BlackBerry considers what success it could find with a phablet

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

It’s been a while since we last had the opportunity to talk about BlackBerry at any length, checking in with CEO John Chen to hear about the company’s current efforts in Indonesia with the new Z3. While phones will continue to be BlackBerry’s core business (at least when it comes to hardware), we know that it’s been at least keeping an open mind when it comes to other form factors; we’re not expecting to see another PlayBook anytime soon, but

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BlackBerry CEO talks plans for future, engaging customers, and budget phones

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Being the CEO of a smartphone company may sound like a dream job to many of us, but there’s a big difference between running a firm seeing record sales or even a startup chock full of potential, and heading-up a company with sales that are in decline. Last fall, BlackBerry shuffled its leadership amidst talk of a possible buyout, bringing on John Chen to take reins. As BlackBerry introduced its new Z3 to Indonesia last week (above: ...

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BlackBerry shares Z3 hardware details as pre-orders open

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

During Mobile World Congress this year, BlackBerry made a pair of announcements, but both were quite a bit lacking when it came to details. The company announced its Q20 and Z3, but didn’t have so much as a picture of the Q20 to share with us, and precious little to divulge about the Z3′s hardware. We were told the Z3 was supposed to go up for sale in Indonesia in March, but that didn’t quite happen. Instead, today we learn of the start of pre-orders for the Z3, while ...

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Pocketnow Weekly 091: brace yourselves – the reviews are coming

Posted on by Michael Fisher

When an avalanche of reviews is rumbling its way down your mountain, it’s rarely easy to assemble a podcast team – but as we frequently remind you, the Pocketnow Weekly has never missed a week, and we’ll be damned if it’ll do so now. So despite the forthcoming reviews of the Samsung Galaxy S 5, Gear Fit, Gear 2, Oppo Find 7a, Nokia X, and the just-completed reviews of the ZENS Qi line, BlackBerry 10.2.1, and the Verizon HTC One M8, we’re banding together behind microphones in three separate cities on two continents to bring you the news and editorials of a very ...

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BlackBerry celebrates five years of its app store with free apps

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Back at the start of March, Google celebrated the two year anniversary of its Play Store (née Android Market) by offering users a few special deals on apps and media. That’s well and good for the Android crowd, but what about you smartphone fans who are on a bit of an underdog platform? We’ve got deals coming your way, too, as BlackBerry announces some special downloads to celebrate five years of BlackBerry World (née App World). With a user base split between BlackBerry 10 and older BB OS revisions, ...

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BlackBerry Q20 narrows-down its ETA

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Last week, BlackBerry announced a couple new BlackBerry 10 smartphones, including its upcoming Q20 handset. The Q20 is notable for not just being another hardware keyboard model, but also going back to the company’s roots by incorporating some old-style menu, back, send, and end buttons, as well as a trackpad. We weren’t quite sure how enthusiastic we should be towards the company taking a step backwards with its ...

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Windows Phone slinks past BlackBerry to #3 in US smartphone market

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

You don’t have to be paying extraordinarily close attention to the smartphone market to realize that Windows Phone is slowly but surely on its way up, while BlackBerry has been circling the drain. Even with those trajectories being pretty clear, BlackBerry started with enough of a head start to still outnumber Windows Phone users in many markets, including the US. It’s taken a long time to get here, but the latest ownership statistics finally suggests that BlackBerry usage has fallen to the point where ...

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Apple CarPlay built on a BlackBerry QNX foundation?

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Yesterday we saw Apple announce the arrival of CarPlay, the new system through which vehicle manufacturers can provide an in-dash interface to give drivers quick access to Siri, driving directions, as well as their favorite music. It all sounded like a pretty nice effort, with a number of big-name auto companies planning support. But as we learn more about CarPlay and how it works, one very interesting wrinkle is coming to light: the vehicle side of CarPlay sure sounds like ...

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Looking to the past won’t save BlackBerry

Posted on by Michael Fisher

Last week, BlackBerry broke into the fast-and-furious MWC news cycle with a few announcements of its own: not only would the company be keeping the door open for another tablet in the coming years, but it would also be releasing new smartphone hardware in the form of the Z3 and Q20. The former device was less than interesting, destined as it was for Indonesia, but the Q20 seemed like a BlackBerry fan’s NSFW fantasy. As ...

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BlackBerry keeps the door open for another tablet (but maybe don’t hold your breath)

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Over the years, we’ve seen many a smartphone manufacturer move into tablets. Some, like Samsung, take to the form factor like a fish to water, and tablets become an established part of their mobile lineups. Some, like LG, saw their tablet efforts go dormant for years, only to recently rekindle things. Then there are companies like HTC, which had some early dalliances with tablets, but seem to have moved on altogether. Where does BlackBerry fall in all of this? We had the ...

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The BlackBerry Q20 is just the first of many “classic” BB10 models

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Yesterday brought us some interesting news from BlackBerry, with the company announcing two new BlackBerry 10 smartphones. While the Z3 will be available in just a matter of weeks, its Indonesian-only focus took some of the air out of the news. But then we also learned about the Q20, the next BB10 model with a hardware QWERTY keyboard, though one that won’t hit retail until the second half of the year. The Q20 intrigued us so due to the way it seemed to backpedal in BlackBerry’s evolution, restoring the hardware ...

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BlackBerry launches Q20 and Z3 BB10 handsets

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

We knew to expect new Androids this week, and boy have we seen a lot of them! Those have been joined by handsets on platforms like Firefox OS, and we even got some updates about where Windows Phone is headed. Today, however, we receive news of a couple smartphone launches that have swooped in largely under the radar, as BlackBerry confirms two new BlackBerry 10 models, its Z3 and Q20. The Q20 will be the company’s latest model to feature a hardware keyboard, and ...

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BlackBerry’s move to 64-bit could happen much earlier than rumored

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Earlier this week, we talked about the idea of BlackBerry putting together a smartphone around the upcoming Qualcomm MSM8994 Snapdragon 810 SoC, making it a 64-bit octa-core powerhouse. The thing was, those rumors were seriously forward-looking, far more than usual, and described this hardware not launching until well over a year from now. However, a new source is now talking about a much earlier embrace of 64-bit chips, and claims that a BlackBerry handset featuring such a processor could launch as soon as September of this ...

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BlackBerry rumors looking to 2015 with very high-end hardware

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Where are BlackBerry smartphones going from here? We’ve heard that hardware keyboard should be getting some more attention, and there’s been recent talk about introducing some models this year with modern quad-core SoCs. Now one rumor attempts to look even further out, and claims that BlackBerry is planning to develop a handset around the still-unannounced Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8994. The MSM8994, based on what’s been revealed in leaks, looks to be a beast ...

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BlackBerry 10.2.1 update arrives with quite a few new features

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Lately, it’s seemed like every time we’ve had the opportunity to talk about BlackBerry, it’s had to do with BlackBerry the company: who’s leading it, how it seeks to restore its business, and all that. But today we get to put all that off to the side and focus on the phones themselves, as we see the release of a new software update bringing the platform up to version ...

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