Phone features are finally getting futuristic – and specs have nothing to do with it

Posted on by Michael Fisher

If you’re not one to tote your smartphone around in a slick-looking holster, do me a favor: go ahead and pull your phone out of your pocket. Or if it’s on your desk, flip it over. What’s it do? Unless you own one of a small percentage of modern smartphones (or you’re a big fat phony) your answer is probably “nothing.” As powerful as today’s mobile devices are under the hood, most are still lacking in a crucial area: intelligence. Or, if you want ...

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Smartphone OS marketshare April update: Android dominates, iOS grows, Windows Phone passes 5% threshold

Posted on by admin

The latest smartphone OS marketshare numbers are in from Kantar and they refer to the three-month period that ended in April 2013. Google’s Android is still leading the chart of OS percentage share of smartphone sales, with its 51.7%, up from 50.3% in the same period ending in April last year. However, it’s growth is much slower than the one at which iOS is trending, up from 39.1% last year to 41.4% this April. Last year the gap between the two was 11.2% and this April it is down to 10.3%; not a spectacular decrease, but a steady trend, at least in the US. There is also good ...

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BlackBerry Z10 Review

Posted on by Michael Fisher

___ The BlackBerry Z10 isn’t just another new smartphone. It’s a symbol of redemption, the net result of the efforts of thousands working to salvage one of the most famous brands in the history of mobile technology. For the first time in years, “the new BlackBerry” isn’t just some repackaged business phone; it’s an iconic flagship on which rests the fate of the company that now shares its name. “We had to make a serious decision,” BlackBerry ...

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4 Things the New BlackBerry Needs to Learn From Android if They Want to Succeed

Posted on by Joe Levi

The cat is out of the bag and the new BlackBerry — the company — is here. For whatever reasons, the market didn’t seem to take the news very well and BlackBerry stocks dipped notably. Hopefully the tech world won’t be quite as harsh as Wall Street. Most of us will agree that competition is both good and healthy for the mobile industry. Everyone seems to feed off each other’s successes and learns from the competition’s failures. The end result (ideally) is a better device for each of us, regardless of which platform we’ve adopted in our personal and ...

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Are You Going to Consider Switching to BB10?

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Yesterday’s BlackBerry 10 announcement feels like the arrival of a major new player on the smartphone scene. Sure, BlackBerry’s been around this whole time, but with how RIM let BlackBerry 7 really stagnate over the past year or so, it’s been difficult to treat as a serious competitor. That all changes this week, though, and the availability of the first Z10 handsets in the UK will give smartphone shoppers a new option to consider. ...

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BlackBerry 10 Vs. Windows Phone 8 (Video)

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

We’ve already showed you how BlackBerry 10 looks when compared against Android, but for you Windows Phone fans out there, we wanted to highlight just what BB10′s got in common with WP8, and where these two platforms tend to do things differently. Just like we did with Android, we take a function-by-function look at the two operating systems, starting with the first thing you’re exposed to when picking up your phone: its lock screen. From there we check out how notifications work (or don’t), see ...

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BlackBerry 10 Vs. Android (Video)

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Android’s the most popular smartphone operating system around at the moment, so you’d better believe that BlackBerry is interested in courting more than a few of those Android users and bringing them over to its new platform. Let’s take a look at how BlackBerry 10 stacks up against Android. We put a new BlackBerry Z10 up against a Samsung Galaxy Note II, taking a look at how performing common tasks differs between the two systems. We investigate differences and similarities between their lock screens, how search works ...

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BlackBerry Commits to Screen Sizes, Resolutions: Future Models Will Mirror Z10 and Q10

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Dreaming about a big 4.7-inch BlackBerry 10 smartphone? Don’t count it on it showing up anytime soon, as in a follow-up Q&A session to this morning’s BlackBerry 10 launch event, CEO Thorsten Heins confirmed that the screen configurations used on the new Z10 and Q10 models will be those the company sticks with for future BB10 handsets. That means a 4.2-inch widescreen 1280 ...

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BlackBerry 10 Launch Dates Aren’t Good News for Everyone

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

We were just getting our hopes up about the chance of seeing BlackBerry 10 hardware available immediately after today’s platform kick-off event, but that’s sadly not going to be the case everywhere. Indeed, while the UK gets the Z10 as of tomorrow, and Canada will get it next week, the US will have to wait until mid-March. We had heard that March date rumored earlier, but after having that followed up by all these other rumors of earlier launches elsewhere (now confirmed), we grew optimistic that everyone would ...

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BlackBerry Z10 Goes Official: The Full-Touch BlackBerry 10 Experience

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Of all the leaked hardware we’ve seen leading up to today’s BlackBerry 10 launch event, no device has been more clear in our eyes than the Z10. BlackBerry is really embracing the idea of models with no hardware keyboards from the get-go with BB10, and the Z10 is intended to highlight just how far the company has come since its QWERTY roots. The Z10 features a 4.2-inch 1280 x 768 display, for a pixel density of 356 ppi. Around back, there’s a textured surface to give you a secure grip on the phone, which will be arriving in both black and white. The phone runs a dual-core ...

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BlackBerry Announces Its Q10, The Grand Return of QWERTY

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Today’s BlackBerry event is more than just about a platform launch: it’s about new hardware! We’ve been looking forward to two BlackBerry 10 handsets, the full-touch Z10, and a hardware-QWERTY model we thought would be the X10. Well, a good event could always use a few surprises, and that keyboard model turns out to be the Q10, instead (Q for QWERTY, get it?). Unlike the BlackBerry Z10 with its widescreen 4.2-inch display, the Q10 goes for a smaller square screen to make room for the keyboard. The ...

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RIM Launches BlackBerry 10

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

It’s been a long time coming, but after literally years of waiting, the time has finally arrived for BlackBerry 10, the next big chapter in RIM’s smartphone story. The company coordinated an ambitious multinational launch event for the debut of its new OS, and beyond the main stage in Toronto, RIM has simultaneous events going on in London, New York, Johannesburg, Paris, and Dubai. With a global audience watching on, CEO Thorsten Heins took to the stage to formally announce the arrival of BlackBerry 10: “BlackBerry 10 ...

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Yes, We’re Going to Cover BB10; Here’s Why

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

The problem with BlackBerry news has been, at least until recently, that it just wasn’t very interesting. Sure, we’d occasional get news of some hot new hardware, but then RIM would milk the life out of those devices; as of today, the Bold 9900 is still the company’s top model, and it launched eighteen months ago. Even on the software side, there was little happening to grab our attention, and especially in light of all that was going on for iOS, Android, and even Windows Phone, it was really hard to find a reason to care ...

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White BlackBerry Z10 Makes On-Camera Appearance as It Gets Ready for Wednesday’s Launch

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

We’ve known to expect a white BlackBerry Z10 for a while now, and have had a few opportunities to check out depictions of just such a model thanks to a number of leaks. Well, press renders and official photographs are well and good, but if you’ve been wondering when we’d have the opportunity to check out the white Z10 in the flesh, we’ve got good news for you, upon a smattering of images surfacing with just a couple ...

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BlackBerry Z10 Could Get Here Weeks Earlier Than Anticipated

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Make no mistake: RIM’s BlackBerry 10 launch is still scheduled for January 30. While that should bring us all sorts of news on just how we can expect the new platform to roll out, rumors are already looking to just when the first hardware will arrive. So far, we’ve heard a couple possible dates for the arrival of the full-touch Z10, with both a February 28 date attached to a launch in Canada, and a much farther-out March 27 for T-Mobile in the States. As we start to close in on RIM’s announcement (less than ...

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