This is a guest post from Fabian Heuwieser, developer of VibAndRing and other useful BlackBerry tools. Here is a list of all the applications Fabian has written for the BlackBerry at Mobihand.

You can follow Fabian on Twitter at www.twitter.com/FabianMH

Switching from the Palm to the BlackBerry Platform

Until November 2007 I used Palm’s Treo Smartphones and I developed applications for that platform. The best known application was KeyLight which handled the Keyboard Light depending on time of day and application launched. At the end of 2007 I bought my first BlackBerry: a Vodafone Curve 8310. At the beginning, the change from Palm to the BlackBerry was really not without problems due to Palm’s Touch screen and RIM’s Trackball – two totally different navigation controls. The only quite similar hardware feature was the full QWERTY keyboard. Soon I got used to the BlackBerry and the totally new and different Operating System.

But one thing I couldn’t get used to in the BlackBerry OS was the following: When a call comes in, the device firstly vibrates and only after the vibrations are over it starts to notify the user with the audible alert. I used to miss countless calls and got truly frustrated with the device. Deactivating the vibration in the Profiles Application was a temporary solution but a phone without vibration is useless for me.

How I started to develop applications for the BlackBerry OS

In November 2007 I started reading through RIM’s BlackBerry APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and I went through a lot of tutorials and workshops on how to get started with BlackBerry Development. Thanks to the perfect Developer Support by RIM I soon was able to develop and deploy high quality BlackBerry Applications written in Java. My first successful application for the BlackBerry OS was LaunchPads, an application that increases the speed of usability of the device. It allows the user to launch other 3rd party applications quicker, create tasks, memos or contacts, launch phonecalls, new SMS or emails through the click of the side button. The application was an all-round Launcher for anything on the BlackBerry OS.

The story of developing VibAndRing

Soon after that I started working on an application that sets the ringtone and the vibration at the same time because I got so annoyed missing phone calls just because of this ‘feature’ included in the system that it firstly vibrates and only then rings. Version 1.0 of VibAndRing was finished only after 2 weeks of coding and was released in the beginning of June 2008. It didn’t have many features: the vibration was one long pulse and the user couldn’t set multiple bursts. But soon after launch, the application got very successful and well known in the BlackBerry Community. Many users found the solution to not miss anymore calls. It climbed up in the various bestseller list and many feature requests and suggestions rolled in.

VibAndRing Update to Version 1.1

Most of the requests sent in by users were about adding a feature for ‘Multiple Bursts’. It should allow the user to not only have one long pulse but many, short bursts so that you really feel the device vibrate in the pocket when a call comes in. In September 2008 Version 1.1 was ready for release. All the previous customers were able to update to this new version for free. In October/November the application was the number one in the CrackBerry Software Store Bestsellers for over 4 weeks. That showed how needed that feature was for BlackBerry Users. Since its launch in June 2008 it is in the Top 10 Applications on the CrackBerry Software Store. Customers coming from other devices were not used to not have ringtone and vibration at the same time. VibAndRing made their BlackBerry experience easier and many users thanked me for that.

Thanks to RIM’s BlackBerry Connect with the Experts Seminar in Frankfurt/Germany in November 2008 I gained a lot of insight in further BlackBerry Development and a lot of features and tricks were revealed at this seminar, especially on how to port applications to the BlackBerry Storm and how to use the JDK 4.7. Through this I could create a Storm-Compatible version of VibAndRing which got released soon after.

At the beginning, VibAndRing Version 1.0 looked like this. As you can see the user could not change a lot of settings…

That changed now in Version 1.2 where the user can now set a lot of options and the multiple bursts feature is included. The vibration can also be tested in the application and some pre-defined vibration settings are available.

CrackBerry.com 2008 Cracky Awards

At the End of 2008 the CrackBerry.com Community held the 2008 Cracky Award for the Best Application and best Accessory for BlackBerry of the year 2008. VibAndRing was nominated and got in third place in the category for ‘Best Utility of 2008′. Here are the poll results for the Best Utility of 2008 where VibAndRing clocks in with 17.82%:

What does the future hold for VibAndRing?

One of the most important features VibAndRing could include is the following:

When you have your device set to silent and a call comes in then your BlackBerry still vibrates through VibAndRing. To avoid this you have to go into the application and disable the vibration manually. A more elegant way would be if VibAndRing could read out the selected profile and set the vibration-setting depending on that active profile.

Unfortunately RIM does not provide 3rd party developers with the needed APIs to control the Profiles application. Maybe one day they will loosen up and this feature will be available. So until now 3^rd party developers cannot ‘see’ what profile the user has selected. On the same day RIM releases these APIs I will update VibAndRing with this needed feature!