What’s new in the BlackBerry app world?

BlackBerry Travel – FREE

BlackBerry Travel is an official RIM app that has been recently developed by WorldMate, one of the most notable and longstanding developers of mobile travel application and itinerary planning solutions.

In short, the app makes it easy to plan, book, manage and share your travel activities. For example, if you are looking for flights or places to stay, BlackBerry Travel will help you find flight schedules and hotel options using nothing but your smartphone. The automatic trip scanning feature will recognise itineraries that you receive by email and then push them to your BlackBerry. The service can even identify gaps in your itinerary, like a hotel stay that ends a night earlier than it should. It also pushes notification alerts to your BlackBerry in order to keep you informed of any flight delays or connection changes.

Other features include the mandatory currency converter, a weather forecasting tool and local search functionality. On a final note, sharing your travel plans with others is a breeze and the app lets you do this via email or over the business networking service LinkedIn.

Overall score: 8/10

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Bubble Birds 2 – £0.99

There is a plethora of games available for the BlackBerry but few sport the polished graphics of Bubble Birds 2. With a new design, more levels and some novel new characters, the game is certainly fun to play. The objective is simple; match three or more birds of the same colour to remove them from the field and to score as many points as possible in doing so.

Overall score: 8/10

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SugarSync – FREE

The ability to be able to back up files to the cloud certainly enhances productivity and SugarSync and Dropbox are two of the most popular cloud-based syncing solutions available. There are really only minor differences between the two. For instance, SugarSync doesn’t support Linux, whereas Dropbox does.

The primary task of the SugarSync BlackBerry client is to ensure that your files, photos and music are accessible while away from the desktop. You can back up photos taken with your Blackberry, share files via email or grab a link to a photo or other file and share it with others via Facebook. You can also stream your music collection, edit documents locally (using a document editor) and then sync the changes with your other computers.

Overall score: 8

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For more reviews of the latest apps to hit the BlackBerry app world, as well as new apps for Android and iPhone and handsets, pick up a copy of Smartphone Essentials: Issue 118 (on-sale from Thursday onwards).

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