Blaast Finally Launched, Partners With XL

This morning I accidentally read a Tweet from Fachry Bafadal, one of the ambassadors of Blaast who retweet the information about Blaast services availability for common users.

Feeling curious, I downloaded Blaast application while looking for some additional information. Other information that I found came from Ziyad,  someone that i know as a local software engineer who works for Blaast. He announced that today Blaast has soft-launched and opens their services for those who are interested trying a variety of applications in their ecosystems.

Blaast, a cloud computing platform on mobile device, has been active in Indonesia at least since May 2011. Even though the headquarter is in Finland, Blaast chose Indonesia as the first place to launch their services. One of the main reasons is because the opportunity of feature phone is pretty big here.

Various activities such as meet-up, workshops, competitions and approaches to different developers in different regions has been done to introduce their services, to get developers to develop applications and make them available in their application store. You can read other information about Blaast in DailySocial.

One of the interesting things is the cooperation between XL and Blaast. I have actually heard this long time ago but it's not yet confirmed. Blaast has also mentioned in their website that they would establish partnership with telecommunication operator in Indonesia. The partnership seems official and it now can be seen from the URL address to get mobile Blaast application. Two logos (XL and Blaast) will appear when you launch the Blaast application. There are also the information from XL relating to GPRS cost that would be applied for the first week.

After trying to download Blaast application, the applications are still not available. Somehow the ‘start’ button which should be pressed is not active. I am using Nokia C7 and XL service. No other explanation on Blaast website about the requirements needed to be able to use their services as well as mobile device type and provider; so I assume it can be used in all mobile phones device. Their website also didn't mention about using other operators than XL.

If you want to try a variety of Blaast applications such as chat and games, you may go to this link get.blaast.com from web browser. You have to mention phone number that you’re using and later on there will be a link to download Blaast application. You may also visit get.blaast.com from your mobile browser.

We will try to find additional information about Blaast soft launched and the cooperation with XL. I will try again, perhaps on other phones, the variety of Blaast applications available. For those who've tried, you can write your experience in the comments field.

Note: After i wrote on DailySocial Indonesia version, Daniel Bergqvist, Head of Developer Relations Blaast, told me via email about supported phones for Blaast. Daniel said, “Blaast is purpose built for feature phones and with reduced data usage by design – which is one of biggest constraints in evolving markets.”

Here are a list of most popular Blaast supported phones:

• Nokia C3
• Nokia X2
• Nokia 2700 Classic
• Nokia 2730 Classic
• Nokia 3120 Classic
• Nokia 5130 XpressMusic
• Nokia 5310 XpressMusic
• Samsung B3210 Corby TXT
• D-One DG578
• Nexian NX-G801 Beatbox
• Nexian NX-G821

Daniel also told me that the number of supported phones is growing by the day. So if you want to test Blaast you can check out those devices or had similiar characteristics.

Blaast also will have an event to officially release their service, we will update the detail.