BlackBerry regularly touts features like its Hub, Password Keeper, and more as highlights of its Android phones. Starting today, though, those features are available on non-BlackBerry Android phones, too.
BlackBerry Hub+ will offer a suite of BlackBerry apps on any Android smartphone running 6.0 Marshmallow and up. The Hub+ pack includes BlackBerry Hub (shown above), the company’s popular unified inbox app that view email and social alerts, compose messages, view and respond to calendar invites, and more, all from one place.
Also included in Hub+ is Password Keeper, BlackBerry’s password manager; Contacts, which handles all of your contact info; Tasks, an app that’ll let you create tasks and reminders and set due dates; a Device Search universal search bar; Notes for keeping track of notes and to-do lists; and Launcher, an Android launcher replacement.
BlackBerry Hub+ will launch on Google Play today. Once installed, you’ll use it to download BlackBerry Hub+ Services and then get the individual apps listed above.
BlackBerry Hub+ will be free for 30 days, after which point users will have two options if they wish to continue using the apps. They can either continue using them for free and agree to view “occasional” ads, or they can pay $0.99 per month and go ad-free.
One other detail that’s worth noting is that BlackBerry is working to expand Hub+ to devices on Android 5.0 Lollipop, and it’s thinking about how to bring its features to iOS devices, too.
This is pretty big news from BlackBerry. As I said before, the company often touts the software features of its Android phones to help them stand out, but now any Android phone running Marshmallow can get most of BlackBerry’s software features, too. The BlackBerry Hub in particular is worth a try, giving you a unified inbox for email, messaging, and social.
Will you be giving BlackBerry Hub+ a try?
