One of the great things about moving to, or in my case adding, a new platform is that it opens up a host of new opportunities to learn about a device, experience new apps and, at times, feel like a total newb.
Wayne and Jason have been amazing about holding my hand as I dip my toes into this new world. I’ve also gotten some great tips from our readers. One came from our reader “xRollinx” who wrote…
Welcome aboard Dan,
Just wanted to throw in one more MAJOR plus for BlackBerry that you have not considered yet, and that is the use of Themes. With BlackBerry, you can make your UI look GORGEOUS, even better than the iPhone and legally too. No jailbreaking nonsense, just download and install. That was what won me over to BlackBerry from iPhone.
The freedom to do anything you want and to customize it exactly the way you want is a freedom every device needs to work on. In my opinion BlackBerry rocks in that department.
Check out this site for examples of what I’m talking about: http://elecite.com/
He’s right, I had not considered the various themes that are available. Now, however, thanks to xRollinx, I have.
What struck me about changing a theme on a Blackberry is how simple it is. Go to “settings”, choose “theme” and pick the one you want.
What that means, of course, is that you can change the look, and as I discovered to some degree the function/information, to fit your mood or, more likely, to fit your activity. The selection is excellent and many are exceptionally well done.
So far I have taken a look at two.
The first I looked at was iBerry.
Available for $6.00 in the Gear Diary Store I didn’t plan on keeping this theme on my Bold for very long (and I didn’t) but it sure was fun to have the Bold looking so familiar. I mean, I still have my iPhone and LOVE using it but this just seemed too good to pass up. (It also let me shoot an image to Judie and Larry to which a reply of “Blasphemy” was returned in seconds from one.)
It looks good, brings some nice iPhone icons to the BB but that’s about it. I’ve never been all that excited about making one device look like another so, after a good laugh, off it went.
Next I took a look at In The Know Today
In The Know Today adds some serious function to the Blackberry by letting you see your next few appointments and newest unread emails without having to open either the calendar or the mail app. It is available in the Gear Diary Store for $6.50.
I found that it added a nice bit of convenience without making the screen look too crowded.
The home screen the icons have a nice clean look that I appreciated. (Oh, look is that??? Why yes it is, there’s the Google Voice app highlighted. And, what’s that you say? You can use it to call out without having to get a “call back”? Now that’s neat!)
The theme also lets you scroll through a variety of up to 15 icons at a time. That translates to less time needing to go into the full pages of apps. Here’s a quick look at that functionality…
At first I went back to the original theme. I like the simplicity of it and the Blackberry makes it so easy to pull up my calendar and messages that I didn’t really need them on the screen full time. After tweaking the In The Know Today theme so that it has my fifteen most used apps available for scrolling on the home screen, however, I am “In The Like” With “In The Know”. It stays!
Other useful themes to recommend??? I’m all ears!
