BlackBerry PRIV updated: Camera, Launcher and Keyboard

The BlackBerry PRIV received a new camera, launcher and keyboard update yesterday on Google Play.  These are individual app updates and are not operating system updates.

First is the BlackBerry Camera app which now offers slow motion video recordings.  Users can now record video at 120 frames per second that play back at 30 frames per second.

While higher frame rates are enabled, audio is not.  Slow motion video does not allow audio to be recorded and BlackBerry did not indicate if it would be available in the future.

Other stability improvements for the camera were also in the update.

BlackBerry PRIV camera received slow motion video

Typing gained three main renovations, the first being better predictive typing which now makes use of a user’s emails or social media to learn their writing behavior.  It also will be able to learn slang words that include numbers such as r4dical or sw33t.

Fine Cursor Control was improved on the BlackBerry PRIV physical keyboard and now has four directional arrows to help with cursor location during typing.

If a user holds down the delete key for more than two second it will now start to delete words instead of each character making editing long messages quicker.

The BlackBerry Launcher received a few updates yesterday.

The last major piece to yesterday’s update was the BlackBerry Launcher.

For those who are curious an Android launcher is how apps, settings and navigation are presented to the user.  Most Android devices have a generalized organization due to the operating system, but all have slight differences because of the launcher installed.  It is why Samsung devices look a bit different from HTC devices when you look at the screen, but overall have the same functionality.

Viewing apps in the updated launcher can now be sorted by Recent, Personal, and Work.

Any page can now be selected as the main home screen and can be deleted if not needed.

Widgets that pop-up are now enabled by default and “improved overlays” will now provide more information to the user.

The most significant update though is when an SD card is removed that has apps installed on it.  Apps will be grayed out so that the user will know that they will be unable to use the app until the SD card is implanted back inside the BlackBerry PRIV.

Since these updates are to each app, all you have to do is open up the Google Play Store and update all apps.