Yesterday I attended a BlackBerry App World event in New York City, and while there was no huge announcement, I did get a chance to check out BlackBerry App World 2.0 in person. The long-overdue update will include some great new features, some of which we noted yesterday. Perhaps the biggest is the addition of carrier billing. Users will be able to choose to bill the app to their carrier (providing it is supported), PayPal or credit card. There is also a new feature called BlackBerry ID that allows you to easily take your account from one device or another. As many of you have found at first hand, you can currently only use App World on a set number of devices before it won't let you download apps (Bla1ze knows this well). With this new feature, you will be able to login to App World and use it on whatever device you choose, so if you swap devices often you won't have a problem.
The layout of items within App World has been tweaked now as well. Added are Newest Items and Top Themes categories, and you will be able to view items and simply scroll sideways to change categories. So you can easily go from new apps to top selling to top themes just by swiping sideways, and the app will remember your position in each category. In the "My World" section of App World you will also have a Pending Downloads area which will house items that you have marked for download from the app or web.
Overall some good things on the way with the new release. Still no official word on when it will be available, but we're hoping for sometime in the next few weeks. This is a much needed update so we'll welcome it with open arms. Unfortunately my photos tunred out a bit blurry, so thanks to Al Sacco for letting me borrow some of his. Some more shots after the jump.
Reader comments
What's coming in BlackBerry App World 2.0
How big is the new app world? Hopefully they were able to make it a lil smaller.
as long as they inundate it with themes again, like they did not too long ago, then it should be a long overdue welcomed update.
thx for the info Adam
This is what we needed! I can't wait till they release this update!
Its about time they put in a section for "New Apps". For me, this is 1000x bigger than Carrier Billing.
I know exactly what you mean! I am always going through each category looking at the newest items. It took me forever!!!
Tartar Sauce, I was hoping for the next few days... I really hope it allows you to save non-paid apps as well to your "Blackberry ID". That's the one thing that bothers me about App World 1.0. And I read a good idea somewhere, about having the QR Code reader as an option in the camera app. So a person could just switch to QR Reader mode and it would recognize wether its an AppWorld link, a BBM Contact/Group, Web Address or whatever.... Just my.02
2 words!.....carrier billing.....lol, I've been waiting on this for a while now....excited about this update
Hope this works with VodaFone IN.
Willing to buy some apps.
Being able to swap devices is a huge deal for me. I stopped using app world because it was such a pain. This change will definitely bring me back!
So does the swapping feature allow you to switch devices and have all of your apps transfered to the new device? I want to upgrade my 9630 to the new 5.0 software but last time I upgraded I lost all my apps so I was thinking about waiting for the new app world to come out so I could have a backup of my apps. Is that what the swapping feature is, or is that something that needs to be incorporated into desktop manager?
Hopefully this new versin gets released sometime soon!! I updated the last version and now have the missing icon!!
I also have the missing icon :( The workaround is a full backup, wipe clean and restore... RIDICULOUS!
i believe there will other users too who use blackberry phones but not blackberry services. and as per my expirience gprs users cant use blackberry application world. we have paid for phones and ready to pay for applications too, so why we are not allowed to use it ?
Notice the category switching interface. It looks similar to the home screen interface from BB6 where you swipe side to side to change from favorites, most used, all, etc.
I must say, I like swipe gestures on the trackpad (or trackball). They work well in the 7digital music store app and they make sense from a UI perspective.
P.S. The side to side swiping thing also vaguely resembles windows phone 7's UI.
So the apps won't take up the internal memory
App world 2.0 needs to... 1)keep the icon visible and not go hidden every so often, and 2) find a way to download apps onto a memory card. 3)And being a smaller file itself would be a nice addition. 4) My app world never seems to find upgrades to apps I've already downloaded. So a reliable app world that gives me an icon showing that I have a facebook, or a poynt upgrade would be fantastic.
How about it BB app world 2.0, we get more apps lol
when will we be able to download this and start using it?
61.2MB... running a little low on mem, aren't we? ;) lol
if thats the 9780.. i must admit, it looks pretty neat. I mean i was hating on it at first. If so, i'll stop the hating.
Anyway I can link up my paid bebuzz from mobihand to appworld?