Power Tools hands down has to be my most used productivity application. It combines several must-needed applications into one. From tracking your battery, having a homescreen wallpaper changer, choosing a Custom LED for contacts, apps, and messages, to blocking incoming calls and messages and scheduling event sounds and alarms. It's a full-featured application that fully enhances the BlackBerry experience.

This latest update brings not only a vast array of new features including Daily Device Usage Tracking, File Manager to hide files and folders, new Debug screen, and a new Battery screen. Now that the BlackBerry Passport is available, the application has been optimized to fit the display and is running smooth. The official, and extensive, change log is shown below for the latest release.

Version 4.5.0.2 Change Log

  • Added: Support for Passport.
  • Added: Daily Device Usage tracking. This will track your usage daily. You need to enable this in the Application Settings screen in Power Tools in the General screen. Scroll to the bottom and check the Checkbox. Once enabled Power Tools will track your device usage. You can then view hourly, daily and summary reports and export to csv file. This feature will show you how much time you spend on using your device.
  • Added: LED when a message is blocked. You can set the led by editing the message filter and then select the led color.
  • Added: new File Manager to hide files and folders. Hide folder will hide all the media files in that folder like pictures, videos and music. When you hide a folder the media files will NOT show up in apps like Pictures, Video and Music. Other apps like File Manager can still see the hidden media files. This is not as secure as hiding files.
    • If you want to hide files from everyone then use the Hide Files feature. Create a new hidden folder and then move all the files there. It is very simple to do in the File Manager screen. Files are hidden on the Device and NOT on the SD Card. You can only view the files within the File Manager screen in PowerTools.
    • Note: Hidden files are not encrypted and they can still be seen when you connect your device to a desktop computer via USB or Wifi file sharing can you can password protect this in the Settings File Sharing screen. The purpose of Hiding files locally is when you share your device or let someone use it. Other apps can not see the hidden folder and only you can.
    • If you install leak os often or reinstall the OS it is important that you restore all the hidden files and then do a backup first. Wiping the OS will wipe all the hidden files.
  • Added: new Battery screen. The battery charging sounds have been moved to the Battery screen. When the battery is charging you can now set a LED color from the 7 choices. When the charging LED is active all incoming messages's LED will be disabled. You will still hear the ringtone if that is enabled. When the battery is fully charged or you unplug it then the charging LED stops.
  • Added: new Debug screen. When you enabled debugging Power Tools will wite out the debug info to a text file. You can view, delete or email the log to us for debugging. Make sure you disable debug when not using because the log file will get bigger.
  • Added: Disable language localization in the Application Settings screen. If you do not like the translation and go back to English then check this checkbox.
  • Added: On Active Frame when charging the Average Current value is now displayed and is updated when the percentage changes.
  • Update: Changed the main Grid layout to support up to 5 columns of icons per row. Just select the Grid icon on the Toolbar to change the icon size.
  • Update: New grid icons.
  • Update: The message filter wildcard. You cannot use multiple wildcards in the filter. For example if you have a filter like this: free_@*dailydeals.com, the above will filter all email address with free_ word in the address and any domain with dailydeals.com in it. So any of the following will be blocked: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
  • Update: The French and Chinese localizations.
  • Update: Power Tools now works on landscape mode.

Power Tools is, of course, headless and available for BlackBerry 10 for $3.99. Considering how many individual applications this replaces it is decently priced. Anything that helps improve daily functions is always a plus in my book.

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