-
Thoughts from Day 3 with the Q10 ….
Remember, Remember ... Tasks & Evernote
I'm only just beginning to explore the BB10 Remember app but it seems to have bags of potential. It's integration with Evernote (i.e. ability to access your notebooks) seems particularly useful. The native BB10 Evernote app seems a little slow opening when there isn't a network connection, I spend a lot of time using my Q10 on the train where signals come and go, and it can get pretty irritating having to wait for an app to open. No problems with Remember - it opens fine regardless of network connections [indeed, I'm using it now to draft this post].
I'm a big user of Remember the Milk for cloud based task management, via miscellaneous Apple Mac’s. Now that RTM have integrated their task management with Evernote the BB10 Remember app should make another way to manage RTM/Evernote tasks from the Q10.
Missing notes
What I haven’t yet worked out is, where the notes/memos from my 9900 have gone. Most other things seemlessly moved over while running 'device switch’. My assumption was that these would appear inside Remember app - but this doesn’t appear to be the case, does anybody know where they might have gone?
The Hub & filtering Email folders
It’s going to take me a while to master the Hub, and there’s no doubt that it is a very powerful tool for handling messages. It’s really useful to be able to access messages stored in various (IMAP, Exchange) sub-folders and sent boxes, that’s another big improvement over the Bold 9900 where (using BIS) access to mail messages was much more limited. I handle a lot of Email in my work and it’s great to be able to access sent mail that might have originated from a desktop (rather than handset only). However, with so many sub-folders on my work Exchange server, I’m also grateful for the ability to be able to check-box select folders that do/don’t sync with the Q10.
The Bold9900 was great for knocking out Emails but I was always a little disappointed with the way it handled Email folders -- BB10 and the Q10 have that beat!
Ringing in the changes
Thanks to evodevo69 for post #148 drawing my attention to miscellaneous resources for ringtones
and to JSanders (Resident Expert on the BlackBerry support forums) for making a collection of zip files available to the BlackBerry community. I now have access to all my old BlackBerry favourites!Last edited by mushroom_daddy; 07-25-14 at 09:45 AM.
07-25-14 02:51 AM - Some more thoughts as I move into week 2 with my Q10 �.
Web browsing
The Q10 browser, there can doubt about it, the BB10 browser is a massive improvement over that of the 9900. I should say that for me this was never a real concern while using the 9900, I tend to use my PlayBook or MacBook Air for more serious web-browsing, but I can not help but be impressed by the BB10 browser. The improvements in speed and page rendering are huge compared to OS7.
I particularly like the application of the reader, which is great for reading longer articles and news reviews. Having the option to invert colours (e.g. White text black backgrounds) can further enhance readability on the super AMOLED Q10
Email manipulations in the Hub
Things I miss from the Bold � yes, yes, yes that trackpad, but also the many keyboard shortcuts that were second nature. With the 9900, it was so fast to select messages and mark them as read unread with the trackpad, shift key and then alt-U (or to flag messages etc. etc.). On the Q10 I find myself fiddling about with touch interface trying to select more and mark miscellaneous messages in the hub.
With OS7 it was easy to rapidly fly through a mailbox, pressing U to move sequentially through all unread messages. Similarly, it was easy to mark a message as unread while reading it (by pressing alt U) this was useful if you wanted to come back to a message at a later time. Although BB10 has some key-press short cuts (e.g. W for flag, I for file, R for Reply etc.) it seems rather odd that U is not used in this contact menu.
BB10 has made use of the U key to take you to unread messages while reviewing the hub but, rather irritatingly, they do not remain highlighted and you can't use alt-touch to select multiple messages - again you have to use the touch interface to 'Select More'.
I'd really like to be able to select multiple messages while holding down the alt or shift keys - this is one place where I miss the 9900 and it may be things like this that are preventing many of the die-hard OS7 power users from moving onto BB10 devices.
More later .....08-04-14 09:16 AM - Further observations as I continue with my Q10 ….
LED lights - RED lights - No lights!
I was keen to replicate the facility I had with my Bold9900 where BeBuzz - LED Light Colors had enabled me to quickly differentiate Emails, SMS messages from my favourite contacts with different coloured LEDs.
Looking in CB forums, reviews and on BlackBerry World I thought that this would be easy e.g. http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...vs-hub-914477/
There are several options and these have recently been re-visited by DJReyes see: LED notification apps compared - BeBuzz, HUB++, Powertools, Watcher | CrackBerry.com
I decided to go for Power Tools (�2.50), as this seemed to offer numerous other utilities. Could I get it to work? No!
I like to think I am reasonably savvy with Tech and software, but try as I might to follow the instructions I can't get it to control and colour LED notifications on my Q10. With Power Tools you need to disable notifications in the system settings and let the PT software do it's thing. Now I only wanted to change the colour of the LED lights not control ringtones etc. so the only changes I made were for LED.
The net result for me was no notifications at all, and after a week I gave up and decided to invest (�2.00) in BeBuzz 10 Pro, after all BeBuzz had worked so well on my Bold - what could go wrong?
BeBuzz 10 Pro appeared much easier to set up than Power Tools, and I could quickly select my contacts and specify the colours I desired for SMS text and Emails etc. But although I did get LED notifications they remained plain old red.
If anybody knows how to get either of these apps working (Power Tools or BeBuzz) on the Q10, I’d be grateful for some guidance
Inactive frames
Another thing I have noticed that occasionally happens with the Q10 is that active frames fail to update. Have a look at the screenshot below. What time is it!? 08:17 or 08:19?
I’ve also observed that some things don’t update in the background in quite the same way as they did with my 9900. For example, on the Bold and OS7, Twitter and BeWeather used to appear refreshed and up to date when opening the apps. This doesn't seem to be the case with my Q10; the BB10 Twitter app always seems to need a manual refresh on opening, with a ‘pull-down’ to load the latest tweets. Similarly, the default weather app (Accuweather) doesn't refresh until opened. You might well say 'leave them as active frames’ - but that can make for a very cluttered experience if multitasking. Perhaps for others with a constant network data signal this may prove less of a problem, but if you spend time travelling (on a train) with intermittent data connection this trait of failing to auto-refresh can be a little irritating.
On balance however, I’m enjoying my Q10 as I get more familiar (and more efficient) with how BB10 works. Currently, I’m not sure whether I’ll be prepared to go back to OS7 and my 9900, but I am keeping a watchful eye on Newfangled’s Bold Experience
More from me later ….08-13-14 07:33 AM - To be honest my main objective with these apps has been to use different colours to discriminate between and notify me of messages from some key contacts - and as yet I've had little success using either Power Tools or BeBuzz.
Power Tools has a lot of settings, which does allow you to change blink speeds, repeat times, and profiles for different contacts so that might meet your needs (at least in part) if you can get it working.
It's also worth noting that it's possible to customise notifications (tones etc.) for specific contacts direct from BB10 settings window: System Settings>Notifications>(customisation) Contacts> where there are multiple various options for Emails. Texts, phone calls, instant previews etc.
But you can't simply change the colour of LEDS, which is all I wanted to do and why I've been trying these alternative apps.
I'm hoping that somebody else who has experience of either Power Tools or BeBuzz will chip in and tell me what I'm doing wrong.
*
NB. If this post works out OK, it will be my first post using the Android Tapatalk apk (installed via Snap) on my Q10; as far as I'm aware Tapatalk is not available for BB10 but I'd be happy to hear otherwise08-14-14 02:43 AM - One of the things I really am enjoying about my Q10 is regular updates. I had three this morning; that's something that rarely happens when using my Bold 9900 - if you're using a legacy OS7 device then you just have to accept little or no improvement in your apps.*
That said, life on the cutting edge can have it's downsides as I recently found out with Evernote and their venture into illegible dark themes (grey text on a black background) see: **http://forums.crackberry.com/showthread.php?t=951677
I'm pleased to say that the Evernote developers rapidly responded to complaints from the BB10 community, and the latest version restores legibility (black text on a white background). With my Q10 I find myself making increasing use of Evernote, it's tight integration with the BlackBerry Remember app is especially useful.Last edited by mushroom_daddy; 08-21-14 at 05:38 AM.
08-21-14 04:23 AM - Just received a message from my network provider (3UK) informing me that I have spent the princely sum of �5.47 on Internet data in the last week or so; that means I've also used up the free allocation that I get when topping up my PAYG account.
That's something I didn't need to bother with while using my Bold9900; a monthly charge of � 5 for BIS (which was automatically renewed) covered all my data usage, I rarely made a dent in the free allocation and I never felt the need to worry about how much data I was using.
I've now invested � 5 in a 2GB data (30day) add-on - hopefully that will cover my needs and there will be no net increase in costs of changing from the 9900 to Q1008-26-14 05:35 AM
The Q10 Experiment: Using a BlackBerry Q10 for 30 Days
Similar Threads
-
Syncing Outlook 2003 and Q5 running OS 10 has changed the Calendar to show 24 hours instead of 12
By robertstj in forum General BlackBerry News, Discussion & RumorsReplies: 3Last Post: 05-28-14, 09:03 PM -
Stuff in the Android runtime
By ubizmo in forum BlackBerry 10 OSReplies: 3Last Post: 05-09-14, 09:17 PM -
Vogons and the lazy finger!
By nickdud in forum Rehab & Off-Topic LoungeReplies: 1Last Post: 05-09-14, 11:22 AM -
Is there a way to create a QR code for smart tags without first writing to an NFC tag?
By Raestloz in forum BlackBerry 10 OSReplies: 6Last Post: 05-09-14, 07:16 AM