BlackBerry App World 1.1 review

Mary Branscombe

We review the updated BlackBerry app store, now with improved navigation and archive features

Published on Aug 18, 2009

Wondering why your App World icon has a ‘new message’ red star on it? That’s a prompt to update to the new 1.1 version, which has useful new features and also improves memory usage (you can also download the new version from the Blackberry Web site).

When you do, you’ll see an extra icon at the bottom of the screen; top downloads are now divided into free and paid apps. You still get a mix of free and paid-for apps on the list of featured applications, but when you browse through what’s most popular you can choose whether you want to spend money before you see the list and get tempted – or skip the basic, free applications and find the more powerful tools you have to pay for.

As more apps become available on App World (there were 1,416 for the BlackBerry Bold at last count), being able to search as well as browse categories isn’t always enough. App World 1.1 lets you sort results by what’s newest, what has the highest rating, what’s cheapest or most expensive or by the name of the app or the developer – a big improvement on the rather odd ‘sort by relevance’ (wouldn’t you expect all your search results to be relevant?).

If you’ve downloaded a lot of apps, you might find yourself running out of memory, or there might be some tools you want to have handy but don’t need to use every day. If you have an SD or eMMC memory card in your BlackBerry, you can now archive apps so they’re not taking up memory on your device until you need them.

To do this, you have to select the app in the My World tab in App World, press the menu key and choose Archive (it would be more convenient to have this on the same menu that allows you to move and hide apps on the home screen). Rather than copying the app files you already have, this downloads a new, installable version of the app from App World, saves it and removes the existing installation – so you need to be online to archive an app, and some apps may require a reboot for archiving.

Once that’s done, you have an offline copy of the app you can reinstall at any time, whether you’re connected or not. The app icon stays on the home screen or the Downloads folder (depending on which version of the OS you have), marked with a green arrow. Click the icon from the home screen and you’re prompted to restore it from the archive; click on it inside App World and the detail page loads to remind you what the app is for (which you might need a month later).

Not everyone is going to need this feature but if you want to manage your handset memory the archiving option is very flexible, and rather easier to use than manually copying installation files on Windows Mobile (and there’s no way to do anything similar on iPhone).

App World 1.1 is also good news for BlackBerry users outside the original three territories; it’s now available in Ireland, the Channel Islands and nine European countries (although the apps available will vary from location to location – in the same way that you only see apps compatible with your device listed in the AppStore).