If you are the type of BlackBerry owner that likes to monitor battery status, and analyze the ins and outs of your usage, then you will definitely want to check out Battery Watch by S4BB. With this app you can have the both of best worlds, with Basic Mode for users that want just to see a quick overview and have notifications for battery status, and Professional Mode with detailed information, line charts that display energy levels over day, week, or month and more. Battery Watch is FREE and compatible with all BlackBerry smartphones.

More information/screenshots and download Battery Watch from the CrackBerry store
More information/screenshots and download Battery Watch from BlackBerry App World

Cell phones and radiation have been a topic of much conversation since their inception, as well as the butt of more than a few jokes. We have posted several times in the past year about different apps, case studies, and even accessories for your BlackBerry aimed at reducing the risk of health issues caused by radiation from our beloved devices. First, there came RadGuard, an app that claims to monitor the radiation levels emitted by your device, and issues a warning alarm at a particular threshold. We covered Pong Research back at CES 2010, when they came out with their new line of cases that claim radiation-shielding properties.

Enter Tawkon, the latest competitor in the battle against radiation. Tawkon is an app that operates on one basic premise - monitor the radiation emitted by your BB. However, Tawkon takes this one step further in its implementation, not only notifying you of rising radiation and a predefined threshold, but also offering helpful suggestions as to how to reduce the level, without interrupting your normal usage. It attempts to be as non-intrusive as possible, while maintaining the highest possible level of safety.

More than just a simple monitoring app, Tawkon is fully-featured with some impressive tools at your disposal:

• Predictive Mode allows you to preview your potential exposure prior to making a call, based on current conditions, such as your location on their "radiation zones" map. This is displayed to the user with easy to understand colour-coded signs, ie: green for minimal exposure to radiation.
• Call Mode monitors your current conditions while in a call, providing intelligent solutions and feedback, such as engaging speaker-phone, or moving back to a previously "safer" location.
• Statistics - The app also features a full set of statistical data tools, showing you how much radiation you have avoided by using the apps suggestions, accumulation of radiation, and radiation during the last call.

Now live in App World and available in the CrackBerry App Store, it is currently available for the BlackBerry Bold 9700 only, with more devices planned for support in the coming weeks (it's a complicated process customizing the application to work accurately with each different device - different radios, etc.). The price point may be a little steep for some at $9.99, but if you're really concerned about the effects of the radiation emitted by your "companion", it's likely worth the investment. It's definitely a well thought out and executed application.

• More info / download Tawkon for the BlackBerry Bold 9700 >>

I've always been a big fan of the "I love BlackBerry" app from EarlySail. The only problem with that application is that it really could be more advanced in its breakdown of how you use your BlackBerry. Today, we have a new entrant that looks to fill that void. SmrtMonitor is an application which tracks and monitors your BlackBerry usage in the background and actually breaks down your usage to percentages to give you a better idea of how you spend your time. Do you spend more time messaging people? Maybe you spend more time using a specific application? Now you can get a full break down of each, that is if you're not too scared to find out. SmrtMonitor is available for all devices 4.2+ and is currently on sale for only $3.99 until December 31st.

• Click Here For More Information And Downloads Of SmrtMonitor >>

Our friends at BoxTone hit us up with an email earlier today with some information of how things played out yesterday from both their and their customers' perspective. We've talked about BoxTone lots of times here before on CrackBerry - they focus on enterprise companies that have a LOT of BlackBerry Smartphones running and provide monitoring and managements services. An afternoon like yesterday is where their services really make an impact. Here's what they told us (all times EST):

• Between 3:00 and 4:00 PM - Problems with BBM and BIS internet browsing reported around the web (I personally experienced around 3:30 PM).
• Between 6:30 and 7:00 PM - The problem extended to BES email, preventing the delivery of BES emails to and from BlackBerry smartphones. At each of our customers, BoxTone detected a greater than normal quantity of users with messages pending, based on our learned baseline of what is normal for each server and carrier, and immediately generated a warning alert our customers before the flood of user calls (Sample email alert below). BoxTone also placed all affected BES and Carriers in a Critical state on our customers' Operations Dashboards (depicted by the red dots next to each BES and carrier). The steady growth in Pending Messages beginning around 6:45 is annotated in the attached screenshot and continued until the issue was resolved early this morning. From our monitoring data, it appears that BES were able to communicate with the RIM NOC throughout the outage; however, the NOC was unable to deliver messages.
• At approximately 12:09 AM, BoxTone detected a brief disconnect in the SRP connection of each BES to the NOC; it appears RIM reset the NOC SRP connection to complete their fixes. Following this reset, delivery of BES mail resumed.
• By 2:45 AM or earlier, BoxTone detected that most of our customers had returned to their normal (baselined) service levels, and that the backlog of pending mail had been delivered. BoxTone generated notifications informing our users that their service levels had returned to normal and updated the status of the BES and carriers to Normal.

Pretty interesting stuff. Big thanks to Mitch and the BoxTone team for sharing it with us. You can learn more about their services at BoxTone.com.