Blackberry Playbook Apps

**codexblue** · 01-02-2013, 01:33 PM

First thread here. Hope it's in the right place. I just got a blackberry playbook and I played around with it. I found an extreme lack of android apps. Many of the apps I want are not available and it is really hard to find the apk of the app for conversions too.

Really what I'm asking is, does anyone have a textnow apk file or already converted bar file for use with the playbook?

I searched the web and found no remains. It's a free app.

F2 · 01-02-2013, 02:42 PM

There's both an App Subforum for the PB and within that, an Android Subforum.

Welcome

**djenkins6** · 01-02-2013, 02:58 PM

I have done a lot of side loading but the playbook has matured and there are playbook apps with equivalent functionality to many android apps in app world, if you provide a list of the ones you are looking for people here can provide suggestions. If you do sideload be prepared to wipe your playbook and reinitialize the OS occasionally (I just wiped mine today), these unapproved apps can lead to instability. I don't think textnow is available already converted, you could submit a request or try converting it yourself. However Text Me, TextPlus, Talkatone, Pinger, iCall are available already converted for you to try out at goodereader.com. this is the site owned by the guy running the Ask Koz thread in the android sub forum.

**codexblue** · 01-13-2013, 02:34 PM

Thanks for the info, but I cannot get Textplus to work. Textnow doesn't work either,those are the 2 appear that I actually use. Textplus will start andthen crash. Restarting the PlayBook was no use. Textnow just crashes. Once again, thanks, I'll stick around.

**pacoman03** · 01-13-2013, 03:03 PM

I have version 4.5.4.8 of TextPlus and it works just fine.

**Well spoken man** · 01-13-2013, 03:13 PM

Originally Posted by djenkins6

I have done a lot of side loading but the playbook has matured and there are playbook apps with equivalent functionality to many android apps in app world, if you provide a list of the ones you are looking for people here can provide suggestions. If you do sideload be prepared to wipe your playbook and reinitialize the OS occasionally (I just wiped mine today), these unapproved apps can lead to instability. I don't think textnow is available already converted, you could submit a request or try converting it yourself. However Text Me, TextPlus, Talkatone, Pinger, iCall are available already converted for you to try out at goodereader.com. this is the site owned by the guy running the Ask Koz thread in the android sub forum.

I had a sideloaded app (Live365) that was working well until recently. I assumed it was due to the most recent OS upgrade. This is the first time I have seen where periodic wiping is recommended. Does anyone else recommend that?

**kill_9** · 01-13-2013, 06:39 PM

Originally Posted by codexblue

First thread here. Hope it's in the right place. I just got a blackberry playbook and I played around with it. I found an extreme lack of android apps. Many of the apps I want are not available and it is really hard to find the apk of the app for conversions too.

Really what I'm asking is, does anyone have a textnow apk file or already converted bar file for use with the playbook?

I searched the web and found no remains. It's a free app.

If you want to run Google Android applications on a tablet buy an Android-based tablet. The sooner the BlackBerry Android Player is removed from BlackBerry OS 10 the better for everyone...except RIM's inflated app count.

**djenkins6** · 01-13-2013, 06:59 PM

Originally Posted by Well spoken man

I had a sideloaded app (Live365) that was working well until recently. I assumed it was due to the most recent OS upgrade. This is the first time I have seen where periodic wiping is recommended. Does anyone else recommend that?

By sideloading a lot I meant several hundred apps and some of them are flaky and corrupt some things in the file system so you just have to wipe.

**rupam95** · 01-13-2013, 07:16 PM

It is a half-baked Android Player...so not all android apps will work.

C'mon RIM, if you want to include android player then at least make it possible to run all android apps.

**edyb** · 01-13-2013, 08:49 PM

"... if you include an Android player make sure it can run all Android apps"

We are forgetting, Playbook is using a player based on Android v2.3 which Google made code source open for. None of the more recent code like v4.0+ is used, as far as I know. There were issues with hardware like camera and other things up until recently, maybe still.

Playbook was not designed to run *all* Android apps. An emulator will always have flaws, run slowly, or buggy. It was designed to allow some Android app developers to try and see if their apps would easily convert over. Yes this works on a good number of basic apps, but really if you want a robust Android environment then buy a Nexus 7, or look for alternative apps, or just keep trying to sideload and see which ones work and which are buggy. At least you can try for free.

There are a bunch of sites with APK to BAR converted apps and you can usually track a download and see if it works. Some do and some are pretty unstable. But that is why the developer should be doing the conversion and going through proper channels (like RIM and app store) even for free apps... to make sure it works, rather than having all these half-baked Android BARs all over the net.

Having said that, at least these apps are around so since the developers aren't trying themselves, other people have been able to convert with good results, although "illegally" even though it is a free app on the other platform.

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