Blackberry App Store First Look
Not only have Blackberry added new features like copy and paste to their handsets but they’re also going after Apple’s home turf with their own Application Centre. The new service will be launched on version 4.7 of the Blackberry OS (the OS on the Blackberry Storm).
The Application Centre is designed to function in pretty much the same way as Apple’s App Store; users can find, browse and install/upgrade 3rd party BlackBerry apps hosted by carriers. This means that the Application Center is effectively an interface between the user and the carriers application offerings. The interface will also provide users with a description and marketing information about each application.
The complete solution will consist of a device based application talking to backend sesrved hosted by RIM that the application will interact with to retrieve up to date application list of applications hosted by the carriers.
Application Centre Features
- Available on OS 4.7 Storm devices
- designed for the Storm touch screen UI
- Carriers will be responsible for hosting the application data and sending updates to the directory to RIM.
- Users will be shown a list of all install candidate applications based on the hanset model and OS version. Incompatible applications will not be displayed
- One click installation of applications
- Users can delete apps from within the App Centre
- Notifications on application status will be delivered through the interface i.e. last update of the app list, notification of application updates etc
- The Application Centre checks for updates daily.
There’s some debate over the actual launch date of Application Centre with some sites suggesting it may not even be available when the Blackberry Storm is launched. It’s either a case of the app not being ready or, more simply, may mean that RIM has done rather a good job of hiding the progress. Either way, the Blackberry Application Centre will no doubt be a massive hit with users - as long as the carriers keep the prices down.
images courtesy of crackberry.com
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