To understand how software is an integral part of BlackBerry’s DNA, look no further than the BlackBerry Hub and its associated productivity apps, which have consistently rated as one of the most popular features of both BlackBerry 10 and Priv. Software like the Hub is at the core of the quintessential BlackBerry experience, and is consistently rated as THE way to get more things done by enterprise users in every industry. Last month, we decided to bring that productivity to other platforms, extending Hub, Calendar, and Password Keeper to one billion people on Android through Hub+, a new subscription service.

We initially launched Hub+ as a free trial on Android Marshmallow, with only the Hub, Calendar, and Password Keeper available. Today, we are happy to announce the remainder of our productivity suite (Contacts, Tasks, Device Search, Notes, and Launcher) is now available to Android users for a free 30-day trial period and for just 99 cents a month.*

The BlackBerry Hub, Calendar, Password Keeper, and Launcher will continue to be available as part of a free, ad-supported offering.

Even better, we’ve officially expanded Hub+ access to smartphones running Android 5.0 Lollipop and lower-resolution smartphones running Android 6.0 Marshmallow! To ensure no technical issues for users, our initial list of Hub+-capable smartphones was limited by screen resolution, but that’s changed. As of today, more than 3,000 smartphone versions can run Hub+, and that number keeps growing. Note: Hub+ requires 2GB of RAM or more, and does not currently support tablets.

BlackBerry Hub

Support for Hub+ subscriptions.

Hub Widget: The Hub Widget now lets you select 1 of 3 views: all of the accounts in your Hub, a particular account, or custom view. If you prefer quicker access to your inbox and to sending messages, Hub combined with the BlackBerry Launcher also fully supports Pop-up Widgets.

User Experience Updates: When opening an email or previously snoozed notification from the tray, pressing the back key will now take you into the Hub message list. When in an account view, custom view or folder-specific view, pressing the back key will take you back to the Hub view instead of closing the app.

Conversation View Enhancements: Once an image has been downloaded you can now see a quick thumbnail preview of that attachment. These are presented below the message body, and can be opened by tapping.

Email signatures: GEEK ALERT! Email signatures now support rendering HTML. With a little bit of HTML skill, you can get creative and add advanced formatting, images and hyperlinks to your email signatures. Just enter the HTML content into the signature field in the accounts settings screen including weblinks, images (HTTPS only), text formatting attributes such as bold, underlined, and italicized.

Printing: This feature may not be for everyone, but it can still be pretty gosh darn useful. The “3 dots” menu on an email now includes the option to print. This hooks into the Android printing framework, so if you already have set a printer up, then it’s super easy to fire the email off to your printer.

SCEP / Cert-based Authentication: Don’t worry, Admins – we have you covered, too! Administrators can now set up email accounts in the Hub that utilize certificates for authentication instead of passwords. You can make your business deployments even faster, easier and less painful for both users and yourself.

Keyboard

Japanese Input: You can now configure the BlackBerry Keyboard to type in Japanese.

Keyboard Stats: Want to compare your typing skills with your friends and co-workers? Now you can! Under BlackBerry Keyboard settings, you can see how many words you’ve typed, how it’s helped you, and even how often you Emoji.

Customized Symbols: I’m going to keep this simple because next week we’ll do an in-depth blog on this one, but you can now change the symbols screen to meet your needs! Keep an eye out for more details, or go experiment for yourself.

Calendar

Support for Hub+ subscriptions

Quick Reminder: Based on your feedback, we wanted to provide a simple UI to quickly create a reminder with some text, a location, a reminder and a due date. When tapping the Compose icon in the Calendar app, you now have the option of creating a calendar event/meeting OR a quick reminder.

Out of Office Availability: You can now set your status to “Out of Office” and have this sync to Exchange. “Working Elsewhere” is going to be coming in the next release as well.

Contacts

Now available on non-BlackBerry Android Smartphones with support for Hub+ subscriptions.

Copy Contacts Across Accounts: Quickly migrate all of your contact data from one account to another with the click of a button. To prevent duplicate contacts, you also have the option to delete all contacts from the originating account after the transfer. This feature can be found in Contact Settings > General Settings > Copy Contacts.

Notes/Tasks

Now available on non-BlackBerry Android Smartphones with support for Hub+ subscriptions.