The general perception indicates that the BlackBerry 10 platform isn’t among the most ideal ones when it comes to the sheer numbers of apps available on its application store. However, that may be a rather “myopic” way of looking at things. We aren’t too sure how having almost 100,000 apps on a platform enhances your user experience, because an ideal blend of quality apps and show-off numbers is definitely the better way forward. On its part, BlackBerry has been working hard to get more apps onto its BlackBerry 10 store, but the progress has been quite slow. However, the ‘quality aspect’ is where they have done really well, unlike some of the more established smartphone platforms.
And to prove that point, we have handpicked 10 must-have apps for every BlackBerry 10 smartphone (the Q5, Q10, Z10 and Z30) user.
Flipboard
Price: Free
Flipboard is possibly the most visually appealing, and debatably the most popular news reader app on the Android and iOS platform. And despite not being available on the BB10 platform initially (when it was released), the app did finally land on the platform towards the end of 2013. Users can subscribe and browse through a large number of news sources and content, customize the news feed according to their interests, as well as share stories on social networks and also save them for reading later. No other news feed app comes close to the visual appeal of Flipboard. At the moment, Flipboard is available for the BlackBerry Z30, BlackBerry Z10 and the Porsche Design P9982. We hope that the Q10 and Q5 users will also be invited to the club, soon enough.
Neatly for Twitter
Price: Free (Basic version)
The official BlackBerry Twitter app is still a massive compromise, despite having received a bunch of updates along the way. But we do understand a part of the problem. The official app is designed for various BlackBerry phones, with different screen sizes and resolutions. The solution, for you, is simple – download the ‘Neatly for Twitter’ app. This app has been specifically designed for the BB10 platform, which is why it deploys all the smooth swipe UI gestures as well as the ability to change themes, see threaded conversations, the ability to clean up the timeline by relegating spammers to a separate corner and the ability to create proper lists. It is available for all BlackBerry 10 smartphones and is a must-download for anyone who spends most of their waking hours on Twitter.
Kindle for BlackBerry 10
Price: Free
For anyone who loves reading, and has been using an Android or iOS device till now, will most certainly be hooked to the Kindle app; be it for their own PDFs, or for buying ebooks from the largest store in the world. A switch to BlackBerry 10 doesn’t mean that you will have to give up on that peace of mind. The Kindle app for BB10 platform is currently restricted to the Z10 and the Z30, as well as the mightily expensive Porsche Design. Sign-in with your ID, and the entire collection is synced to your Blackberry device, right down to the last read status of each book. The feature set is in line with what is available for Android and iOS, but while the other two platforms have tablets to enjoy the reading experience on a much bigger screen, that is not a luxury with BlackBerry 10 at the moment.
Evernote
Price: Free
All the Evernote fans out there must have been delighted when BB10 finally got its own stand-alone app, just before the year 2013 came to a close. The close integration with the native ‘BlackBerry Remember’ app is extremely useful. It adds a whole host of features like rich text editing, checkmark boxes, as well as attaching audio, video, and image files to notes, and organize them in clusters called notebooks. This app is pretty much the best app on the platform. It can do multiple things like letting you plan your week, make quick notes, attach multimedia clips and sync all this with your PC or tablet or the second smartphone.
PlayCloud 10
Price: Rs 100
While BlackBerry 10’s own file manager does a decent job of letting you access the Dropbpx and Box cloud storage from within the same interface, all of the power users out there may require a lot more. Particularly when you have files scattered across multiple cloud services, including Google Drive and Microsoft Skydrive. The PlayCloud 10 app is pretty much a “God’s gift” to people who use the BlackBerry 10 smartphones. The UI is very similar to the native file manager but it adds a wide range of features which the former doesn’t – access to Google Drive, Skydrive, SugarSync, OpenDataSpace, WebDAV, and FTP, Dropbox, Box, as well as device storage.