark.

From the applications page of the Blackberry App Store:

BlackBerry Software Stores

Check out BlackBerry Software Stores for a large selection of games, ring tones and business and personal productivity tools.

• Handango Software Store
• Handmark Software Store

You’ve got to love an open market system to keep the apps plentiful and the cost low.

©2010 My Crackberry Storm. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 My Crackberry Storm. All Rights Reserved.

Now, the bad news. This appears to be one of the buggier releases.

First off, the cool QWERTY keyboard has dissappeared from portrait mode.
Secondly, sometimes you will need to shift my crackberry storm from horizontal to vertical and back again to get the notifcation icons to appear and/or disappear.
Thirdly, The battery is back to needing a charge every night.
Finally, though the camera may be back in working action, it seems that it takes a looooonnnng time to save the picture file before you can move on to the next shot.

This update is probably more of a core update and possibly some user functions were dissabled, etc. so there is no surpirse that this may seem a step back.  It of course isn’t as it may be that the other beta releases were glimpses of what is to come in the next official release.

Stay tuned for the next release update!

Blackberry

©2010 My Crackberry Storm. All Rights Reserved.

Obviously, $10 is a lot to spend on a smart phone application and currently there is speculation on many boards that developers that are releasing applications are jacking their price up before the Blackberry store opens so as to maximize profit. If the crackberry app store will be like the Apple iphone store, then prices will being to moderate and you will see the higher priced apps drop to more reasonable levels.

Of course, some developers can justify their price, since making an app for my crackberry storm usually takes a team, project management, beta testing, updates, etc. even if it is a two man shop.

So what is a good price for an app? Take for instance the Urban Spoon app for the iphone. Quite possibly the most widely talked about app (at least in San Francisco) and people love to use it because it’s cool factor is so high. Shake the phone and then go dine. The interface is slick and there are tons of options to customize your food choices. I asked some friends the other night how much they thought the app cost. Most said somewhere in the $5 to $10 range. They were shocked (yes non of them had iphones) when I told them it was free.

Now of course Urban Spoon can use their app as a loss leader, since eventually you will go visit their site with something other then your phone and then they have you.

Of course most app developers don’t build apps as loss leaders. They build apps to make money. It is just right now is kind of the wild west for apps here in crackberry land. Just about anyone who can program is releasing apps of various qualities. Since the developer sets the price of the app, they can monkey with the price until it hits the sweet spot. This of course can vex early adopters of the app or those who think the app should not have even made it out of BETA.

In time when the crakcberry store kicks in and some sort of quality control is instilled upon the developing masses, there should be an uptick not only in affordable apps, but also a better quality crop of applications.

©2010 My Crackberry Storm. All Rights Reserved.

.90s claim to fame is the new QWERTY keyboard in portrait mode. It is light years better then the old portrait keyboard, but I must say still is not as easy to use as the QWERTY keyboard in landscape. What I would really LOVE TO SEE in next updates, is having of the space bar and making a .com button. That will save time and earn major kudos from…well just about everyone who uses the blackberry storm.

Of course this update comes with some drawbacks as well. At first the camera function was working great. Once focused there was hardly any lag time between pressing the button and taking the picture. But after a while 9about two days I think) of moderate use, the camera function stopped working. The camera would go dark after taking a pic, but the image would not be saved. The screen would go dark and then slowly come back to life, but poof! that memory is lost… Hopefully this will get tweaked back to normal soon as well.

I’ll finish off by saying the best update this time around is that once you lock my crackberry storm, touching or pressing on the screen WILL NOT cause the backlight to turn on. The screen will stay dark until the lock button is clicked again. That has been excellent for battery life. I can now go two days almost without a charge! Slowly but surely things are getting better!

©2010 My Crackberry Storm. All Rights Reserved.

Whoooo!hooooooo!

Now the bad… The next generation hardware NEEDS WIFI! I honestly did not think it would be a problem not having wifi, but with $2/minute call surcharge and $.50 txt charge (dont get me started on data rates!) it is inconceivable to consider this a “world phone” when using the USA verizon plan. Thank makes me sad.

Ok. we will be on vacation for the coming week, so our updates will be sporadic. But be sure my crackberry storm camera will be in full use, clicking away for vacation!…

©2010 My Crackberry Storm. All Rights Reserved.

I think this could have lots of potential, especially if you lose it. Case in point. I was out last weekend and left my phone at a friend’s house. I sms’d myself and PING! I knew where my crackberry storm was. Unbeknown to me however,  my friend (being the good egg he is) tossed my phone in his pack and set off across town to do stuff one does on a Saturday before we met up that evening for general boozing and other assorted forms of merriment. While he had my phone, I was amazed to see my crackberry storm take a trip across town until finally it was back in my hands! Whew!

©2010 My Crackberry Storm. All Rights Reserved.

C’mon.

Comparing the Storm to the iPhone is like comparing Red Delicious Apples to Granny Smiths. Yeah they they are both the same kinda fruit but they taste and bake very differently. Everyone that owns a storm knows of its shortcomings by now. To me the hardware is solid, the OS will take time to catch up. When the third party apps start rolling in, and the OS gets a wee bit more stable then we will see the Storm come in to its own.

©2010 My Crackberry Storm. All Rights Reserved.

So there you have it. Check out the fourm and leave a post! Let’s get this community rolling!

©2010 My Crackberry Storm. All Rights Reserved.

(update 12/30/08. Ok I have had the update a few days now and I will say the following. Once I pulled the battery two times during the first day, everything seemed to stabilize. Before then, things were too wonky, though at no time was the ability to place a call affected. The one BIG improvement I can say about .85 is that my battery life has seemingly doubled. Not sure why, but before I needed to charge almost twice a day and now it is more like every day-and-a-half. So, if extended battery life is all that comes out of this  leak, then It is a good sign for the next official release!)
Well, Looks like Santa RIM has been working overtime to delvier a new OS for my crackberry storm. After installing it this morning and fiddling with it for a while I can say it is more stable then .83 was.  83 was a good interim and bug fix update, but the latest from RIM is now more stable while addressing more issues with my crackberry storm. (Note: .85 is not an official OS release. So, don’t install it unless you know what you are doing or are just having way to much fun this holiday season to care.) What the OS fixes after the jump!

Some fixes of note are:

The camera is not any faster (boooo!)
Flipping between portrait and horizontal is faster.
Flipping between positions starts at a greater angle. In .83 it seemed to flip at about 45 or 50 degrees.  Now it flips at about 75 degrees. Anyone else experience this?
Flipping between applications is faster

As with any interum OS release, it is not perfect, though I can say in the few hours I have been using it, it has not crashed on me yet! I know that may sound pathetic for an OS to crash every few hours, but I have been putting it through it’s paces and trying to bring it to its knees. Why? So you don’t have to!

©2010 My Crackberry Storm. All Rights Reserved.