Last night I attended MobileMonday Toronto’s April Event: “Developer Ecosystem Discussion – From PlayBook to BlackBerrys”. The event featured Tyler Lessard, VP Global Alliances and Developer Relations at RIM (Research In Motion) giving us a general overview and taking questions as part of audience Q & A about the newest developments around the launch of the Playbook, and BlackBerry Developer Ecosystem.

Side Note: If you want to come to a future Mobile Monday in Toronto check out the links below for their Twitter account and website. As well, even if you can’t attend you can follow the Twitter hashtag #MoMoTO, also linked below.

A lot of things were talked about last night but most of them related to developers and how they could make money on apps they put into App World but this post isn’t about that. This post is about a comment that Tyler Lessard made during the Q & A afterwards in response to a question about BlackBerry App World.

I think most BlackBerry users have seen the icon shown above which indicates to us when there is a new update to one of our apps available in App World. Or we see it appear in our Messages Application as we are looking at emails as shown below.

The question posed to Tyler Lessard was when & if App World will ever get an “Upgrade All” button for those times when we get more than one app upgrade availability notification.

This may seem like something mundane to someone who doesn’t own/never really used a BlackBerry. But as many a BlackBerry use can tell you it isn’t and here’s why (and if you already know this pain you can just skip the next paragraph of description which is italicized).

What happens when there is more than one of these notifications? We have to upgrade each item individually on our Blackberry. This means that we have to: Download the app, let it install, reboot the BlackBerry to finish the install (a reboot usually takes upwards of 3 minutes) and then do the whole process again for each app we need to update. The whole process is somewhat drawn-out when you have one app to deal with but 2 or 3? Forget about it. That is totally for a time when you’re definitely not going to be using your phone AND you’re doing something else at the same time so you only have to look at your ‘Berry every 2 or 3 minutes to click and ensure it continues the process.

When Tyler Lessard heard the question he got a smirk on his face and his response was given in the tone of voice that said ‘I am officially not allowed to comment on this but it is something that is going to be happening sooner rather than later‘. His actual reply was

“Upgrade All button? Hmmm….what a good idea!”

That is all the confirmation I have to say that this option/feature is coming to a BlackBerry App World update near you at some time in the future. I do not have any leaked documents, I do not have an official confirmation from anyone at RIM, I just have implication based on a tone of voice and facial expression of a RIM VP on stage at a developers event. However, I think if you ask everyone who was there, they’ll agree with me what Mr Lessard was saying with his answer.

For More Info:

Mobile Monday Toronto home page here

Mobile Monday Toronto on Twitter @MoMoToronto here

Mobile Monday Toronto Twitter hashtag #MoMoTO search here

Tyler Lessard on Twitter @TylerLessard here

Picture credits:

App World Notification Icon: BlackBerry Help Center 6.0 Icon Guide here

App World Notification within Messages Application: CIO.com article here