Three Must Have Free Utility Apps for BlackBerry
By: Hillel Fuld
While one of the big complaints I have about my BlackBerry Bold is the lack of sufficient application memory, the fact that I can only install the most important apps on my phone helps me decide what I need and what is just fun and games. Any app I leave installed on my Bold is an app I use regularly or something that provides important functionality that the phone would not have otherwise. These three apps are the perfect examples of this. All three apps are ultra simplistic in their UI, in fact, some of them do not even have a UI, but they all provide something very important that RIM apparently did not think about when engineering the Bold.
LED Reset: Let’s start with the simplest one. LED Reset has no interface, it is an icon in your Application folder, and all it does it reset the phone’s blinking LED. Why do you need this? Good question! The answer is that all my notifications about new email, new IMs, new Facebook messages, or new tweets get pushed to my BlackBerry and the phone notifies me with a blinking LED.
In an ideal world, there would be no need for this app, but being as smartphones are not so smart yet, the LED blinks sometimes for no apparent reason. Now, I am still running a relatively outdated BlackBerry OS (4.6), so this issue might have very well been solved in the new versions, but for me, it is a problem that needed solving.
When you experience inexplicable LED blinking on your Berry, all you need to do is access your applications, click on the LED Reset icon, and t he blinking stops. Useful little app that I wish I did not need.
Soft Reset: Similar to the last app, there would be no need for Soft Reset in a perfect world. Unfortunately, RIM’s world is far from perfect. What does this little app do? It simulates a battery pull and resets your device when needed. I have to admit, I used this app maybe 5 times in the first 6 months of owning my Bold, but to my surprise and disappointment, I find myself using it a lot more lately.
Any BlackBerry user is familiar with the famous spinning hour glass that to our utter frustration, sometimes does not stop spinning. Then there is also the “I am doing to many things at once” phenomenon, which sometimes causes extreme sluggishness. Whatever the case may be, BlackBerrys, like many other cellular devices need an occasional reboot. Turning it off and on does not really do the job that pulling the battery does.
However, taking off the back cover, removing the battery, and reinserting it is annoying, time consuming, and cannot do wonders for the wear and tear of your precious Berry. This app basically takes care of your battery pulling needs by making the device think you pulled the battery (like I said, smartphones are not as smart as you might think).
The interface is very simplistic with a big blue icon, that when pressed launches a screen that asks you whether you want to reboot now or later. The whole process takes approximately a minute and a half, and your device is like new. Once again, I wish I did not need such an app, but I very much do, and it has saved me on many occasions.
Capture It: Did not want to leave you with a sour taste or give Apple fanboys another opportunity to say “I told you so”, so we will end off with a very useful app that does not fix a problem with RIM’s devices, but rather offers an important and useful feature, the ability to capture your screen.
Whether you are writing a review that requires screen shots (all the pictures in this review were taken with Capture It), asking your Twitter network what a certain error means, or just interested in taking a picture of your device’s display, this app has you covered. Now, do not belittle the screen capture functionality, there is no such app in the Android Market as of today, so I am thankful that such an app exists for BlackBerrys.
So how does it work? Well, similar to LED Reset, this app has no interface, just an icon. When you click the icon, it snaps a picture of the current screen and saves it to your pictures. But why would I want to take a picture of the applications folder, which is where the icon is stored? Good question! You wouldn’t.
The app is mainly used with a hardware shortcut key. You can define that every time you press the button on the left side of the phone for example, the app takes a picture of your current screen. Like I said, there are many different reasons one would want to do this.
In conclusion, most if not all of the above apps should be included in the phone’s features, but sadly they are not, and we therefore have the developers of these apps to thank. All three of the above apps are must-have utilities for your BlackBerry, and will save you time and offer convenience in your every day use of your Berry. I highly recommend all three, and since all three are free, all you really have to lose is some precious space in your phone’s already limited application memory. Lucky for you, all three take up minimal space and are very worth it.
If you have tried these apps, please share your thoughts in the comments. alternatively, if you know of other crucial utility apps for BlackBerry users, share those too.
Download Links:
