Today’s article is about Blackberry 10 devices and news on which this whole article is based, Its something about which you never heard off. Any guess ?? No, Ok I tell you, its about How to use android apps on Blackberry 10 devices. Sounds like uncommon but its true.
( Image credits: CrackBerry )
I really liked the new great features of Blackberry 10 devices and one feature which I personally liked is the ability to install and run android application on Blackberry 10 devices, ported for Blackberry 10 OS. This features is introduced by Blackberry team for very first time. If we discuss about this technically, then these all are Blackberry app at the time of installation. What they did is, converted Android .apk files to .bar files. But the apps are essentially all Android and run within Android App Player environment on Blackberry 10.
Currently Android App Player is running on Android 2.3 Gingerbird, but support for Jelly Bean Android 4.2 is also announced and is coming soon. This mean more boost in the performance. Right now apps most of the android apps running well and sometimes you can’t even tell that they are Android aside from parts of the UI.
Using ported android apps on your Blackberry 10 devices not a bad thing but it become tricky and more difficult then expected, if you’re using its for first time. So its better to have some finger work before using it for full time. But before we start with this, Are you sure you’re using an Android app,
If you want to check you can check below a sure sign of android
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The app starts on a black screen with a BlackBerry logo and/or takes a bit to start up
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The navigation UI doesn’t look like that of BlackBerry (ie. different fonts, icons, colors)
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You see the Android navigation bar pinned to the bottom of the screen
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You can’t navigate by swiping with the standard BlackBerry gestures
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You already know it’s an Android app
Once you confirmed that you are actually using android apps, then you can check below navigation guide to so that it become easier to use android app on your Blackberry device. So lets we start with first one
1. Hidden Navigation Bar
If navigation bar is hidden, you can swipe down to from the top bezel to reveal it. On the bar you have option provided to go back, pin the bar (so it never hides) and an overflow menu.
2. Go Back to App
You can tap back button which let user go back in the app. There is another way to make it by swiping on a diagonally from the bottom right of the screen and to the left.
3. Get the Information
If you tap this button you will get the information about, how user can go back in the app, just in case if you’re not aware of the same.
4. Pin Bar/Hide Bar
If you tap on pin bar, it will let you pin the navigation bar so that its always shown. If its already pinned, tapping the hide bar will again hide the navigation bar and you will have to swipe down from the bezel to show it.
5. Overflow
The overflow (3 dots) icon will bring up the application menu where you will have multiple app-specific options.
So its all about this opinion piece, getting around inside android app in blackberry 10 device is not much difficult, All you need is a little hardworking to become gesture master.
