Ever since the Bolt BlackBerry browser went into public beta, it has seen more than 300,000 downloads. That’s an enormous sample from which they can draw feedback and further improve the browser. At CTIA Bolt has announced the first set of upgrades since the move to public beta. They’re truly functional and useful changes, addressing many issues I had myself — especially the scrolling aspect. Hopefully we’re only a couple more change logs away from an official version. After the jump, the updates.
As mentioned, the first and (to me) most important upgrade is the scrolling functionality. That was a big issue with the initial private beta, though Bolt did tweak it a bit in the subsequent upgrades. It’s even better now. I’ll have to play around with it a bit more to determine whether it needs a further tweak or if it’s ready to go.
Other upgrades include a greater magnification level, 33.3 percent bigger than their 2XL magnification in previous versions. Wi-Fi is now auto-selected if it is enabled and available. Bookmarks got a boost, with the ability to save and view pages locally on the phone, plus support for folders in bookmarks. For Storm users, they added double tap approach for links to avoid inadvertent clicks. They also now support landscape view and have introduced better magnifier dragging.
From the press release, there are also some user feedback improvements:
# Improved video quality on mpeg4 capable devices
# Improved scrolling speed on image-rich pages
# A user preferences page to reduce menu clutter, especially useful on BlackBerry smartphones where the native menu structure, without sub-menus, is utilized
So head to http://boltbrowser.com/ from your BlackBerry and give it ago. The more people who provide feedback, the better experience Bolt will provide back.
