The Ideal BB10 - Android Switch Setup, Or: Dear Launcher Junkies and BlackBerry

So, after looking at all the sweet Priv/DTEK homescreen setups and reading about the Mercury (DTEK70?), I was taking a shower and had a sweet idea for the perfect setup that would make me and possibly others switch from BB10.

Here's how it would look:

A launcher that allows you to swipe bottom to right for BlackBerry Hub, swipe bottom up to access rollodex/grid multi-task view, and bottom left to bring up Google Now. On the home page, left swipe to search, right swipe to your apps. The bottom of home has the phone and camera on the left and right.

Now, the questionable icing on the cake: using the Mercury's keyboard, set up dual functions for each key. Long press buttons for speed dials, single press to launch the apps you want (P- phone app, S- BlackBerry search, B- browser, F- Facebook, et cetera).

It's not a perfect exchange from BB10 as it's still not QNX and running Android. But I think with this setup it can be nearly as good, and in some ways, better than OS7 and BB10.

Now, to all you Priv keyboard users and Launcher pros (and hopefully to BlackBerry): While I know the Mercury is a big unknown, how much of this is possible now? What Launcher combinations could make this work?

Have you ever tried using a Priv? You can pretty much already do all of those things without even installing a third party launcher.

You have three "swipe from home button" shortcuts on it, you have short- and long-press shortcuts, etc. You should have bought it when it was on the Black Friday sale. ;)

I had no idea.

What can't you do based on my ideal setup?

Originally Posted by ominaxe

I had no idea.

What can't you do based on my ideal setup?

I use action launcher 3. I have left swipe for hub, swipe down to lock and swipe right for calendar.

I don't use the home button swipe motions much, but you can set it to bring up the app Rolodex if you want.

All except getting to recent, they should have a shortcut for this, that can be activated from convenience key.

I liked the idea of the priv, I just thought it was too big. :(


I think the Mercury will be too big too, but I like the always on keyboard.

I think BlackBerry should had gestures like bb10 with an option to turn on and off. If its on then bottom bar (back, home , apps) will be hidden and then we will get more screen space. Would be awesome. Or instead Google adding option to hide bar in next version of Android. Then I just need an app for gesture.

It honestly seems like a lot of this can be done already. You just need the right launchers.

Originally Posted by ominaxe

I liked the idea of the priv, I just thought it was too big. :(


I think the Mercury will be too big too, but I like the always on keyboard.

Compared to some other phones out at the moment it's not that big. I thought the same, coming from a Classic, but after a few days of using the Priv, it didn't really seem that big at all.

I originally thought that way about the Passport, but I felt right back at home when I went back to the Q10 and never looked back to the Passport.

Something about winging a phone around one handed, throwing it in your pocket, reaching the entire screen easily with your thumb and also seeing less wasted space. It just feels so much better to me.

I certainly hope I can get used to the size, and I know I will be able to, but my heart will always yearn for the svelte size of the Q10 or 9900.

Originally Posted by ominaxe

It honestly seems like a lot of this can be done already. You just need the right launchers.

Yes but remove bottom bar just with android root.

Ohh! You're talking about home/menu/back buttons?

Is it possible to change the middle swipe shortcut away from Google?

Originally Posted by ominaxe

Is it possible to change the middle swipe shortcut away from Google?

Yes, you can use those three shortcuts for whatever you wish.

I have Opera, BB Hub and Whatsapp, and my Mute button is mapped to open BBM on short press and Phone app on long press. Shortcuts everywhere on this phone. :)

Attachment 413848

Sweet. I saw a video saying that Google was required in the middle. With Action Launcher 3 or Nova Launcher can you change the left/right/up/down swipe on the home screen?

Originally Posted by ominaxe

Sweet. I saw a video saying that Google was required in the middle. With Action Launcher 3 or Nova Launcher can you change the left/right/up/down swipe on the home screen?

The video lied to you. ;)

Most launchers do have swipe up and down gestures. I used Next launcher on my previous Android phone and used swipe down to bring up the shade notification bar so that I don't have to pull it from the top of the phone, and swipe up to bring up the app drawer so that I can have more shortcuts in the dock (the dock is where Phone, Hub, Opera and WhatsApp are on my screenshot).

Left and right swipes are not used in most launchers because they generally have multiple homescreens which you change by going left or right. I have a "full-screen" Hub widget on the left and some default shortcuts on the right one, while the middle one is default. There are probably launchers which would have only one homescreen and would let you do swipes left and right as you desire, but I don't really think that you would miss having left and right homescreen swipes to launch apps because you can do more by placing various widgets there, plus, with the 50 shortcuts that Priv's physical keyboard enables you, there is no way you would need any additional shortcuts.

I forget to even use my left or right homescreen and the same goes for keyboard shortcuts because even without them everything is accessible so quickly that I'm not sure how much more could I get out of them. You're really overthinking this a little bit. ;)

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Originally Posted by ominaxe

Is it possible to change the middle swipe shortcut away from Google?

Here is my setup for the 3
Hub flashlight youtube
I have dtek50 so my convenience key is currently set to BBM but find I never use it. I would to find a way to set it to screenshot

Haha, I'm just looking for the perfect combination of OS7 and OS10, and if Android can duplicate that, it could be perfect.

I never liked the multiple Android pages. I loved my 9900 because I had a theme that had no apps anywhere on my homescreen and no other pages or swipes from the home screen. It was only the information I needed: notifications, time, date, WiFi, network. I launched everything from my keyboard and I loved it because it was so fast and simple.

Originally Posted by ominaxe

Haha, I'm just looking for the perfect combination of OS7 and OS10, and if Android can duplicate that, it could be perfect.

I never liked the multiple Android pages. I loved my 9900 because I had a theme that had no apps anywhere on my homescreen and no other pages or swipes from the home screen. It was only the information I needed: notifications, time, date, WiFi, network. I launched everything from my keyboard and I loved it because it was so fast and simple.

All in one gestures app is pretty cool. Gives you a lot of gesture power without using any power (battery)

Originally Posted by dpw09

Here is my setup for the 3
Hub flashlight youtube
I have dtek50 so my convenience key is currently set to BBM but find I never use it. I would to find a way to set it to screenshot

I had flashlight in one of 3 shortcuts but one day I saw flashlight on and then my battery it was almost at zero and I was like what the? How can this be. Then I look into battery consumption and blackberry launch had drained almost all battery. I saw I had flashlight turned on for 5hours.

Which launchers get rid of the BlackBerry launcher's home button gestures?

Originally Posted by ominaxe

Which launchers get rid of the BlackBerry launcher's home button gestures?

Those shortcuts are system-wide and work regardless of your choice of the launcher.

Good to know. I'm getting seriously pumped about making Mercury perfect. Just worried about the possible size of the device now.

With my BB10 devices breaking down, I recently got a V20 for a great deal because I couldn't wait for Mercury. I just installed Nova Launcher Prime, which has great swiping from icons. For instance, I have my wife as a Contact icon on my home screen and configured swiping up to be a direct dial of her smartphone. And for Nova's Dock, I placed BlackBerry Hub right in between the phone and app drawer apps on the left side. I find a combo of BlackBerry Hub+ and Nova Launcher Prime's swiping and other tweaks to be the ideal Android experience thus far.

Originally Posted by ominaxe

Good to know. I'm getting seriously pumped about making Mercury perfect. Just worried about the possible size of the device now.

They said the Mercury's height is going to be similar as a regular modern phone with a 5.5" screen but width will be skinnier.