“The industry got stuck on the term ‘tablets’,” Heins told CNET, before adding a stance for the company. “We want to create something that’s easier to use.” His plan is to make the tablet essentially a paper weight unless it’s paired with a mobile phone — in this case, a BlackBerry — to act as a brain.

That completely contradicts his view from last month, when he essentially claimed that tablets would be dead in the water within five years. “We believe in a single element of mobile computing: one on your hip,” he said. Even that seems to be a contradiction as well, since BlackBerry released the BlackBerry Playbook a couple of years ago… which is a tablet. It was a failure of a tablet though, so perhaps the company was bitter about tablets because they have scarred themselves with a flop.

While it seems Heins has reversed his views from last month today, it doesn’t look like that means BlackBerry will be coming out with another tablet any time soon. The focus has been mainly on mobile phone hardware and the BlackBerry 10 OS. ”The pure hardware play isn’t making a lot of sense today,” Heins remarked, but later added, “We’re interested in the future of tablets, whatever that is.”

Whatever you say, Heins.

[via CNET]

OS 10.1 comes with some much-needed improvements, including HDR camera, improved apps, Instant Action, battery improvements and much more.

Here’s the full description of features and improvements provided by BlackBerry.

Highlights of BlackBerry 10.1

BlackBerry Hub manages all of your conversations

BlackBerry Hub helps you stay organized, in control and on top of all of your conversations, and with BlackBerry 10.1, it just keeps getting better. You can now view emails that are attached to another email, get contact suggestions when you start addressing a message, and send PIN to PIN messages for direct communication between BlackBerry smartphones.

Personalize your Notifications

BlackBerry 10.1 allows you to set up personalized notifications for your contacts and accounts. Customize ringtones, vibrations and the LED light for calls or message from each of your friends, family or colleagues. You can also set up a different notification for different accounts (such as for different email accounts, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

Click to call

You can now click on a phone number in an email or BBM message to call the number or copy and paste it right onto the dialer screen in the phone app.

Better cursor control

BlackBerry 10.1 offers better cursor control making it easier to accurately place the cursor and select text. Just tap once to bring up the cursor control, grab the blue circle and drag it around to the insertion point that you want. Improved visual feedback lets you know where you’re pointing. You can also tap either side of the circle to move forward or backward one character at a time.

Improved picture capturing

BlackBerry 10.1 adds an HDR (high dynamic range) shooting mode for taking beautiful images in tricky lighting conditions. High Dynamic Range (HDR) mode takes multiple pictures at different exposure levels and layers them automatically to produce a single photo that combines the best of the dark and light areas. It also includes improved red eye and golden eye reduction in the picture editor.

More to discover with BlackBerry 10.1

You’ll find a number of new enhancements across the BlackBerry 10 OS like landscape support for the calendar, easier international dialing and so much more. The first step to discovering these new features on your BlackBerry Z10 smartphone is to update your BlackBerry 10 software.

Updating is easy

Updating to BlackBerry 10.1 is free and easy to do. To update your BlackBerry Z10 smartphone to BlackBerry 10.1 look for the alert in the notifications section of the BlackBerry Hub. You can also check for software updates through the software updates section in the Settings menu or through the BlackBerry Link desktop software. The download will happen in the background and the update will be applied without needing to back up your smartphone. All of your information remains safe. For more information on how to update your BlackBerry Z10 smartphone, visit www.BlackBerry.com/update.

It will land this July in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. It will be available in a variety of colors including pink, white, black and red. Pricing is not yet announced. It is not known whether the Q5 will land in the US.

[Via BlackBerry]

“In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore. Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.”

Though Heins is not a tablet fan, the CEO does believe BlackBerry will be “the absolute leader in mobile computing” in five years. The company will gain market share on the strength of its BlackBerry platform, not by being a copycat. The executive was silent on the future of the Playbook, but this and earlier comments hint that the PlayBook line is on hold indefinitely.

[Via Bloomberg]

Carphone Warehouse was packed with customers, with two lines forming at the retail stores, one for those buying one unit and those buying multiple units, according to a report from Seeking Alpha. Carphone Warehouse sold 2000 units in the first 90 minutes of the store opening, which translates to 22.2 BlackBerry Q10 handsets being sold per minute.

The BlackBerry Q10 is one of two new BlackBerry handsets that run on the BlackBerry 10 OS. It’s brother, the Z10 sports a full touch screen, and was released in the U.K. last month to modest sales. The BlackBerry Q10 has a full QWERTY keyboard, runs on a dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, an 8MP rear-facing camera and a 2MP front facing camera.

[Via: Seeking Alpha]

BlackBerry unveiled two BlackBerry 10 smartphones back in January of this year, the Z10 and the Q10. The difference between the two is a QWERTY keyboard, a piece of BlackBerry’s past that will grace the Q10. The Z10 was released in the U.S. and Canada in early February.

BlackBerry claims to have shipped 1 million Z10 units worldwide — not a bad start for the company, but not the best either. With Apple and Google dominating the smartphone app ecosystem with their iOS and Android offerings, BlackBerry is having a hard time penetrating the consumer mind with 83% of Americans ignorant about the release of BlackBerry 10. The Z10 is accounting for 5.3% of BlackBerry traffic currently, which is a step in the right direction. The release of the Q10 could propel the company into the limelight however if it is adopted by traditional BlackBerry consumers, who are mostly business and enterprise users.

What do you think about BlackBerry’s new operating system and handset offerings? Is BlackBerry doomed, or can it compete against Android and iOS? Let us know your thoughts.

[Via: Mashable]

MKM Partners researched BlackBerry 10 by the numbers and found, well, some pretty bad ones. When asked the question, “Are you aware that BlackBerry 10 was launched in Canada and Europe in late January 2013?” 82.6 percent of respondents said “No.” To be fair, Americans are being asked about a Canadian and European launch, but for nearly 83 percent of them to not know anything about RIM’s new flagship product months after a pretty large debut is still pretty sad.

Additionally, The Wall Street Journal reported that over 50 percent of BlackBerry Z10 buyers ended up returning it, which would mean returns are outnumbering sales. This is a claim RIM later denied, stating that return rates are on par with other smartphones.

Another poll indicated that 71.4 percent of participants said they would never buy a BlackBerry compared to 31.3 percent saying the same about Android and 19.7 percent saying that about an iPhone.

After all this I think it’s safe to say RIM has a real problem on its hands. Even with BlackBerry 10, the platform has failed to stay relevant in the eyes of consumers. What’s next will either be imminent doom or a miraculous turnaround.

[via 9to5Mac]

The update is slated to bring camera updates, such as HDR picture mode which will help users take quality low-light pictures. Features that will utilize the Q10′s keyboard such as Keyboard Shortcuts, Word Prediction and Type N Go will make an appearance, as well as Blackberry Mobile Voice System Support, BlackBerry Balance and Mnemonic Phone Dialing. BlackBerry Link is also rumored to make its way to BlackBerry 10.1, which will enable access to users’ PC contents.

What BlackBerry 10.1 will actually look like is still to be determined, but we couldn’t expect it to look much different from what’s already in place right now.  We should see the new OS update soon, as the BlackBerry Q10 releases in Canada later this month.

[Via: GSM Arena]

Phones4U was the first UK retailer to offer the BlackBerry Z10 handset, and is claiming exceptional sales of that unit. BlackBerry has shipped one million Z10 handsets to date, which bodes well for the nascent OS, but BlackBerry will have to move many more units of its smartphones to catch up with the likes of Android and Apple devices.

The keyboard touting BlackBerry Q10 will be available at the end of April, for the price of £549.95 without a SIM, or £36 a month on contract.

[Via: T3]

No one really knows how BlackBerry’s OS 10 will look on such a small screen, as the Q10 display is only 3.1-inches. However, on paper the new QWERTY BlackBerry will carry a Super AMOLED display, 720 x 720 resolution at 330 PPI. This could be a really beautiful looking screen, but it could also be a disaster if BB10 doesn’t operate as good on the smaller screen.

[via Best Buy (CA), Telus, Rogers, Future Shop]

]]> http://www.intomobile.com/2013/04/09/blackberry-q10-preorders-available-canada/feed/ 0 http://www.intomobile.com/2013/04/06/blackberry-10-jam-kicks-off-belgrade-serbia/ http://www.intomobile.com/2013/04/06/blackberry-10-jam-kicks-off-belgrade-serbia/#comments Sat, 06 Apr 2013 12:41:11 +0000 Dusan Belic http://www.intomobile.com/?p=414861 ... Read more]]> Today I’m attending BlackBerry’s developer event in Belgrade, Serbia, which is organized by the company’s Balkan developer network. Even though the Canadian company was losing market share in the last few years, they’re eager to tell everyone they’re a different company now, one that has a brand new platform to compete in today’s market.

We had a chance to watch the live demo of select BlackBerry 10 features, including the sexy-new UI called Flow with the “Peak” preview capability, TimeShift camera mode (licensed from Scalado, as far as I’ve understood) and the BlackBerry Hub all-in-one messaging/alert center. The company’s representative also reminded us that their platform is more secure than anything else on the market, and has even got certification from the German government.

As developers are looking beyond “two default platforms,” iOS and Android, BlackBerry is looking to attract them to its eco-system. And so does Microsoft, and the Canadian company is doing its best to make it as easy as possible for developers to choose BlackBerry 10 over (or in addition to) Windows Phone.

To that end, BlackBerry is investing a ton of resources to help developers not only port existing mobile apps to BlackBerry 10 but also make brand-new apps. In that sense, individuals and companies looking to make applications for the platform can visit dedicated forums, ask assistance from BlackBerry tech centers, get training and certification, as well as app exposure if their “work” uses all of the elements of the platform.

But that’s not all. The company also gave away more than 12,000 Dev Alpha BlackBerry 10 devices, 20,000+ Playbooks, and 7,000+ Z10 Limited Edition devices to developers to help them test their apps. All this produced impressive results, driving the app count from 20 in June 2012 to more than 100,000 apps in April 2013!

Finally, we were also able to get a hint about BlackBerry’s future plans, which go beyond mobile and include not only computing devices but also (connected) cars and other in-house appliances.

As I’m finishing this text, the company’s Aaron Ardiri is giving as an overview of developer tools. The launch break will follow, after which we’re off to developer sessions…