BoostApps

Update: Bolt 1.7 was released today. The links at the end of this post point to the latest release.

This is a significant update that includes the following new features:

• The ability to post to Twitter from within Bolt. Posts are pre-populated with the current page's URL and are editable so you can add your own comments to the tweet.
• Widgets based on the draft W3C standard. These widgets run on the Bolt server and display in the browser rather than on the phone's idle screen. Currently there are nine widgets available
  • Weather - which shows a four day forecast for any world city
    Twitter Profile - displays recent tweets by a single Twitter user
  • Twitter Search
  • Bolt Forum - displays the last 10 posts on the Bolt user forum and lets you reply or create a new topics.
  • A basic Calculator
  • Calendar widget that displays a calendar for the current or any other month
  • Wikipedia Search, Dictionary.com lookup and Bing search; each of which opens the respective site to display the results of the user's query.
• New keypad shortcuts:
  • zoom in (#2), zoom out (#8)
  • Jump to page top (22) Jump to page bottom (88)
• Search for text in the page

Until you update, every time you start Bolt you will get a screen prompting you to update. The Update link in Bolt does not work on iDEN phones because Motorola doesn't allow 3rd party apps to update themselves.

To Update Bolt: Use the "Send To Phone" button below to send Bolt 1.7 to your phone. Then highlight Bolt in the Java Apps menu, press the "Menu" soft key and choose "Update". Choose to "Keep existing data" when prompted and you won't lose your bookmarks and settings.

This is latest release (1.7) of the "Full" Bolt Browser. It's a big app that uses a lot of resources but I think that it is preferable to the "Lite" version because of two features; the password manager and copy/paste.

The password manager is a real time and aggravation saver as you only have to log into new sites once and Bolt fills in your ID and password on future visits.

Copy and paste are useful too, although a bit limited. You can only paste into another field in Bolt; like the URL box, blog comment forms, forum posts or a Google search box. You can't copy text from Bolt and paste it into another app like a text message or calendar entry, unfortunately.

Bolt Full should work best on the i9 and i856 which have faster processors than the other iDEN models. But I've found that it is fast and stable on my i776 using the following settings which were suggested by BoostApps reader Jiesen:

• Set magnification to large or greater;
• Set image quality to low or none;
• Turn off the inline text input;
• Set the display mode to mobile.

There are a few things in Bolt that don't work: The "OK" button is one, use the green "Call" key instead. Downloading and Videos don't work either due to the limitations inherent in Motorola iDEN phones.

Type: Freeware
Vendor: Bitstream- Product Page, Online Help, Forum
Data Connection Required: Yes
Supported iDEN phones: All Falcon Series (i776, i465, i9, i290, etc.)

Alternate links for side loading and non-iDEN devices: ZIP JAD JAR