Draw Electronic signature Presentation Android

Honestly, it was overwhelming. Things went truly viral and we were completely unprepared. We were so unprepared that we left the arena while there were important dignitaries trying to talk to us. Thanks to all of you for making this magical and thanks for your wonderful compliments.I was just a few feet from Mr.Modi as we entered the place and it was an amazing feeling. Someday I will get to talk with him. And Ivanka was probably the most beautiful woman I have met. We just joke that even our robot went giddy infront of these amazing personalities. Top entrepreneurs like Ritesh Aggarwal [founder of Oyo] walked up to us to congratulate and it was a magical feeling.The highlight of the whole thing was Amul making its signature billboard with our robot. I feel humbled by these billboards.We were truly excited by Shri Modi’s and Ms. Ivanka’s expression and the thousands of snaps that were taken along with hundreds of media coverage we got. The PM tweeted about it and his office featured the bot in their homepage.Yesterday in Finland at the Slush event a founder of a European company building robots walked up to me after recognizing the Mitra and talked about partnership in taking our robots to the European market. That felt elating [inspite of the fact that the product was not in the perfect shape especially after disassembling for the flight]. Many Finnish people took selfies with the robot to put it on their timeline and that was great.We also had a delegation from Japan’s Olympics committee visit our office to explore robots for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. These sales might or might not happen in reality, but it felt amazing to imagine that Europe and Japan could buy products from India not for cost, but for uniqueness.To our well wishers:I’m humbled by your comments and it comes as a great boost for my team that has been tired and dazzled from months of hard work. Everyone in my team come from humble backgrounds and are out to prove something big and this comes as a shot in their arm.They worked day in and night to get the models going. We faced a number of setbacks. A model made in China never came home as it is stuck in Chennai customs for 2 months. A clay model we made had several inaccuracies and could never be completed. An android device we planned didn’t support our code base and we had to go for a quick fix with another tablet. Logistics went crazy and so did a million things.There were many hands that went in. Our CTO Bharath built the overall mechanics and everything to get it moving. He was helped by our production engineer Ram and Salman who helped in the structure. Our BDM Kaundinya pulled off this event and got our robot in after our COO Mahalakshmi was invited as a delegate for the event. Mahalakshmi and her brother Sudarshan did the whole supply chain and logistics for getting all the components. Her father helped us secure funding resources to sustain the R&D.Our electronics engineers Murali, Raushan and our new hire Spandana helped in building the circuit boards and making the electronics work. Our software engineers Ashwin, Anand and Sreejit made the entire stack. Our project manager Amit made sure the things went on schedule. and Our clay modeller Mr. Angappan helped us prepare the final fibreglass body. Our designers Vinay Rao and others at Bang Design helped us design the body. And journalists like Ranjani Ayyar and Nilesh Christopher spent time understanding the product to build an accurate story.And a special thanks to Kishlay Raj and his team at Sumeru. Their CEO and CTO gave their team’s personal time to finetune the underlying product. While we couldn’t showcase Hindi language NLP in the limited time it is a part of the product that we would sell.It took the whole village to put up this show.To the general public:Just to clarify, it was not any approval from the Indian government for being best startup or anything. And it didn’t involve me using any connections or favours. The event organisers were looking at something unique for the event. They were set on a large, humanoid robot to move around and greet the dignitaries and ours was the only one in the market - not just Indian - that could do so. We have done many events across India with our robots and we had worked with the event organisers before.A few days before the event, our robot was even cancelled for the event due to security reasons etc. Then we got back in the game once the senior leadership Wizcraft [the organisers] realised this was Made in India and they wanted to encourage such a product. And being a poor bootstrapped startup, they recognized the need to encourage entrepreneurship of all kinds. We got to this place without any angel/VC money.We have had many successes so far this year. Nasscom put us in a number of top events - including letting us pitch to the Japanese delegation at the Ministry of IT earlier this month. We were among the top 50 startups chosen by them and were in almost every top Nasscom event this year. We were also invited as a part of the Indian delegation to China and close to closing a big order there.We have also worked with Thub and had the honour of presenting a PoC to the global leadership of Novartis who came to Hyderabad earlier this year.To our critics:A few people on the Internet trolled us saying this looks like 70s toys, 90s toys, children’s project etc. I’m used to getting trolled and don’t mind criticism on me. But, since you guys were abusing the work of a group, I’m forced to respond in kind.I just ask them if it were that easy to make our product, why was there never a robot in a major Indian event so far? Why didn’t they make it and take all the honours? Why are you reading about an Indian robot doing such a thing for the first time? And why are there no global product companies from India, if making hardware is a child’s game? Think about it.People who never make things are usually the ones who underestimate the complexity that goes into a product. If you have never made things, you won’t know the pain of making.People said I pulled my connections. The event organizers don’t know anything about me and neither does anyone at BJP’s top brass or the US government that sponsored the event. Our event participation was pulled off by our excellent BDM and I had little to do with it. The event organizers would draw a blank if you ask them who Balaji is.Some people said I should learn from Elon Musk and Steve Jobs in how not to make shitty product. With due respect, I studied business history more than most of my critics. Jobs and Musk are geniuses. But even the geniuses start with more achievable targets. Elon Musk started with a product like this: Yellow Pages. Steve Jobs started with a product like this: Apple I. Honda’s Asimo started this way: Honda E1. Benz started this way: karl benz. Our own amazing ISRO guys started like this: The Story of How ISRO Defied All Odds To Put SatellitesGreat looking products don’t sprout in thin air. They are a result of years of work, starting with more modest looking creations. You cannot become an adult without starting as a fetus.We are trying to prove that there is a mass market for humanoids. It would be suicidal for a company of our stage to worry about a perfect product. Ours is more like a fetus and we are trying to keep it nourished and nurtured for a grand future.A few more critics said we should have been embarrassed to put such a product. Predictably none of those are entrepreneurs or someone who have created something. Because, real creators and entrepreneurs don’t worry about breaking things. Taking risk is what we do. Rather than an embarrassment, I would feel elated for my team even if it had not even started moving.The challenges:Try moving a 50kg, 5 feet tall object through varying terrain in a noiseless, smooth way without tripping and you will understand the physics behind the design. And with a battery life to last hours of rehearsals. It is a non-trivial piece of engineering with suspension systems that my team created. From the fiberglass body to the internal structure, everything was made here.We built the hardware, software and electronics for this. We built 9 prototypes this year. We are bootstrapped and have done all this hardware investment without any external funding. And while we didn’t show its real capabilities in the GES event [too risky to try] our robots can move autonomously and that what the funky head antenna is for. We integrated NLP tools and face recognition APIs and those are non-trivial things. And over the years we iterated a million times to get things better and better.Of course, there are plenty of inaccuracies and faults. This was handmade and in a very short span of time. But, the team has gone through enormous things to get this far, from where we started earlier this year.Developing product in India is hard. Making everything in India is hard. Making such a large object is hard as the mould costs multiply and the complexity goes as a square of that. Talk is easy, getting the stuff work on the floor is hard and why these don’t happen often.I’m not saying that our product is perfect. I’m saying the product is perfected and we will get there someday. If we keep worrying about breaking things, we are not a startup.In conclusion:I’m not saying we are India’s best product or even India’s best robotics company. The GES event was not about that. They wanted to showcase entrepreneurship at an early stage and a product that fit their needs. Large finished products come from large companies, startups backed by billionaires or at least startups with large venture funding. GES thought having a product from a company that didn’t fit any of these categories above and supported by no one was worth doing.Hardware in India will sprout only when difficulties of building hardware is understood and its complexities appreciated. Everyone says they or their grandmother or their child could have our product. But, they didn’t. Only our team did. And it is much easy imagining doing a product than doing it.Is the product overhyped? Maybe. Was there luck involved. Yes. But hey for a bootstrapped startup that has been teetering on brink of bankruptcy and has had more than its share of misfortune this year, I would not mind a little luck. Would you? Peace!

Here’s a breakdown of some awesome Features Office 3651. Work Smarter, EverywhereAfter buying Office 365, you also gain access to its accompanying mobile apps and browser apps. This allows you to access their cloud service from any up to date web browser on your desktop or mobile device. Even better yet, you don’t have to install Office software on your computer to do this.The mobile app allows you to access all of your Office 365 subscriptions and Office products right from your smartphone or tablet; this includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Onenote, and more. Cut the cord and stop working on your PC only — download the Microsoft Office 365 mobile app to stay productive, even while on the go.2. Enjoy 50 GB of StorageEach Office 365 user receives a whopping 50 GB of storage with Exchange Online; this can be used to save emails, calendar events, task lists, meeting notes, contact information, and email attachments.You can save some more space in your mailbox by utilizing the OneDrive cloud storage feature to share attachments.Your OneDrive storage is also synced to your device, enabling you to work offline on files. As soon as you reconnect to the web, the newest versions of your documents will be automatically uploaded to your cloud storage. The new versions of your documents will also be sent to any other connected device, including your phone or tablet — nifty!3. Edit Documents with Real-Time Co-AuthoringCollaborate online and see changes your team makes to shared documents within your Office apps as they happen with the real-time co-authoring feature in Word. Save your file to OneDrive cloud storage or SharePoint so your team can access the document and make any necessary edits or updates. You can also share it directly from Word by utilizing a handily integrated sidebar. As the publisher and access-giver, you can edit accessibility settings at any time.With the improved version control that was rolled out with Office 2016 co-authoring, you can see which changes to the document were made by which contributor and when the update was made. You can also easily revert back to a previous version of the file whenever you need to.4. Connect with Co-WorkersYou may not have known this, but Office apps include a Skype in-app integration. You can use this feature to instant message your teammates, share your screen during meetings and have audio or visual conversations — without even exiting the Office apps you’re working in. You can continue Skype conversations even after you close your office apps via your desktop or mobile version of Skype. The best part? Your team will receive unlimited Skype minutes.Source: Microsoft5. Send Links, Not FilesIt’s time to move away from email attachments. It’s never been easier to share documents for co-authoring!Simply upload your file to Office 365’s cloud storage. Then, write your email via Outlook or the Outlook web app. Rather than attaching your document to the email, you can insert a link to the file on your cloud. Outlook will automatically allow email recipients to edit the document you wish to share. You can always change permissions on any document at your convenience.6. Convert OneNote Items into Outlook Calendar EventsEasily configure OneNote items to tasks within your Outlook calendar. You can also assign tasks to colleagues, complete with follow-up reminders and concise due dates. You can also transfer meeting notes taken in OneNote via email to your teammates, and add important details (date, location, and attendees) to their respective meeting.7. Use Your Mouse as a Laser Pointer during PowerPoint PresentationsWith only a simple keyboard shortcut (Ctrl + P), your mouse can be used as a laser pointer during your PowerPoint presentations. You can also use the “presenter mode” commands while using this feature.The laser pointer tool has been a nifty trick within older versions of the office apps for years; however, it was only recently integrated for touch-screen devices. All you have to do is hold down on your device’s screen, and the laser pointer will appear.8. Create a Power Map Using ExcelTurn data into a 3-D interactive map with Power Map, one of the many Power BI-enhanced data visualization features that Excel has to offer. It comes with three different filters: List, Range, or Advanced. The Power Map will help you not only convey your data more effectively, but also support your claims by creating a tangible story from the numbers.

“Rail travel at high speeds is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.”-Dionysius Lardner, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London, 1830It hurts my heart to see an esteemed university publish such a regrettable article.  It is also shocking that there was no empirical based insight published, just agenda ladened conjecture.  In some ways I am not surprised.  Academia has misunderstood the payments industry for over 50 years and I have tried and have been successful to help quite a number of well known professors understand the details.  However, if one were to go by the postulations some Professors have presented over the years, the payments industry should not exist.   There is much to learn from these insights and surprisingly many of them were adopted by some payment startups, advisors, board members and VCs.   I will address the idle conjecture from this article, section by section:Apple Pay’s Technology Adoption ProblemApple wants to convert your iPhone into a digital wallet with Apple Pay. Professors Benjamin Edelman and Willy Shih assess its chances for success and wonder if consumers have a compelling reason to make the switch.This is a mostly correct insight.  It may turn out to be ironic wording on the part of the author.    To be clear, no one needs to “switch”.On the eve of debuting its digital payment system, Apple Pay, two Harvard Business School professors think the Cupertino company will have trouble coming up with an equally compelling message to drive sales of a service that allows you to pay at the retail counter with a swipe of an iPhone.No iPhones are “swiped” during a transaction, they are held at short distance for a few seconds in front of a customer facing terminal. "What does it do for me as a consumer?" asks Associate Professor Benjamin Edelman. “Why would I want to trade for something that already works [e.g. credit and debit cards], something that doesn't complain when it gets wet in the rain, something that doesn't complain when I launder my pants?"Why would I want to trade in an iPod, for something that already works, the Sony Walkman and use the cassette tapes that already work.  This is a comment that shows a professor that truly does not understand the history of technology. Especially, he adds, when those cards give users and additional 1 or 2 percent off the purchase price. “I think Apple has its work ahead in convincing thoughtful and potentially skeptical customers," says Edelman.There is little that one can draw from this passage.  There is no loss of 1 or 2 percent if the cards offered them before, they will be offered in the exact same manner via Apple Pay. ON WITH THE SHOWReports say Apple will roll out the digital payment service later this week, with perhaps more details coming at a press conference Thursday. But will it catch on, especially when several other similar services with big name sponsors such as Google have failed to gain much traction?The element that was overlooked by this professor is the fact that very little is similar to the business processes and business relationships Apple used in relationship to Google.   Apple choose wisely to work with every element of the existing payments ecosystem.  History will show, and likely this university will teach, that this was the primary premise that made Apple Pay the largest change since the invention of the magnetic stripe. Apple has a chicken-and-egg game to solve. Consumers won't use the service unless they are in use at a compelling number of stores. But merchants won’t install the expensive near field communications readers used by Apple Pay unless consumer demand is high.First off, Apple must convince merchants to adopt its service, says Willy Shih, the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Management Practice.“I THINK APPLE HAS ITS WORK AHEAD IN CONVINCING THOUGHTFUL AND POTENTIALLY SKEPTICAL CUSTOMERS”Only about 10 percent of retailers use NFC readers, and at least one retailer—Best Buy—stopped using them because they were too expensive. Officials with both Best Buy and Walmart have said the retailers have no plans, at least right now, of accepting the new payments technology in their stores.There will always be a “Chicken / Egg” issue with any system that would require equipment upgrades.   However this article assumes over 200,000 of the most popular businesses in the US is not “a compelling number of stores”.  It took 30 years for Visa and MasterCard to have over 200,000 businesses.   It took over 5 years for Discover to have over 200,000 business locations.   The professors did not even do a single empirical study to gain insights about the number of actual businesses and the demand to upgrade.   I am performing these studies and can say that early results point of almost 300,000 locations and a demand that has shot up by over 3,000% and growing among small to large businesses.Thus Apple will not have “work” to convince merchants, the huge drive is coming from merchants and banks wanting to implement the service.Best Buy stopped using NFC for only one reason, they were not paying PIN based debit rates for these transactions and Apple is on the way to get these types of cards to be confirmed using biometric PINs.  Shih believes merchants who consider adopting Apple Pay will naturally wonder: What do we get out of this? And they will specifically want to know if they will be asked to pay higher fees than credit card companies are charging?The data that Professor Shih has is invalid.  The merchant is paying the exact same rate as with any other credit card.   What they get out of it is manifold but no one can argue that the increase in speed is one foundational benefit. "Consumers might be motivated to do it, but if I don't have the merchant side in place, it doesn't matter," Shih says. "The merchants certainly aren't going to be motivated if the economic model is less favorable than today. It’s a complicated puzzle."The data that Professor Shih has is invalid.   The economic model is not a “complicated puzzle to anyone other then Professor Shih.Apple has touted that Apple Pay will be supported by several leading retailers, including Bloomingdale's, McDonald's, and Macy's—and that it will work at about 220,000 merchant locations across the United States that have enabled contactless payments. But some analysts believe that's a small number compared with the nine million US merchants that currently accept credit cards. In short, Apple has a long way to go to knock off the established credit card system, Shih says.There is some valid information here.  However 80% of the dollar volume in retail payment card sales come from 20% of merchants.  Apple will have coverage of about 70% of these merchants by year end.  My research suggests that a tremendous number of smaller merchants will fill in these numbers as 2015 winds out. "Ecosystems are very delicately balanced, and the current payment system represents a balance that has resulted from 40 years of evolution. There's a lot of inertia around that," Shih says. "You can have great technology, but you really have to line up the complementary assets so all the pieces play with you and they are motivated to make it work. At the end of the day, Apple is going to have to make the economics work for everybody. That is a hard job.”Professor Shih is still functioning on invalid data about the “economics”.  The economics are exactly the same.DO CUSTOMERS CARE?Which brings us to the customer side of the chicken-and-egg conundrum. Millions of shoppers have used cards for years, with little hassle. Edelman points out that people will continue to carry cards even if digital payments gain some traction, so the barrier to overcome for mass acceptance is even higher.Millions of people used payment cards every day at Starbucks.  But somehow  6 million weekly transactions in the U.S a full 15% of transactions made at the U.S. Starbucks-operated stores are made on the Starbucks wallet.  The barriers these users overcome are huge, they have to buy credits using a payment card to even operate the wallet, yet this barrier is overcome 6 million times per week.Edelman has studied Bitcoin, a software-based online payment system, and he sees similarities between technology adoption roadblocks Bitcoin has encountered and issues Apple Pay is likely to face."Apple Pay has the same problems as Bitcoin: There's no reason for the regular consumer to use it," he says. “Why would a consumer want to make a $100 purchase with Bitcoin when the consumer can pay with a credit card and get 2 percent cash back?"There is absolutely no comparison to Apple Pay and Bitcoin.  Professor Edelman is also operating on invalid data.  The payment card that pays 2% back will continue to pay 2% back with Apple Pay.In addition to the limited number of merchants, Apple Pay appears to be limited to users of the latest iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and Apple Watch—which leaves out many consumers with older iPhones or Android models.“Apple might be hamstrung by an incompatibility issue that the company intentionally introduced," Edelman says.The system works on iPhone 6 series phones.  There is no doubt that there will be similar Android initiatives.  The picture is very clear, if you have an iPhone 6 series phone, it works.  This is not an incompatibility issue. Shih agrees that selling technology is tricky in a market full of incompatible products.Yes, yes it is."We're in a period now where you see this design competition with competing offerings, and on top of that, you have a platform competition where everyone has their network effects," he said. "It's like PlayStation versus Xbox. The technology convergence has brought us to a place where people are scrambling to come up with a new platform and trying to become the new dominant design.”Great insight about video game platforms.  However they have no analogy with the subject of Apple Pay.Other companies that have attempted mobile payments have run into similar problems. Google Wallet was limited by its compatibility with different types of phones and cellular networks. And Softcard, which was backed by major wireless carriers, has seen little traction with its mobile wallet for similar reasons.This is correct.  This is one of the most accurate insights from these professors.   The destiny of Google Wallet was never in the hands of Google and thus it contributed to the failure of the system.  This is not the case with Apple Pay.  PITCHING SECURITYOne marketing pitch Apple is sure to try out with potential users is security, especially after notable bsignNowes at Home Depot and Target. When a customer pays with an iPhone, cashiers won't see the consumer's name, credit card number or security code because Apple uses a fingerprint reader on its recent iPhones to confirm identities. And when consumers add a credit or debit card with Apple Pay, the card number is not stored by Apple—instead, Apple provides a unique device account number for each transaction. In addition, the company says it won’t collect consumers' purchase history.Very accurate assertion.Edelman questions whether addressing security and privacy will be enough of a carrot to wean consumers off of their beloved plastic. Hesays other companies have tried to market the security angle, including the RevolutionCard, a PIN-based credit card that had no name, signature, or account number on it so that if it got lost or stolen, it couldn't be used unless the PIN was known. "It was stillborn," Edelman says. "It didn't work as a feature set. No one cared.”Professor Edelman is partly correct about the failure of  Steve Case’s Gratis Card and The Revolution Money Card.   However the professor is operating on invalid data.  Apple Pay is not a card replacement.  Apple Pay is a security wrapped around the existing payment card issuer relationship.“APPLE PAY HAS THE SAME PROBLEMS AS BITCOIN. THERE’S NO REASON FOR THE REGULAR CONSUMER TO USE IT”Even recent high-profile data bsignNowes have not led consumers to abandon credit cards in signNow numbers. "Security doesn't work for the thoughtful consumer," Edelman says. "(Data bsignNowes) mostly mean inconvenience for the consumer because the losses are really borne by banks, merchants, and credit cards, not by consumers."Besides, Shih wonders whether data will be any safer with the Apple Pay system.I think Professor Shih may need to conduct a study on how the Target bsignNow impacted consumers.  I have not conducted a deep study but can state clearly that some consumers had their bank account zeroed out in the early days of the bsignNow and the banks were not crediting back the transaction that appeared “valid” from debit card bsignNowes.  I know of a case where a single mom had missed rent and food because of the missing funds in her checking account for days.  Although this is anecdotal, there are many examples vetted by the media. I would also ask Professor Shih  to speak with any merchant that has been a victim of a major bsignNow about how systems like Apple Pay would have saved them millions of dollars in fines and replacement costs to card holders. "The fingerprint reader generating a unique code is pretty smart," he acknowledges. "But it electronically seems to do the same thing as a PIN code. And to the extent that the code goes into the existing payment network that's still not secure, have we really accomplished anything?"TouchID is far and away more secure then a 4 digit PIN code.   The math is quite simple.   But just the logic, it take very little time to guess a PIN number.  It takes a great deal of time to try to fake a finger print that is acceptable to TouchID.  In many cases it is impossible to fake a fingerprint unless you have intimate access to the target.  Thus a faster way to steal money is a PIN number and not a finger print. CAN YOU PAY ME NOW?Other technical questions remain. Edelman wants to know whether Apple Pay will work if the phone isn’t charged, or in areas with poor cell reception?This would be better addressed by studying the technology and not using a  a guessing game.   Apple Pay will work with zero cell or WiFi reception.  Apple Pay will work with a low battery.  Apple Pay will stop working if there is no way to power on the iPhone.  Apple may release more details tomorrow, so time will tell whether the company will address some of the system's potential shortcomings—and perhaps more important, whether regardless of any shortcomings, merchants and consumers will embrace this new mode of payment. Either way, even if Apple stumbles with its mobile wallet, the company will likely survive the reputation hit.Yes, they addressed the shortcomings.  Apple announced that instead of 7 banks supporting Apple Pay payment cards, there are now over 500."Any failure Apple experiences here will be more than offset by the legions of fans that like their other stuff," Edelman said. “I'm not losing any sleep for Apple."I think Professor Edelman can sleep soundly.    He has articulated how some academics, even notable academics are all too human.  We are fallible.   I hope that history is kind with these Professors.

When we look for apps to add to this list, we're after those that excel in two areas: uniqueness and elegance. A unique app provides something that no other app can. Take a look at Tasker, which gives you incredible control over your Android device, if you can master its numerous tools. An elegant app may not be the most original app, but the way it accomplishes something makes it a joy to use. Lots of apps let you browse the news, but few do it as stylishly as Flipboard.We also consider timeliness, design, price, security, and popularity when putting the list together. Each and every app in the list is excellent in its own way. Taken together, they are like a snapshot of the best of the Google Play store at the time of writing. If we missed something, or you have a recommendation, be sure to drop us a line in the comment section below. And now, we humbly present the 100 best Android apps of the year.BrowsersDolphinFreeA clean, tabbed browser, Dolphin delivers an excellent user experience on Android, almost making you forget that you're on a mobile device. Dolphin also supports tight integration with services like Evernote and LastPass, as well as robust settings. My favorite feature is gestures, which might not always be efficient but are definitely cool to use. Dolphin also has integrated ad-blocking and support for Flash. Yes, Flash!FirefoxFreeWhat's incredible about the Android version of Firefox is that it feels as mature, if not more so, than Firefox on the desktop. It's lickety-split fast, and its clean design is a joy on mobile. Mozilla makes a big point about how it doesn't collect your data, and I was pleased to see that the app comes with a full complement of security settings—including an option to protect your information from advertisers. Like the desktop version, Firefox for mobile has a robust selection of plug-ins.OperaFreeNot to be confused with its Mini cousin (see the next entry), Opera is a full-fledged browser for Android. With a slick design, it aims to be your gateway to Web content with features like a built-in news portal and the Opera mobile apps store. Opera also takes it easy on your data plan with special video compression and ad-blocking software.Opera MiniFreeDon't be fooled by its unassuming exterior: Opera Mini is a clever, stripped-down version of the full Opera browser designed to thrive where network conditions are not their best. And it doesn't skimp on features, either. Opera mini gives you access to special Opera Web apps, a handy homepage complete with news and social media updates, a surprising array of powerful security settings, and even ad-blocking.Back to Top ↑FoodCookpad RecipesFreeCookpad connects you with a vibrant array of recipes. Easily add favorite recipes, manage shopping lists, and find new recipes you'll love based on those you already like. Once you start using it, you'll have one less excuse to eat out.Pepper Plate Recipe, Menu & Cooking PlannerFreePepperplate makes it easy to access your recipes from any Android device so you can cook up a storm wherever you go. On the desktop side, the service connects to websites like Allrecipes and Epicurious so you can import recipes (and sync them to your phone) with just one click. You can also easily build shopping lists and keep your recipes handy wherever you are.SeamlessFreeRemember the bad old days of ordering food? You needed takeout menus, knowledge of the terrain ("will they even deliver out here?"), cash, and faith that the person jotting down your order got it right. Seamless takes care of all that, even letting you pay via credit card from your Android. The downside? The app only supports restaurants in Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington DC. Sorry, everywhere else.UntappdFreeThis handy app lets you record each brew you try along with a rating and tasting notes. Think of it as Swarm for beer! No more staring at a tap list, trying to remember which ones you've had before. The app also has a vibrant community of beer drinkers that can point you toward new discoveries, and an extensive list of beers. It's also a handy way to find your favorite brew near your current location. While it's not perfect, it can change the way you think of beer.YelpFreeIt pays to be a little skeptical of crowd-sourced reviews, but Yelp can tell you a lot more than just what people thought of a bar, restaurant, or just about any other place where you spend money. Many locations list hours of operation, contact information, and menus, making it easy to find the perfect spot in your neighborhood or a new city.Back to Top ↑Health and FitnessClueFreeMenstruators the world over will rejoice over Clue, a simple app with a beautiful design for tracking one's period and predicting when the next will occur. Using the data you enter about your cycle—and other factors—you can use Clue to plan ahead, whether it's for pregnancy or just to keep ahead of your cycle. Reminders and a handy calendar tool can help take the guesswork out of life. Best of all, it's totally gender neutral, and not pink.Eve by GlowFreeTracking one's period isn't just about knowing the cycle, but also the other factors surrounding it. Eve by Glow lets you track physical and emotional states, which can lead to some important insights when you take the time to interpret your own data. Eve also boasts a vibrant community and a wealth of information about sexual health built right in.FitbitFreeYou might know Fitbit from its popular fitness trackers, but the app that powers those devices works well on its own, too. Using your just your smartphone (assuming you meet the minimum hardware requirements), this fitness app can count steps and log activities to help you achieve daily goals. There are also social features, so you can compete against your friends. It's a must-have (really, you must have it) for Fitbit users, but also a smart choice for anyone looking to be more active.My Asics Run CoachingFreeMost running apps charge you a pretty penny to access training regimens. That's not the case with My Asics Run Coaching. This app, for both iPhone and Android, has customized plans for 5K, 10K, 5-mile, 10-mile, half-marathon, or marathon runs. It's also not on a fixed schedule. Instead, the app adjusts your plan based on your running data. This app will get you off the couch and on the road to victory. PCMag has a full review of the iPhone version of My Asics Run Coaching.MyFitnessPalFreeThis calorie counter and exercise tracker aims to help you lose weight the old-fashioned way—expending more calories than you take in. With its smart design and an extensive library of foods, it makes quickly logging the calories you take in and what you burn while exercising a snap. A barcode scanner makes it even easier to log that post-workout snack. This fitness app also plays nice with other such apps, so your data won't be tied up in just one place. MyFitnessPal won't give you a whole workout regimen, but it can make you more aware of your habits. PCMag has a full review of MyFitnessPal for the iPhone.Runtastic PRO$4.99Runtastic can do much more than just track your favorite running routes. This excellent fitness app keeps track of all sorts of useful data and can return information-rich maps to help you plan future outings. It also features a fully integrated music player, for a seamless workout experience. Use it for cycling, hiking, and walking, too.Runtastic Six Pack Ab WorkoutFreeIn today's lazy-yet-busy world, it's difficult to find time to get to the gym to truly blast your abs. If you're trying to build a washboard set, consider Runtastic's Six Pack Ab Workout app. It lets you create a customized workout to target the specific muscles you want to transform into rock-hard edifices of chiseled humanity. Just follow the avatar on the screen through the moves, and you'll be the mayor of six-pack city before you know it. PCMag has a full review of Runtastic Six Pack Ab Workout on the iPhone.Back to Top ↑Music and PodcastsApple MusicFreeMarking one of Apple's first forays into Android development, Apple Music brings the company's impressive musical catalog to Android. The app is built around Apple's subscription-based streaming service, which dishes up all-you-can listen music for $9.99 per month, or just $4.99 for eligible students. It suffers a bit on Android for being divorced from the Apple ecosystem, however.BandcampFreeFilled with both up-and-coming and established acts, Bandcamp is one of the most exciting music marketplaces there is. The app was initially built around streaming songs you'd already purchased on Bandcamp, but now it's a one-stop shop for digital and physical band merch. If you want to keep your finger on the pulse of music, this is an essential app.DeaDBeef PlayerFreeIf you're an audio nerd or just prefer to have a lot more control over your music collection, take a look at DeaDBeeF. This sprawling app supports AAC/MP4, ALAC/MP4, APE, FLAC, MOD, MP3,OGG, WAV, and more. There's also a 10-band equalizer so you can get your tunes sounding just so. If the idea of buying Neil Young's weird music player doesn't appeal, DeaDBeef is the next-best thing.Pocket Casts$3.99Android has struggled with podcasts (they don't call 'em "Droidcasts," after all), but Pocket Casts is here to help. This highly customizable app is great for chilling out with an episode of your favorite casts, and it can also sync among different devices so that you can pick up right where you left off. Time to start listening.Slacker RadioFreeWhile Pandora may have introduced the world to streaming radio, Slacker Radio has refined it. You can listen to what Slacker thinks you'll like, or try out one of its human-curated channels and playlists. It also has hyper-specific playlists that appeal to particular tastes and moods, such as Yacht Rock.Songkick for ConcertsFreeSongkick is the bridge between the music in your digital collection and concerts in your area. Once installed, Songkick scans your device for tunes and then lets you see when and where your favorite artists are playing. If you see a show you're interested in, you can also purchase tickets all from within the app. Add multiple locations to Songkick to catch concerts when you're on the road.SpotifyFreeWith its huge inventory of music, Spotify has become a mainstay for free, legal music streaming. You can shuffle through smartly selected songs, find your favorite albums, or explore one of the service's excellent playlists. Close ties with artists means that new tracks are sometimes available the same day they hit the shelves in record shops. Those still exist, right?Stitcher Radio for PodcastsFreeThough its interface is a bit tricky, Stitcher connects you with just about every podcast out there. Podcasts are organized by subject, or you can just search for a familiar title. Shows can in turn be organized into playlists for a continuous stream. Once you've exhausted all your favorites, let Stitcher recommend something new. With a special emphasis on sources like NPR, CNN, and ESPN, Stitcher has a little bit of everything.Back to Top ↑Personal ProductivityAny.doFreeAt its core, Best To-do list & Task Manager. Free, Online & Mobile is a list manager. You can quickly create a shopping list and have it synced among your devices and even share the list with others. The app also doubles as a task manager, keeping you on top of what needs to be done. This very capable app sports many features, but I particularly like one called the Best To-do list & Task Manager. Free, Online & Mobile Moment, which encourages you to take a second and review your plans for the day. Lists are one thing, but building good productivity habits is quite another.EasilyDoFreeIf you're the forgetful type, EasilyDo is your savior. Once you hook the app up to a slew of supported social and calendar services, it suggests simple actions from a unified dashboard. Did you know it's Susie's birthday? EasilyDo will remind you and suggest you send her a message or a gift. It makes the little things easier, and proves its worth with saved time. It covers everything from to-do lists to tracking packages to storing your travel information.EvernoteFreeOnce you start using it, this note-taking app becomes a powerful tool for organizing just about everything. Notes can be anything—text, images, audio, or a mix—and are organized into notebooks. One of its killer features is optical character recognition, which makes the text in images searchable. Cloud-storage makes it the perfect tool for organizing the little pieces of a project into a finished draft.Inbox by GmailFreeInbox by Gmail isn't a tool for email power users. For everyone else, however, it's fantastic. Google took to heart the lessons of the now-defunct Mailbox and offers a client for Gmail with gestures, reminders, and some of the tricks pioneered by productivity pros. My favorite features include automatic package tracking, travel document detection, and the bundling of like emails. It also happens to be one of the best-looking material design apps to date.MintFreeMint is a fantastic online service for keeping track of your finances, and it really shines on Android. Once you've entered all your information, you can easily see where your money is going. And Mint's budgets help you make spending decisions on the fly. Another great feature is the Mint widget, which helps you keep your finances in mind by keeping your account balances in sight. Mint can be a bit overwhelming at first, but it's well worth the effort to learn.PushbulletFreeIf you've ever had to email a link or a picture to yourself because that seemed like the easiest way to get it off your phone, Pushbullet is for you. Simply put, it's the missing link between your PC and your Android. This handy service lets you send notes, URLs, files, addresses, and even lists among your devices. You can even push all these things to your friends, too.WunderlistFreeIn a crowded app store full of to-do apps, Wunderlist for Android distinguishes itself as one of the prettiest and, more importantly, the easiest to use. It's ideal for making to-do lists, grocery lists, or lists shared with friends and family. Best of all, Wunderlist is cross-platform with numerous native apps and a spiffy, interactive website that keeps your lists within easy signNow. Purchased by Microsoft last year, this app has a bright future on any device.Back to Top ↑PhotossignNow Photoshop ExpressFreePhotoshop CC is a notorious beast of a desktop application, but Photoshop Express is a svelte app, with powerful tools to make the most of your mobile snapshots. Sure, it'll do the Instagram-ish filters, but it also lets you make fine adjustments to images with a beautiful, simple interface. It even seamlessly connects to various other services for sharing.Autodesk PixlrFreeIf you've ever browsed through image-sharing services and wondered where the picture collages came from, Pixlr is a good guess. This photo editor can do more than just build mosaics of pictures. It has a host of effects and adjustments that run the gamut from subtly artistic to ridiculously bombastic—perfect for giving your images a touch more pizzazz.FlickrFreeRemember Flickr? The venerable photo sharing service is an Editors' Choice Web service, and the Android app has a lot to recommend it, too. Offering a free terabyte of photo storage, a truly gorgeous app, and excellent photo and video editing tools, Flickr is more valuable than ever. Plus, the app connects you to the vibrant community of photographers on the service. Best of all, it can automatically back up photos from your phone.Google PhotosFreeGoogle Photos puts the search giant's powerful image-discerning magic into your phone. It can identify faces, even as they age over decades, as well as animals and places. The search results aren't as good as those of Google Image Search, but the app can perform impressive feats such as identifying specific dog breeds. It is rounded out with smart editing tools that use machine learning to manipulate specific aspects of photos, such as skin tone and the deep blue of oceans and skies. The service also offers effectively infinite storage for all your photos, so even if you merely need a dead-simple photo backup solution, it's hard to beat Google Photos.InstagramFreeIt seems like just yesterday that Instagram was adding video. Then direct messaging. Then advanced photo editing put it on par with Photoshop Express for image correction and manipulation. The latest addition is Instagram Stories, which will surely be familiar to fans of Snapchat. With a clean, minimalist interface, Instagram is the king of social photo apps.PicsArt Photo StudioFreeWith tons of effects, controls over layers, drawing tools, and collages, PicsArt can contend with Photoshop and is one of the best photo editing apps for Android. If you think it's just a lowly Instagram clone, you're wrong. When you're looking to take your smartphone snapshots to the next level, seek out this app.SnapseedFreeDon't get me wrong: I love Instagram. But if you want more control than Instagram affords, try Snapseed. This app straddles the line between full-fledged image editor and filter app, and it brings a lot of useful tools to the table. Best of all is the amount of control it gives you over how filters and effects are applied to your images. Run a photo through Snapseed before Instagramming it.Back to Top ↑Reading and NewsCalibre Companion$3.99Calibre is the giant of ebook management, and this app is the perfect (ahem) companion for it. With just a few clicks, you can add any book from your computer to your device over USB or Wi-Fi. You can also store your ebooks on the cloud for easy access from wherever you are. What's so surprising is how well it works, and how easy it is to use. If you've got a lot of ebooks and are ready to cast off the shackles of Amazon, this is the app for you.ComiXology ComicsFreeThe Amazon-owned Comixology—the iTunes of digital comics—offers a near-perfect combination of store and comic book reader in its wonderful Comics app. The free app transforms your Android smartphone or tablet into a digital long box that houses and syncs your purchases across multiple devices. Even better, the new Comixology Unlimited service lets you devour an ever-expanding catalog of titles for just $5.99 per month.ESPN FreeWhat impresses me most about the ESPN Android app is the sheer number of sports it covers. Everything from American football to Brazilian soccer to Indy 500 is available. For those unmissable games, you can set alerts and follow specific matches as they unfold. It also connects you to videos and news headlines, courtesy of the popular sports cable network.FlipboardFreeWith its slick, streamlined interface, Flipboard is one of the best apps for reading the news. With it, you browse the articles, videos, podcasts, and other media that matter most to you. The app's signature magazine-style interface lets you explore the day's headlines in a gorgeous environment. The Daily Edition feature gives you the most important news along with themed stories for each day of the week. Flipboard has been one of our top picks for years, and it's easy to see why.KindleFreeThe official Amazon Kindle apps puts all of your existing Amazon ebook purchases at the tips of your fingers, and it gives you mobile access to the Kindle ebook store for impulse purchasing. Best of all, it syncs your notes, bookmarks, and where you left off among all your devices.OverDriveFreeThe library is an often-overlooked public resource, but OverDrive brings it back into the fold with its app. Supported by over 30,000 libraries worldwide, the app lets you access your local library's array of available eBooks. Use it to download titles, place holds on titles not yet available, and read your borrowed ebooks. The only requirement is a library card (or its digital equivalent).PocketFreeYour bag of holding for Internet content, Pocket saves articles, images, and videos for later reading. I especially like how it reformats articles for more comfortable reading on a mobile device, and how it syncs content to your tablet, phone, and online account. With the close integration between Pocket and the Android sharing tools, you can pocket just about anything from your phone.Back to Top ↑SecurityAvast Mobile Security & AntivirusFreeAvast has the distinction of packing tons of features into an entirely free package. Inside, you'll find antitheft tools, app management, safe Web browsing, a battery manager, and an antivirus engine that receives top marks from independent testing labs. It's a top choice for Android antivirus apps.Bitdefender Mobile Security & Antivirus$14.95 per yearNeed Android antivirus? It's hard to do better than Bitdefender. This app has received perfect scores from two independent research labs, and scans your phone in mere seconds. It also includes excellent phishing protection, powerful antitheft tools, and Android Wear integration.Dashlane$39.99You're terrible at passwords. Don't take it personally! Everyone is terrible at passwords. That's why we all need apps like Dashlane, which generate, save, and replay login credentials wherever they're needed. This smart, cross-platform service makes sure that your passwords, payment information, and other vital information is stored securely but never out of signNow.LastPass$12After a major overhaul to this powerful password manager its appearance finally matches its performance. With LastPass, you can access your saved passwords, secure notes, and filled forms from your Android, and you can also create new ones that sync to all your devices. The new version of the app ingeniously melds the password manager with a built-in browser, putting the app's auto-login features at the forefront. Staying safe has never been easier.Net Nanny$12.99Smartphones are a problem for parents. Give one to a kid and they could have too much freedom, use it to talk with strangers on the Internet, access inappropriate content, or just rot their brains with Candy Crush. Don't give a kid a smartphone and they'll be hard to get a hold of, have no emergency contact, and so on. Net Nanny offers a solution with fine parental controls that give kids the benefits of owning an Android while minimizing the risks.Norton Family Parental Control$49.99When it comes to parental control, it's hard to do better than Norton family Parental Control. You certainly get what you pay for, as this app sports powerful Web filtering, call and text blocking, location tracking, and app management. Best of all, parents can use it to control an unlimited number of devices, so it will suit families of all sizes. The only downside? It doesn't block anime.NordVPN$8.00With NordVPN you can rest assured that no prying eyes will see your Internet traffic. This app sports an excellent interface, a handy server selection tool, and a hundreds of available VPN servers across the globe. NordVPN's signature feature is its assortment of specialized servers, which are optimized for activities like peer-to-peer downloading, video streaming, and access to Tor.OrbotFreeTor is probably more famous for providing access to the so-called Dark Web, but it also provides a useful way to connect to the Internet while keeping your movements private. Working with a special browser, Orbot connects you to Tor within seconds. However, I have found in my testing that it sometimes takes a few attempts to get online.Private Internet Access VPN$6.95On the desktop, Private Internet Access VPN offers the protection of a virtual private network along with numerous advanced features. The same is true on Android, where you can connect to any of its over 3,000 global servers. This service also has the option to block ads and online trackers, if you so wish. It might not be much to look at, but it's among the most powerful VPN services available.Back to Top ↑ShoppingAmazonFreeAmazon is the Internet's marketplace; the one place where you can buy just about anything—and it's cheap too! On Android, two of my favorite features are the barcode scanner and photo search, making it easy to surreptitiously comparison shop from one of the brick and mortar stores the site is killing. You can also make purchases from Amazon's streaming video store, but Kindle ebook titles are still unavailable for purchase. Depending on where you live, you can take advantage of super-fast shipping that can sometimes deliver a package before you even get home.Google WalletFreeGoogle Wallet has gone through many permutations over the years. Its latest is as a person-to-person payment app, letting you easily send money without pesky cash or credit cards getting in the way. And in that role, it really excels. It's a strong alternative to our top choice, Venmo.GrouponFreeThe original deal locator for mobile, Groupon partners with businesses to offer low prices to a limited number of people for a limited time. While the value of Groupon's offerings is sometimes debatable, it offers a useful way to try a new restaurant or a totally new activity in your area.PinterestFreePinterest is a social network of stuff, a place to "pin" things that interest you on themed boards. The Android app offers a great way to gather images from around the Web for making lists or just collections of stuff that catch your eye. I've used it to help redecorate my living room and for selecting a tattoo artist. It easily integrates with your browser for fast pinning, and you can view the pins of others for added inspiration.Samsung PayFreeHere's the bad news: Samsung Pay only works on a handful of devices and, yes, only Samsung devices at that. But if you can get your hands on a phone with Samsung Pay, the world is your electronic payment oyster. Whether it's sending money between devices, paying for something on your phone, or using the built-in magnets to trick card-swipe readers into thinking they've just read a credit card, Samsung Pay does it all. It's nothing short of astonishing.SliceFreeFor all our technical savvy and disruptive startups, physical package delivery is still the backbone of ecommerce. The Slice app automatically detects shipping details from your email and then tracks the packages for you. You can watch your precious commodities make their stately way to your doorstep, get alerts when they are delivered, and even receive warnings if they've been recalled or the price has dropped. In short, Slice is an online shopper's best friend.WallabyFreeOdds are, at least one of your credit cards has some kind of rewards program—be it cash-back, miles, or points. But it's a hassle remembering which ones to use, and where. Enter Wallaby, an app designed to help you maximize your rewards. Consider this handy shopping buddy the next time you look to spend some plastic cash.VenmoFreeThere are lots of ways to pay for things with your phone. But Venmo has a smart mixture of clean design, ease of use, and social functions that give it an edge. It doesn't do much, but it does let you easily send and receive payments from friends. And unlike other payment systems, it has momentum. It's usually the app people ask about when the group is splitting up the check.Back to Top ↑Social Media & CommunicationCircle of 6FreeWhile most social apps are there for fun, Circle of 6 is here for when you're not feeling safe. Two quick taps sends one of three pre-written text messages to as many as six of your contacts. One message sends your GPS location and a request to be picked up, while another asks your friends to quickly get in touch with you. The app also includes links to the RAINN and Love is Respect hotlines.EventbriteFreeIf an event isn't being organized on Facebook, it's probably being done through Eventbrite. This service makes it easy to manage invites, RSVPs, and even ticket purchasing. Attendees get handy reminders about the events they planned to attend, organizers can see guest lists. I particularly like that Eventbrite can generate QR codes, making event check-in a breeze.Facebook MessengerFreeThe problem with most mobile messengers is convincing your friends to sign up. But the odds are that most people you know are already on Facebook. This is handy, because the Facebook Messenger app is fantastic. It's simple, clean, and easily handles voice and video calling. But for me, the best part will always be the gorgeous stickers.Google HangoutsFreeLike Facebook Messenger, nearly everyone you know is probably already using Google Hangouts whether they realize it or not. All you need is a Google Account to send instant messages, images, and even participate in video conference calls with up to 12 other participants. Very few other services come anywhere close, and none offer it for free. Tight integration with Google Voice means that you can also use this app to send and receive voice calls and text messages. For some, it's the only communication app they need.LinkedInFreeMost people are probably familiar with LinkedIn as a service only visited in times of desperation; after being laid off or after a day in the office so bad that you're just not going to take it anymore. While that might still be true, the LinkedIn app aims to be a companion to LinkedIn Web service that you check every day. Sure there's the all-important profile pages showing off your work experience, and the handy tools for networking, but the service now includes visitor metrics and a newsfeed for a decidedly more social feel. It's also sometimes the only way to chat with a businessperson you're looking to connect with. It's like Facebook for grown-ups.Nintendo MiitomoFreeWhen Nintendo released Miitomo, we were confused, enthralled, and then obsessed in rapid succession. In this app, you create a cute avatar of yourself (or, as it is heavily implied by the game, another you that is simultaneously you and not you) called a Mii. You answer questions in the game, like "what's your favorite food?" and then watch as your friends' Miis spout answers back at you. But the most fun is dressing up your Miis and posing them for bizarre photos. PCMag has a full review of Miitomo on the iPhone.SnapchatFreeAt first, Snapchat was a little dangerous, popular with the hip and the young, and utterly baffling to everyone else. With Snapchat, you quickly snap and exchange photos with one or several friends. The app also supports video snaps, as well as voice and video calling. The catch is that whatever you send will vanish after a few seconds. Though it's popularly associated with sexting, it's also just a fun and ephemeral way to share the world around you. New updates make the service much easier to use, let you save old snaps, and build ongoing public stories. The more things change, the more they just turn into Facebook.Signal Private MessengerFreeThere are a lot of apps out there that pay lip service to security and privacy, but Signal was built from the ground up with the goal of letting people easily communicate without having to worry about being overheard. The Signal app is a complete phone and SMS client replacement (though it works just fine as a standalone app, too) for sending and receiving encrypted calls and messages. A recent update has greatly improved the app's look and feel, proving that security and usability don't have to be at odds.Twitter PeriscopeFreeStreaming live video used to be a real pain, even on a desktop computer. But apps like Meerkat and Periscope changed all that. Periscope has Twitter's blessing, and it lets you share video and chat with other users with ease. Best of all, it saves your Periscopes for later viewing. Periscope is a lot of fun, but it's facing stiff competition from the Facebook app's recent addition of live video streaming.WhatsApp MessengerFreeIn a world rife with messenger apps, WhatsApp is among the most successful, boasting an enormous and dedicated user base. Add to that an integrated Web version that lets users take their chats to the desktop. Recently, this app was bolstered by encrypted messaging provided by the minds behind Signal. It might just be the largest secure messaging service out there.WickrFreeSometimes the most secure message is one that simply doesn't exist. That's the thinking behind Wickr, a fully encrypted secure messaging service that even handles media messages. The twist is that you set a lifespan for each message, ensuring that your private messages stay private, the way Snapchat message do. And, if you doubt their security chops, here's what the company's founder told the FBI when they asked for a backdoor.Back to Top ↑TravelDuolingoFreeIf you're looking to learn another language, Duolingo gamifies language learning with bite-sized lessons and a friendly interface. Starting with simple vocabulary and building from there, Duolingo is your guide to learning a new language or brushing up on one you already know. The more you use the app, the more you unlock and—with practice—the more you learn. This free app currently supports Danish, Dutch, French, German, Irish, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. Or more practical choices, like Esperanto and Klingon.Google MapsFree Google Maps has been your guide for years, and this excellent app just keeps getting better. With just a few taps, Google Maps tells you exactly how to get to your destination. It even supports walking, bicycle, and mass-transit directions, as well as Uber. The app's road knowledge is so keen that it can tell you which lane to be in while using turn-by-turn directions. And because this is Google, you can easily search for locations nearby.Google TranslateFreeProbably my biggest fear as a traveler is being unable to communicate with other people. Google Translate takes a bit of the edge off, quickly translating either written text or spoken words. You can even use the app to do the speaking for you, and input text through your camera or handwriting. The app can translate 103 languages with a data connection and 52 when you're offline. It can't handle Tamarian, but it's sure to be a handy tool here on Earth. It even works on your watch and while using other Android apps!SwarmFreeIf you miss the check-ins and badges of the old Foursquare, check out its twin: Swarm. This bright, colorful app is laser-focused on check-ins, making it easy to let your friends know where you are and earn cute badges in the process. Some classic features have now returned to Swarm, like leaderboards and mayorships. It seems silly, but it's actually a great way to remember that perfect breakfast spot you visited last time you were in town.TransitFreeWho needs Uber when so many cities offer world-class public transit? The Transit app shows mass transit options—including busses, ferries, and trains—and the estimated time of arrival in 87 cities in North American, Europe and Australia. Here in New York, it even tells you how many bikes are parked at local Citi Bike stands. This app keeps you in the know no matter where your travels take you.UberFreeUber certainly has its problems. Between its questionable business tactics and its bad press, it's understandable to be suspicious. But the truth is that if you're looking for a way to get a ride, regardless of what city you're in, Uber will be there. You can even use it to order food in some areas. A great feature: You can request a wheelchair-accessible vehicle through Uber.Weather UndergroundFreeWeather Underground combines a slick design with a focus on really useful weather information. I particularly like the ability to report weather conditions in your area and the extremely useful comparative forecasts that deftly show how conditions have changed since yesterday. With an accompanying set of useful widgets, it's the best weather app on Android.Back to Top ↑UtilitiesArrow LauncherFreeWhen Microsoft started rolling out apps for Android, I don't think anyone anticipated the venerable software manufacturer to go and roll their own theme for Android. And yet, we live in a world where Microsoft's Arrow Launcher is a thing. With a focus on productivity, it puts your most recently used apps at the forefront and has numerous customizable settings to tweak it to your needs. If you've grown tired of stock Android or, God help you, TouchWiz, give Arrow a try.Netgear Wifi AnalyticsFreeNetgear's free Wi-Fi Analytics app lets you get the lay of the Wi-Fi landscape. With a few taps, you can see the strength of networks in the area and what channels have the most interference. It's the perfect companion to our article on how to set up your wireless network.SwiftKey KeyboardFreeAn impressive keyboard replacement, Swiftkey suggests what it thinks is the most likely next word as you type. A pioneer of this technology, SwiftKey can speed up your typing by inserting whole words with a tap. The app also supports Swype-like input, over 100 languages, and 80 colorful themes.Swype Keyboard99 centsSwype was the first to introduce dragging your finger from letter to letter to input text, which has since appeared in SwiftKey and even Google Keyboard. The developers are not resting on their laurels, however: Their app has numerous input options, including the powerful Dragon Dictation, gestures, handwriting recognition, and SwiftKey-like predictive text. Swype is a sprawling app that makes mobile typing a breeze.Tasker$2.49I'll be honest: I am intimidated to the point of fear by Tasker. But I recognize that this is perhaps the most powerful app available in Google Play. With it, you can script basic actions for your Android to perform when specific conditions are met—like flash the LED when you receive a text message. Learning to use something this powerful can be tricky, but the rewards seem worth it.Zooper Widget Pro$2.99Many Android apps come with handy widgets that you can place on the desktop or lock screen. But who wants to merely accept what they're given? Zooper Widget Pro lets you easily assemble widgets to meet your exacting needs. It's the perfect tool for truly getting the most out of your Android.Back to Top ↑VideoCrunchyrollFreeWhen we wanted to watch anime back in the bad old days, we had to duplicate third-generation VHS tapes of Neon Genesis Evangelion or, God help you, pay some shifty guy for a CD of RealPlayer files. But now, the streaming service Crunchyroll spoils anime fans with choice. Boasting an extensive backlist of popular anime, this app even debuts episodes shortly after they premiere in Japan.Hulu$7.99 per monthHulu has long been the king of streaming TV. It's the best choice for when you want to see current shows and not wait until they're collected for sale or streaming on another service. But it also has a deep well of great movies to draw from, including many obscure gems. If you need to see Brooklyn 99 on your Nexus 6P, then this is the app for you.Netflix$7.99 per monthDespite ups and downs in the quality of its library, Netflix dominates the world of streaming TV and movies. Although Hulu has more TV and more varied movie offerings, the sheer volume of movies and TV in Netflix is still remarkable. The service also creates its own—sometimes indispensible—content, including original comedies, cartoons, dramas, and documentaries. Some of the shows have become cultural phenomena, making Netflix a must-have. Shows such as Black Mirror, Stranger Things, and The Crown (the most expensive TV show ever made) are often the conversation topics of the day. And now with offline viewing capability in the mobile app, you can download select episodes to watch at your leisure.Sling TV$20Have you ever needed (I mean, really needed) to catch your favorite show but found yourself nowhere near a TV? Technology is finally here to solve the problem with Sling TV, an inexpensive service that lets you watch live TV via the Sling TV Web service on any Android device. Get ready to cut the cord and kick cable out of your life.WWEFreeWhen we reviewed the official WWE app for iPad, it earned perhaps the most begrudged Editors' Choice in PCMag history. But that itself should speak volumes about the quality of the app and, uh, the quality of the wrestling content. Whether you're watching the latest bout or catching up on classic matches, this app is there to assist. It might even give you a new appreciation for the bizarre, semi-fictional meta-sport that Americans have loved for decades.Back to Top ↑Workplace ProductivityAsana$800Trello and Best To-do list & Task Manager. Free, Online & Mobile are great for personal to-do lists and small projects, but Web service Asana is the 800-pound gorilla of task management for teams. Collaboration tool Asana is all about workflows and checkbox tasks that can be assigned to individuals. It's a powerful tool with an excellent interface, and new features are added regularly.DoodleFreeThe hardest part of scheduling a meeting is getting everyone to agree. Jeff is free Monday and Wednesday. Jill is available Monday, but not Tuesday. And the other dozen people have their own schedules to contend with. Doodle lets you suggest times, and then see which work best for everyone. It's an invaluable planning tool.DropboxFreeDropbox pioneered the personal cloud service, where all your stuff would be available no matter what device you were using. On Android, it holds its own—even against the highly integrated Google Drive. Dropbox can also act as a seamless backup for your images, automatically uploading every photo to the cloud. If you're a heavy Dropbox user, this app is a must-have.GoDaddy Bookkeeping Essentials$9.99 per monthIf you're a freelancer, the most important thing you need to do is get paid. Enter GoDaddy Bookkeeping. 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Shortly after the release of the first iPhone, Verizon asked BlackBerry to create a touchscreen “iPhone killer.” But the result was a flop, so Verizon turned to Motorola and Google instead.In 2012, one-time co-CEO Jim Balsillie quit the board and cut all ties to BlackBerry in protest after his plan to shift focus to instant-messaging software, which had been opposed by founder Mike Lazaridis, was killed by current CEO Thorsten Heins.Mr. Lazaridis opposed the launch plan for the BlackBerry 10 phones and argued strongly in favour of emphasizing keyboard devices. But Mr. Heins and his executives did not take the advice and launched the touchscreen Z10, with disastrous resultsLate last year, Research In Motion Ltd. chief executive officer Thorsten Heins sat down with the board of directors at the company’s Waterloo, Ont., headquarters to review plans for the launch of a new phone designed to turn around the company’s fortunes.His weapon was the BlackBerry Z10, a slim device with the kind of glass touchscreen that had made Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. the dominant names in the global smartphone market.But one of RIM’s directors was frustrated by what he saw, and spoke out, according to one person who was in the room. There is a cultural problem at RIM, he told the group, and the Z10 was a glaring manifestation of it.The speaker was none other than Michael Lazaridis, the genius behind the BlackBerry, the company’s co-founder and its former co-CEO. Minutes earlier, he said, he had spoken with Mr. Heins’s newest executive recruits, chief marketing officer Frank Boulben and chief operating officer Kristian Tear.Mr. Boulben and Mr. Tear had dismissively told Mr. Lazaridis that the market for keyboard-equipped mobile phones – RIM’s signature offering – was dead.In the board meeting, Mr. Lazaridis pointed to a BlackBerry with a keyboard. “I get this,” he said. “It’s clearly differentiated.” Then he pointed to a touchscreen phone. “I don’t get this.”To turn away from a product that had always done well with corporate customers, and focus on selling yet another all-touch smartphone in a market crowded with them, was a huge mistake, Mr. Lazaridis warned his fellow directors. Some of them agreed.The boardroom confrontation was a telling moment in the downfall of Research In Motion.Once the giant of the smartphone business, RIM, which was renamed BlackBerry Ltd. in the summer, is now on its knees. The company reported a $965-million (U.S.) fiscal second-quarter loss Friday, primarily because of a massive writedown of Z10 phones that sit, unsold and unwanted, about eight months after they first hit the market. The company is cutting 4,500 jobs, 40 per cent of its work force, in a desperate bid to bring costs in line with plummeting revenue.Investors, who have lived through the destruction of more than $75-billion of the company’s market value over the past five years, are still wondering how BlackBerry managed to blow its runaway lead and became a bit player in the smartphone market it invented.An investigation by The Globe and Mail, which included interviews with two dozen past and present company insiders, exposes a series of deep rifts at the executive and boardroom levels.Those divisions hurt the company’s ability to develop products just as it faced its greatest challenge from more nimble and creative rivals – and contributed to the downfall of Canada’s biggest technology company.Once a fast-moving innovator that kept two steps ahead of the competition, RIM grew into a stumbling corporation, blinded by its own success and unable to replicate it. Several years ago, it owned the smartphone world: Even U.S. President Barack Obama was a BlackBerry addict. But after new rivals redefined the market, RIM responded with a string of devices that were late to market, missed the mark with consumers, and opened dangerous fault lines across the organization.Months before their boardroom showdown, Mr. Heins and Mr. Lazaridis found themselves in another strategic standoff in which they were pitted against Jim Balsillie, Mr. Lazaridis’s long-time business partner and co-CEO.Inside RIM, the brash Mr. Balsillie had championed a bold strategy to re-establish the company’s place at the forefront of mobile communications. The plan was to push wireless carriers to adopt RIM’s popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) instant messaging service as a replacement for their short text messaging system (SMS) applications – no matter what kind of phone their customers used.It was a novel plan. If RIM could get BBM onto hundreds of millions of non-BlackBerry phones, and charge fees for it, the company would have an enormous new source of profit, Mr. Balsillie believed. “It was a really big idea,” said an employee who was involved in the project.But the plan ran into stiff opposition at senior levels. Not long after Mr. Heins took over as RIM’s CEO in January, 2012, he killed it, with Mr. Lazaridis’s support.That was it for Mr. Balsillie. Weeks later, he resigned from the board and cut his ties to the company.“My reason for leaving the RIM board in March, 2012, was due to the company’s decision to cancel the BBM cross-platform strategy,” Mr. Balsillie said in a brief statement to The Globe and Mail, his first public comments on his departure. He declined a request for an interview.Mr. Lazaridis, who declined to speak about board matters, resigned as a director this past March after delaying his retirement by a year at the board's request.Now, BlackBerry’s future is in doubt. This week, Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., a Toronto-based investment company, announced a plan to lead a $4.7-billion takeover of the company. The offer is conditional, and requires a group of so-far uncommitted institutional investors to back Fairfax and provide financing.The company’s near-collapse is a painful situation for Mr. Lazaridis, a gifted engineer who co-founded RIM in a tiny Waterloo office above a bagel shop in 1984.“It’s really hurting me,” he said in an interview. “I can’t imagine what the employees must be thinking. Everyone is talking about the most likely scenario being that it will be broken up and sold off for parts. What will happen to the Waterloo region, or Canada? What company will take its place?”Competition risingMike Lazaridis was at home on his treadmill and watching television when he first saw the Apple iPhone in early 2007. There were a few things he didn’t understand about the product. So, that summer, he pried one open to look inside and was shocked. It was like Apple had stuffed a Mac computer into a cellphone, he thought.To Mr. Lazaridis, a life-long tinkerer who had built an oscilloscope and computer while in high school, the iPhone was a device that broke all the rules. The operating system alone took up 700 megabytes of memory, and the device used two processors. The entire BlackBerry ran on one processor and used 32 MB. Unlike the BlackBerry, the iPhone had a fully Internet-capable browser. That meant it would strain the networks of wireless companies like AT&T Inc., something those carriers hadn’t previously allowed. RIM by contrast used a rudimentary browser that limited data usage.“I said, ‘How did they get AT&T to allow [that]?’ Mr. Lazaridis recalled in the interview at his Waterloo office. “ ‘It’s going to collapse the network.’ And in fact, some time later it did.”Publicly, Mr. Lazaridis and Mr. Balsillie belittled the iPhone and its shortcomings, including its short battery life, weaker security and initial lack of e-mail. That earned them a reputation for being cocky and, eventually, out of touch. “That’s marketing,” Mr. Lazaridis explained. “You position your strengths against their weaknesses.”Internally, he had a very different message. “If that thing catches on, we’re competing with a Mac, not a Nokia,” he recalled telling his staff.RIM soon earned a chance to show up its new rival. RIM’s early smartphones had been a hit for Verizon Wireless, one of the biggest U.S. wireless players. Frozen out of the iPhone – Apple had signed an exclusive deal with AT&T – Verizon executives approached RIM in June, 2007, and asked if it could develop “an iPhone killer.” The product would need to have a touchscreen with no physical keyboard. Verizon would back the U.S. launch with a massive marketing campaign.RIM executives jumped at the chance. At one management meeting, Mr. Balsillie called it RIM’s most important strategic opportunity since the launch of its two-way e-mail pager.The product was the BlackBerry Storm. It was the most complex and ambitious project the company had ever done, but “the technology was cobbled together quickly and wasn’t quite ready,” said one former senior company insider who was involved in the project.The product was months late, hitting the market just before U.S. Thanksgiving in 2008. Many customers hated it. The touchscreen, RIM’s first, was awkward to manipulate. The product ran on a single processor and was slow and buggy. Mr. Balsillie put on a brave face, declaring the launch to be “an overwhelming success,” but sales lagged the iPhone and customer returns were high.The Storm campaign didn’t seem so disastrous at the time: RIM was in the midst of a torrid global expansion. In August, 2009, Fortune crowned it the world’s fastest-growing company. A year after the Storm launch, market research firm comScore reported that four of the top five smartphones U.S. customers intended to buy in the next three months were BlackBerrys.But the Storm had failed to give Verizon Wireless the Apple-killer it coveted, and RIM soon abandoned the product. So the carrier turned to Google Inc. and its new operating system, Android, and built a massive marketing campaign around Motorola’s Droid phone in 2009 – at the expense of marketing dollars to support BlackBerry products. Verizon’s “iDon’t” campaign highlighted all the shortcomings of the iPhone that Android addressed with its consumer-friendly user interface.Rather than hurt Apple, the Droid and other Android-powered phones began to steal share first from Palm and Microsoft, and then RIM. By December, 2010, Android’s market share in the U.S. had grown to 23.5 per cent from 5.2 per cent a year earlier, as RIM’s dropped by 10 points, to 31.6 per cent, according to comScore. By late 2011, Android commanded 47.3 per cent of the U.S. market, while RIM had just 16 per cent.A shift by smartphone usersThis post-iPhone period was an era of strategic confusion for RIM. The overall state of the industry “was a bit schizophrenic,” said Patrick Spence, RIM’s former executive vice-president of global sales, who left in 2012. “There was a time when the [wireless] carriers tried to keep data usage predictable. Then it shifted to a period of trying to drive much more usage in different packages, when the iPhone became compelling.”If there were new rules of the game, RIM would require new tools. The summer after the Storm launched, Mr. Lazaridis bought Torch Mobile, a software development firm that created Internet browsers for mobile phones.But the process of moving, or “porting,” the Torch browser onto RIM’s highly-customized system proved complex and time-consuming. RIM’s technology was based on Java computer code and an operating system built in the 1990s, while the Apple and Android systems used newer software platforms and standards that made it easier to build friendlier user interfaces. “This really meant we were not positioned for the future,” Mr. Lazaridis said. In order to survive, RIM would have to change its DNA.RIM executives figured they had time to reinvent the company. For years they had successfully fended off a host of challengers. Apple’s aggressive negotiating tactics had alienated many carriers, and the iPhone didn’t seem like a threat to RIM’s most loyal base of customers – businesses and governments. They would sustain RIM while it fixed its technology issues.But smartphone users were rapidly shifting their focus to software applications, rather than choosing devices based solely on hardware. RIM found it difficult to make the transition, said Neeraj Monga, director of research with Veritas Investment Research Corp. The company’s engineering culture had served it well when it delivered efficient, low-power devices to enterprise customers. But features that suited corporate chief information officers weren’t what appealed to the general public.“The problem wasn’t that we stopped listening to customers,” said one former RIM insider. “We believed we knew better what customers needed long term than they did. Consumers would say, ‘I want a faster browser.’ We might say, ‘You might think you want a faster browser, but you don’t want to pay overage on your bill.’ ‘Well, I want a super big very responsive touchscreen.’ ‘Well, you might think you want that, but you don’t want your phone to die at 2 p.m.’ “We would say, ‘We know better, and they’ll eventually figure it out.’ ”Trying to satisfy its two sets of customers – consumers and corporate users – could leave the company satisfying neither. When RIM executives showed off plans to add camera, game and music applications to its products to several hundred Fortune 500 chief information officers at a company event in Orlando in 2010, they weren’t prepared for the backlash that followed. Large corporate customers didn’t want personal applications on corporate phones, said a former RIM executive who attended the session.Meanwhile, it turned out consumers didn’t care so much about battery life or security features. They wanted apps. Apple’s iOs and Google’s Android systems were relatively easy for outside software developers to use, compared to BlackBerry’s technically complicated Java-based system.Blackberry’s apps looked “uglier” than those programmed in more modern languages, and the simulator used to test the apps often didn’t recreate the actual experience, said Trevor Nimegeers, a Calgary-based entrepreneur whose software company, Wmode, has developed apps for BlackBerry. Further, RIM exerted tight control over developers before it would sign off on their apps for use on BlackBerrys, stifling creativity. “Developers wanted to be embraced, not controlled,” Mr. Nimegeers said. As a result, hot apps such as Instagram and Tumblr bypassed BlackBerry.A split companyOne key to RIM’s early success was its corporate structure. It is unusual for a company to have two CEOs – Mr. Lazaridis focused on engineering, product management and supply chain, while Mr. Balsillie looked after sales, finance and other corporate functions – but for a long time, it worked. Mr. Lazaridis’s side of the shop made the phones, and Mr. Balsillie’s sold them. The two men were collegial and collaborative.Below the top executives, however, the two sides of the company didn’t always get along. And as the company grew into a leviathan with $20-billion in annual sales, the structure sometimes made it difficult to get definitive decisions or establish clear accountability. That contributed to a chronic problem for RIM: speed. “They were always slow to market, and there were always delays in launching,” said James Moorman, an analyst with S&P Capital IQ Equity Research. “It was compounded by miscalculating the speed at which the consumer market changed.”Sometimes, feedback from customers that might inspire changes would die at middle management, because senior executives didn’t want to bring it to Mr. Lazaridis, a former insider said.The split company also lost a major unifying force when chief operating officer Larry Conlee retired in 2009. Mr. Conlee was a whip-cracker who held executives to account for decisions and deadlines, establishing a project management office. Many insiders agreed that after he left, a slack attitude toward hitting targets began to permeate the company. “There was a gap” after Mr. Conlee’s departure, Adam Belsher, a former RIM vice-president, told The Globe last year. “There was no real operational executive on the product side that would really get teams to hit deadlines.”After relying on its own technology for so long, Mr. Lazaridis decided the company’s next advance would come from outside. In April, 2010, RIM announced a deal to acquire Ottawa-based QNX Software, a cutting-edge software maker that would provide the building blocks for the BlackBerry 10 operating system – the new platform Mr. Lazaridis knew the company needed.QNX was a specialist in industrial controls that used up-to-date software tools to run applications ranging from 911 call centres to wireless broadband services in vehicles. Its technology was the perfect core for smartphones and tablets, RIM’s leaders felt.Mr. Lazaridis decided to take a page from the business strategy book The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. The book outlines how established organizations that succeeded against challengers often did so by allowing small, cloistered teams to develop their own disruptive products, free from the influence of the rest of the organization.Mr. Lazaridis decided he would isolate the QNX team and get them to focus solely on the new operating system, while leaving existing programmers to work on products for its existing platform, BlackBerry 7. Eventually he hoped QNX, led by its CEO Dan Dodge, would retrain his entire organization.But first, RIM had to answer a key question: If it wanted to remake the BlackBerry on the QNX system, what was the best way to do that? Should it move over some of its old Java-based applications, or rewrite them all from scratch? If the company abandoned Java altogether, what would it mean for third-party developers who used it?These were not easy decisions. Discussions among the senior leaders in Mr. Lazaridis’ organization dragged on for a year – far too long, according to several insiders.Eventually, the decision was made: BlackBerry 10 would be built from scratch. The problem with that approach was that a new team was being entrusted to recreate the BlackBerry. Those who had created the original system were still working on devices for the BlackBerry 7 platform. Once again, the company was split.“We had bought a powerful operating system and needed to move to it. But the BB7 was late,” Mr. Lazaridis said. “Every week, I was getting requests for more hires, more resources. The conundrum was, how do I pull resources off the BB7 to rewrite all the apps on top of QNX?”PlayBook painThe QNX team’s first assignment was to work on an operating system for the PlayBook, RIM’s answer to Apple’s successful iPad tablet. Mr. Lazaridis saw the work as a precursor to the BlackBerry 10 line of smartphones and was impressed by what the team brought to the product. “It helped our developers experience the power and elegance of QNX,” he said.But the QNX team was overwhelmed and needed to draw heavily on the company’s other resources to complete the PlayBook. Similar issues arose later on the BlackBerry 10. The tablet, originally slated to come out in the fall of 2010, didn’t appear until April, 2011, and it failed to sell. It was an awkward accessory to RIM’s smartphones, and lacked e-mail, contacts and apps. Once again, RIM had missed the mark: Tablets that sold well worked as standalone devices, which the PlayBook wasn’t.Some questioned the wisdom of launching the PlayBook in the first place, feeling it was a needless and costly distraction. And the decision to isolate QNX also created tensions and morale problems: Those who weren’t on the team worried about their future.“To me, the most logical thing would have been to integrate the operating system organizations into one,” said one senior executive who was caught up in the fray. “Then you’d have a whole team, not 150 people sitting around saying, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do next,’ and another 150 people saying ‘I’m over my head.’ ”Meanwhile, RIM’s lack of an advanced smartphone meant that it continued to bleed market share to Apple and Android, especially in the United States. In December, 2010, Verizon Wireless announced it would invest in fourth generation (4G) LTE technology to accommodate the growing demands of customers who wanted to surf the Internet on their phones. It signalled to device makers that it would look to feature 4G smartphones in its marketing.RIM’s 4G phone effort was the BlackBerry 10, but it was far from ready. RIM executives tried to make an engineering argument to carriers that 4G technology was no more efficient than 3G, and that its Bold phones were just fine. Mr. Lazaridis, Mr. Heins and chief technology officer David Yach “were trying to reshape the argument because they knew our products couldn’t go there,” a former executive said. “It was a fight to stay in [promotional] programs with carriers. We lost channel support and feature ads.”The PlayBook debacle and mounting delays of the BlackBerry 10 harmed the organization in other ways.For years, Mr. Yach and Mr. Lazaridis had enjoyed a close working relationship. But as the well-regarded Mr. Yach began to question the company’s ability to hit deadlines on products, his views were dismissed and he was made to feel he wasn’t a team player, damaging their relationship, observers said. He left the company in early 2012.The PlayBook flop merely added to the sense of a company in decline; 2011 became a signNow turning point for RIM. As it became clear the brand was getting trounced in the market, and the BlackBerry 10 project was hit by signNow delays, the stock plunged, falling from $69 (Canadian) in February to less than $15 by the year’s end.The pressure mounted on Mr. Balsillie, Mr. Lazaridis and the board. In January, 2012, they stepped aside as co-CEOs and handed it over to Thorsten Heins, a German executive who had run the company’s handset division.Almost immediately, there was division about how to roll out the BlackBerry 10. The original strategy had called for the company to launch an all-touchscreen version first, because sales were still going well for the company’s BlackBerry 7 keyboard phone.But by 2012, sales of BlackBerry 7 phones had lost steam, and Mr. Lazaridis, now deputy chairman, felt the company should switch its priority to getting a keyboard version out, to meet the demand from BlackBerry die-hards.“This is our bread and butter, our iconic device,” he told an executive at the company. “The keyboard is one of the reasons they buy BlackBerrys.”Mr. Heins’s new management team held firm, sources close to the board said. “They believed everything was going to full touch” and that the QNX-designed system was clearly superior to what was available on other mobile operating systems.To Mr. Lazaridis, abandoning the company’s competitive advantage in the hopes consumers would embrace yet another touchscreen was too risky a strategy, setting up the showdown at the board last year. In the end, management agreed to continue developing the Q10 keyboard phone. But the all-touchscreen Z10 would be launched first.By the time the first BlackBerry 10 smartphones were unveiled in January of this year, market observers generally agreed that the products were two years too late – a view widely shared among many senior RIM insiders.“Buying QNX was the right play ultimately,” said Mr. Spence. “But we didn’t make the turn fast enough. Everyone underestimated the complexity” involved in building the new system.A BBM planFor 20 years, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis operated in tandem, building an increasingly successful partnership that allowed each other’s strengths to flourish.They shared an office in their early years, even possessing each other’s voice mail passwords.As RIM grew, they worked in separate buildings but spoke several times a day. “They had a relationship I wish I had with my wife,” one mid-level executive said.But they had different personalities and their lives seldom intersected outside the office. They have barely spoken since leaving the company.For Mr. Lazaridis, science was both a job and a pastime. Mr. Balsillie was brash, competitive and athletic, and wore his reputation for being aggressive, even bullying in meetings, as a badge of honour. If anything, he viewed that outward toughness as a job requirement, not unlike tech CEOs such as Steve Ballmer at Microsoft Corp. or Apple’s Steve Jobs. “Show me how else you build a $20-billion company,” he once confided to a colleague. “If I was Mr. Easy-going, they would kill BlackBerry.”The two rarely disagreed on key strategic moves – until their last year together. Mr. Lazaridis believed BlackBerry 10 would herald RIM’s renaissance. Mr. Balsillie wasn’t so sure.Mr. Balsillie was concerned that Google had commoditized the smartphone market by making its Android operating system available for free to any handset maker. By 2011, wireless carriers were warning him that they would be ordering fewer BlackBerry products unless he dropped his prices to match rival manufacturers.So Mr. Balsillie pushed an alternative plan.The idea started with Aaron Brown, the executive who oversaw the services division at RIM. By 2010, this division was earning $800-million per quarter in revenue from the monthly service access fee it charged mobile carriers for every BlackBerry subscriber. More than 90 per cent of that was profit. Carriers tried to chip away at those fees – Google and Apple didn’t charge them – but RIM always pushed back. Mr. Balsillie was particularly insistent on keeping the service fees. But the executives knew the company’s weakening position in devices would increase pressure on services revenues as well.Even after its terrible year in 2011, RIM still had several advantages, including close relationships with the world’s major carriers. It also had BlackBerry Messenger.RIM developers created the BBM app in 2005 to enable users to communicate not by e-mail but by using their devices’ “personal identification numbers” or PINs. It was the first instant messaging service built for wireless devices, and it caught on quickly. It was reliable, free, always on and users could send as many messages as they wanted at no extra cost, unlike basic text messages. PINs were random codes, not phone numbers or e-mail addresses, enhancing privacy. That made BBM extremely popular in countries where citizens didn’t enjoy as many freedoms as Western democracies, and helped drive handset sales there.BBM’s developers added a few clever elements that also made it addictive. For example, users would know when a message had been delivered and when it had been read, marked D and R. Today there are 60 million monthly active users.But BBM only worked on BlackBerrys. As Apple and Android took off, BBM knock-offs appeared that could function on those devices, including Kik Interactive Inc., founded by Ted Livingston, a former RIM co-op student. Today Kik, boasts 85 million users, more than BlackBerry (which sued Mr. Livingston for allegedly copying its program). Others, such as WhatsApp, are even larger. Instant messaging “is the killer app of the mobile era,” Mr. Livingston said. “We think there will be a Google or Facebook-sized company that comes out of this category.”RIM’s Mr. Brown believed he could tap into this unfolding trend. While working with Mr. Balsillie on other projects, around late 2010 and early 2011, he began to talk up the concept of offering BBM on other mobile platforms.Mr. Balsillie loved it. At the time, some carriers were pushing for rebates on their monthly service fees. Mr. Brown was willing to comply if the carriers would agree to open new parts of their business to RIM. He and Mr. Balsillie struck upon an idea: Why not give carriers the opportunity to offer BBM to all their customers – no matter what devices they used?Most wireless executives were not fans of instant messaging services and other “over-the-top” apps such as Skype because they eroded the carriers’ revenue from text messaging.To counter that threat, carriers banded together to develop a standardized “rich communication service” (RCS) platform that would enable their customers to exchange text messages, videos, games and other digital information. But the initiative has gained little traction; one commentator recently labelled RCS a “zombie technology.”SMS 2.0Mr. Balsillie began floating the idea that carriers could instead offer BBM as their own enhanced version of text messaging, generating revenue for carriers while providing a cut for RIM. He called it “SMS 2.0.” (SMS stands for “short message service.”) RIM would agree to reduce the fees it charged for services, in exchange for gaining access to hundreds of millions of non-BlackBerry users.He and Mr. Brown discussed several options. For example, carriers could offer BBM as part of a standard “talk and text” plan for entry-level smartphone users. Because of its extra functions, BBM would save customers from having to buy a data plan.Or, carriers could offer an expensive plan that included BBM and other offerings from BlackBerry, including one gigabyte of cloud storage on which they could keep photos or songs. The carriers could then sell extra services such as radio through BBM. It would also make the wireless companies’ customers “stickier” – less likely to defect – since they couldn’t move stored data to rival mobile carriers as easily.The SMS 2.0 plan was a throwback to RIM’s move a decade earlier to form partnerships with mobile providers and share revenues. It was a chance to make BBM the dominant chat messaging service, and would have created a new storyfor the BlackBerry brand.A few carriers responded positively to Mr. Balsillie’s initial entreaties and by mid-2011, he was calling SMS 2.0 the company’s top strategic priority.To round out the strategy, and build a suite of cross-platform services, RIM made a few acquisitions, such as instant messaging firm LiveProfile. The service had about 15 million users and worked on Apple and Android devices, giving BBM the entrée it needed to those platforms.But the plan deeply divided the company. BBM was still an important driver of BlackBerry sales. Making it widely available to competitors represented an added threat to RIM’s faltering handset business, led by Mr. Heins at the time. Many inside the company felt a cross-platform BBM made sense, but only when BlackBerry 10 was out. Mr. Balsillie and proponents of his plan felt that would be too late.“It’s fair to say [the risk to handset sales] was a shared concern of everybody I spoke to,” said former RIM executive Mr. Spence. “But it was hard to deny the fact [carriers’ text messaging] revenue was declining. These carriers were looking for a solution and this was a potential solution.”One former executive felt Mr. Balsillie was overestimating the revenue potential of his software-driven strategy. As Mr. Balsillie talked up SMS 2.0, Mr. Heins and his team increasingly cast doubt on it internally. “He was absolutely canvassing behind the scenes working to kill it,” said one company insider.As for Mr. Lazaridis, he was supportive of launching BBM for rival operating systems, but was concerned about the costs and risks involved in building out the SMS 2.0 strategy, said a source close to the board. “We weren’t in a position to be investing in free services that required massive capital expenditure [and could provide] zero payback for maybe a few years if we’re successful,” the source said. Like others, Mr. Lazaridis worried about handset sales.But Mr. Balsillie was increasingly convinced that SMS 2.0 was the way to go. After pitching the plan to CEOs of 12 of the largest wireless carriers in the world in late 2011, he believed he could sign up at least one major U.S. carrier – insiders say AT&T was interested – as well as Telefonica and one or two other European carriers. That’s all it would take, he felt, to convince others to adopt BBM en masse.But other RIM executives who were part of the growing SMS 2.0 team also encountered resistance.Mr. Balsillie was pushing to formally launch SMS 2.0 at an industry conference at the end of February, 2013. But with the company under mounting pressure to overhaul its top leadership, he and Mr. Lazaridis handed the reins to Mr. Heins in late January.A few weeks later, Mr. Heins killed the SMS 2.0 strategy, backed by Mr. Lazaridis.“We had to get the BlackBerry 10 out, and we couldn’t be distracted,” said a source close to the board. “Everything else was shelved. And if that meant getting rid of strategies that didn’t fit, or weren’t complete, or required resources, I think [Mr. Heins] did the right thing.”The Globe and Mail requested interviews with Mr. Heins and with Barbara Stymiest, the chair of the board. The company declined, but agreed to agreed to provide answers to written questions.Asked why he shelved SMS 2.0, Mr. Heins said in an e-mailed response: “There are so many [instant messaging] alternatives in the marketplace that we wanted to be careful to launch only when we felt we could clearly differentiate our offering.”Mr. Balsillie, no longer an executive but still a board member, urged directors to reconsider, but they backed the new CEO. Mr. Balsillie couldn’t abide by the decision. He resigned from the board in late March, then sold all his stock. Few people knew the reason for his departure, including his long-time co-CEO, Mr. Lazaridis.BlackBerry did launch a version of its BBM application last weekend for iPhones and Android devices, but simply as a stand-alone app. Andrew Bocking, the executive who oversees BBM, said that with built-in capabilities to have group chats, share photos, calendar items and other features, “it really takes BBM to a whole other level … I believe there is an opportunity for a dominant player in instant messaging and there will be one winner-take-all.”To those who championed the SMS 2.0 strategy, most of them now gone, RIM should have been well on its way there already.A fizzled launchFinally, close to six years after Apple unveiled the iPhone, the long-awaited BlackBerry 10 made its debut at a glitzy launch event in January, featuring singer Alicia Keys as the company’s “global creative director.” It was a minor detail in a much larger story, but the made-up title and meaningless job irked some who wondered why the company was distracting itself with celebrity endorsements while in the fight of its life.The Z10 device itself won a number of positive reviews. The New York Times’ David Pogue, who previously had predicted that the BlackBerry was doomed, began his review: “I’m sorry. I was wrong.” But eight months later, it’s hard to see the launch as anything other than a total business failure, given the sheer volume of unsold smartphones now written off.The marketing campaign was confusing and vague: An ad that ran during the Super Bowl failed to explain what made the product distinct. A source close to the board said directors weren’t shown the ad before it ran, and some didn’t understand the content or the slogan, “Keep Moving.” There were no lineups, and no buzz for the product – nothing like the frenzy of publicity that seems to surround the launch of each new version of the iPhone.Once again, the market had shifted, and there was little demand for the Z10 in an era where sophisticated operating systems were commonplace and phones were getting cheaper. The one advantage the BlackBerry may have had over its rivals – a physical keyboard – wasn’t present in the first model to hit the market.“The only people still clamouring for a new smartphone from BlackBerry were in it for the keyboard,” said S&P’s Mr. Moorman. “Then they come out with a touchscreen. Anyone who wanted a touchscreen was already gone.”As it turns out, both Mr. Balsillie and Mr. Lazaridis were proven right. It was hard enough to compete in a commoditizing smartphone market. Leading with the wrong product on top of that only made BlackBerry’s task more hopeless. Mr. Heins’s strategic errors only compounded the challenging situation he had inherited.The product was difficult to sell for other reasons. One company insider said it could take close to an hour for young sales staff to demonstrate the product in dealer stores.And many long-time BlackBerry users found that the new system was too different from the classic BlackBerry experience for their liking. Many of the little “moments of delight,” as they are called in the company, were forgotten or overlooked by the QNX developers who lacked ties to the company’s past. For example, users can’t hit “u” and look at the last unread message in their inbox, nor can they easily shift to the next or previous e-mail, as they could on older BlackBerrys. Pocket-dialling is a constant hazard.Meanwhile, the company was slow to provide service to business users – such as helping them to transfer applications they had written for the old BlackBerry system. Software developers were left with dead-end investments after learning they would have to rewrite their apps for the new system if they wanted to remain part of the BlackBerry world. Many simply didn’t bother.“The decisions we made over the last two years were made within the context of a volatile, competitive and ever-changing marketplace – and always with the goal of delivering the vital technology that our customers need,” Mr. Heins said in a written response to questions about the success of the BlackBerry 10 launch. While he called the launch “a signNow accomplishment and one that involved the reinvention of our company,” he acknowledged it “did not meet our expectations.”As for Mr. Lazaridis, he has not given up on the enterprise he founded 29 years ago.He is still a minority shareholder in BlackBerry, and continues to be the subject of rumours he may join a group to buy out his former company.Mr. Lazaridis declined to discuss any such plans, but it is clear he believes the BlackBerry story is not over.“Many companies go through cycles. Intel experienced it, IBM experienced it, Apple experienced it. Our job was to reinvent ourselves, which we all believed BB10 would do,” he said.“The fact that a Canadian company was able to compete in that space with two of the largest tech companies in the world is a big deal. People counted IBM, Apple and other companies out only to be proven wrong. I am rooting that they are wrong on BlackBerry as well.”