Blackberry are looking to cash-in with their new low-cost Qwerty smartphone. The Blackberry Q5 was unveiled by CEO Thorsten Heins on Tuesday in Orlando.

The Q5 features a trademark Blackberry QWERY keyboard, along with a 3.1-inch touch screen, but that’s about all we know about the entry-level handset from a hardware point of view. Blackberry have announced that the Q5 will be available in black, white, red, orange and pint and will go on sale in selected markets in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia from July. No pricing has been announced yet.

What’s most interesting about the Q5 is that it is clearly a budget device — something that Blackberry originally intended to keep BB10 away from for a while. What do you think of the Q5? Hope it comes stateside?

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Fans of Blackberry’s QWERTY equipped phones will be interested to hear that a new budget-oriented phone could be making an appearance next week at the Blackberry Live conference.

The news comes in the form of a leaked photo of the R10 along with purported specifications from Chinese website DGtle. According to their sources the Blackberry R10 will feature the same 3.1-inch display and 2GB RAM as the more costly Q10 but with a lower spec 5 mega-pixel camera, 8GB ROM and just an 1800mAh battery.

The R10 will be aimed at the entry-level market but would also make a great replacement for anyone wanting to update their older Curve handset. What’s interesting is that Blackberry has said that they will be focusing mostly on the high-end with BB10, so either they’ve changed their mind or they are simply billing this as their first mid-ranger. What do you think, would you be interested in a cheaper variant of the Q10? Tell us what you think in the comments below.

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BlackBerry devices have always been marketed as being very secure. It looks like the Department of Defense agrees. The DoD has officially approved the use of BlackBerry 10 devices, including the full lineup of the Z10, Q10 and the PlayBook, on its network.

This approval has come after earlier reports that the DoD was going to approve Apple iOS devices and some Samsung Galaxy handsets. While iOS 6 devices are expected to join BlackBerry 10 devices in being allowed in the next two weeks, devices running Samsung Knox, the South Korean company’s enterprise mobile solution, have already got the green light.

The Knox was earlier expected to be available with the S4, but later reports have pointed to the feature being available only by July. Samsung is certainly making a good effort, but BlackBerry is still the best when it comes to security.

Scott Totzke, SVP, BlackBerry Security at BlackBerry says: “BlackBerry 10 is ideal for our government customers because it offers a rich, highly responsive mobile computing experience, along with BlackBerry’s proven and validated security model – a combination that’s unmatched in the industry. This approval will enable DoD customers to connect their BlackBerry Z10 or BlackBerry Q10 smartphones to DoD networks and securely access assets from work, while enjoying the wealth of consumer-oriented functionality that BlackBerry 10 brings to market”.

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At the moment, Blackberry’s two main focus seems to be on the Blackberry Z10 and the QWERTY-powered Blackberry Q10. What does the company’s future hold though? According to a new patent, we could soon be seeing a BB10 device that features a sliding keyboard and looks like it could be a new BB10 member of the Blackberry Torch series.

The USPTO document was filed back in December of 2011 and doesn’t actually give out any details outside the lock. Instead it shows a phone that looks rather similar to the Blackberry Z10, save for the sliding keyboard. This could be perfect for those BB10 fans that want a physical keyboard but at the same time want to have a big enough screen to enjoy the much-improved touch features found with the latest Blackberry OS.

What do you think of the above Torch-like Blackberry device? Would you be interested in such a phone?

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Blackberry 10 is still very much a new OS, but that’s not stopping the company from working hard to improving what they’ve brought to the table. Blackberry 10.1 has now arrived as a Beta for developers, bringing with it quite a few improvements.

Thanks to the efforts of CrackBerry quite a few of the changes have already been documented, though there still might be surprise features that arrive when 10.1 actually starts rolling out to users.

One of the more interesting features is the addition of HDR photography capabilities, which exists on other platforms already and is very useful. It essentially combines one underexposed shot, one shot with normal exposure and one overexposed shot to create photos with the best lighting possible.

Other updates in BB10.1 include PIN-to-PIN messaging through Blackberry Hub, a new way to more easily check for BlackBerry World updates, the ability to paste phone numbers into dialpad and much more.
For a full list of everything currently known to be heading to the first major update to Blackberry 10, head on over to CrackBerry.

Do you own a new BB10 device? What do you think of the experience so far? How does it compare to older Blackberry devices or even how it compares to rivals running Windows Phone, Android or iOS?

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There is still no firm release date attached to the BlackBerry Q10, but the official splash page on the Fido website has it listed as “available soon.” As a quick refresher, this phone will come with a 3.1-inch 720x720px OLED display, the full QWERTY keyboard, BlackBerry OS 10, a 1.5GHz dual core processor, 8MP rear camera, 2MP front camera, LTE compatibility, 16GB storage, 2GB RAM and a microSD expansion slot good for up to 32GB more storage.

The Fido website has the BlackBerry Q10 listed at $350 on select 2-year Tab24 agreements (presumably on the “Smart” plans) or $650 outright without a Fido agreement. If you click through to the product page, you’ll find that there is an additional offer for existing Fido customers where they can reserve a BlackBerry Q10 for $200 when they renew on a 3-year Fido agreement (presumably they mean the Tab36 with a Max plan). The $25 hardware upgrade fee still applies.

Giving this “available soon” wording, we can probably safely assume that the other Canadian carriers will also be launching the BlackBerry Q10 pretty soon too.

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It seems that the Blackberry Q10 is on its way to Canada on April 30th, landing on Rogers and perhaps a few other carriers the same day.

At the moment, Rogers has the only confirmed launch date for the keyboard-equipped BB10 handset. For those that need a reminder of what the Q10 brings to the table, the phone obviously uses its more traditional QWERTY design as its biggest call to fame. Beyond that, it has a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 2GB RAM, a 3.1-inch AMOLED 720×720 pixel display, 16GB storage, microSD and both front and rear cameras. For the front you get a 2MP cam, the back gets an 8MP.

Unfortunately, no word on exactly how much the phone will set you back when it lands later this month. Still, if you love traditional Blackberry handsets but want the power of BB10, this could be the perfect phone for you?

What do you think of Blackberry’s latest efforts with the Z10 and Q10? Excited for what the future holds or do you feel it just isn’t enough to compete with its rivals at Microsoft, Google and Apple?

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Even though the iPhone continues to be the talk of the town, iOS actually lost 3.5% market share in the United States compared to the same period last year. By contrast, Android gained nearly 6% market share compared to last year. A big part of this growth can be attributed to Samsung, surely, but companies like Huawei are making a lot of headway too.

But what if we go beyond the two biggest elephants in the room to look at the other operating systems? It looks like the partnership with Nokia is working, because Windows Phone went from 2.7% to 4.1% market share. Considering that no other platform was able to break the 1.0% mark for the 3 month period ending February 2013, that’s quite the accomplishment. If Kantar’s information is correct, Windows Phone is the clear number three in the smartphone race right now. Blackberry OS suffered a heavy blow, as expected, dropping from 3.6% to just 0.7%, despite the push they had with BB10 and the BlackBerry Z10.

Globally, iOS is more or less holding steady with some small gains and losses, but Android has a definite upward trend. This can largely be attributed to people who are leaving legacy platforms — like Symbian — behind. Several former BlackBerry users are jumping to Android, too. Perhaps the biggest hit for BlackBerry is in Great Britain where its market share fell from 16.8% in 2012 to just 5.1% in 2013. Ouch.

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Remember when Blackberry announced they would have around 100,000 apps around launch of the Blackberry 10? It looks like they have now got there and have decided to celebrate by adding a few new higher-profile apps to the mix.

Blackberry 10 users now will find themselves having access to the Kindle, OpenTable and Wall Street Journal apps and eBay, Skype, Soundhound and Viber are preparing to launch in the next few weeks.

Although 100,000 isn’t much compared to iOS or Android, it isn’t half bad and does put it closer to Windows Phone’s app count. This is certainly a number worth celebrating, of course it also seems pretty crazy to think that Blackberry was able to pull off this number so quickly.

The truth is that they got there two different ways. First, there are some good Blackberry apps, but there are also quite a few awful ones as well. Second, the vast majority of the apps aren’t natively designed from the ground-up for Blackberry and instead are Android ports.

That said, no matter how you look at it, 100,000 apps (native or not) is a good start. If Blackberry wants to be more successful in the long-haul they need to attract more A+++ apps from iOS and Andriod as well as get more native apps, but you have to start somewhere.

What do you think of Blackberry 10 and their app selection, impressed or not?

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Feature Overview and Unboxing

I already posted a BlackBerry Z10 unboxing video a couple of weeks ago, so this is just going to be a quick recap. The BlackBerry Z10 is, of course, powered by the new BlackBerry 10 operating system. It gets a 4.2-inch 335ppi touchscreen, dual core 1.5GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB storage, 8MP camera, 2MP front camera, and microSD expansion. It also gets both LTE and NFC, as well as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.

On paper, the BlackBerry Z10 is quite competitive with the iPhone 5 and most higher end Android devices, except that its 4.2-inch screen is noticeably smaller than the much larger Android phones with their 4.7+ inch displays these days. BlackBerry World boasts about 70,000 apps for the Z10, many of which are ported over from their Android counterparts.

Hardware Impressions

The BlackBerry Z10 definitely feels very solid in the hands. I particularly like the rubbery back that provides a great grip. The profile is remarkably thin and I like how the front face is completely lacking in buttons, leaving a much sleeker overall appearance.

The volume controls are along the right side, which is fine, but the power button is in the middle of the top. What I found is that when I wanted to put the phone to sleep (by pressing the power button on top with my index finger), my thumb oftentimes pressed one of the volume buttons by accident. I’m wondering if this could be rectified by either shifting the power button to either side on top, or by placing it on the right side of the phone instead, relocating the volume buttons to the left side.

As I have grown accustomed to Android displays of 4.7-inches or bigger, getting back to the 4.2-inch display felt comparatively small. The overall form factor, in this way, is closer to the iPhone 5. The difference is that the word “BlackBerry” on the bottom is not a home button; it really doesn’t serve any real purpose.

BlackBerry 10 Gestures and UI

People who are coming from legacy BlackBerry products may face some confusion with BlackBerry 10. There is no BlackBerry button, for example, nor is there is a hardware back button. Just about everything is done via gestures and many of these originate from off the screen, not unlike webOS. You get back to the home screen, for instance, by swiping up from off the bottom of the display (where the BlackBerry name is). You swipe in from the right side to access functions and swipe in from the top for certain contextual settings.

The UI isn’t terrible, but there is a bit of a learning curve. One thing that BlackBerry 10 is still lacking, though, are home screen widgets. You only get a page where it displays your last eight apps in a widgetized kind of form, but you can’t “pin” any of these to stay there forever. You can rearrange the apps in the app drawer, but that’s not really the same thing.

And speaking of apps, there just aren’t enough at the moment. The pre-installed YouTube “app” is simply a browser shortcut, for example. The native Twitter app, while functional, isn’t nearly robust enough for power users. It doesn’t support lists and your DMs are bundled together with your mentions in a single column. That’s not good enough. The hope is that third-party developers will continue to adopt this platform and, in time, the app selection will improve.

BlackBerry Hub

Your real home is the BlackBerry Hub, which can be accessed by swiping up from the bottom and then toward the right. Alternatively, it is effectively the leftmost home screen. Here, all of your notifications are amalgamated into a single interface, including texts, emails, Facebook updates, Twitter, Foursquare and so on. There are several “tricks” and UI quirks here that you can use, but I feel there is still a lot that can be improved.

For instance, when you are within one of the notifications, there is no option to easily move to the next one. Instead, you have to hit back to get back to the list of notifications and then choose the next notification. It should be simpler and faster than that.

Camera and Video

The 8MP camera on the BlackBerry Z10 is decent, but it won’t win any awards either. It seems to have a habit of overexposing, leaving some washed out elements, but this really depends on your lighting conditions. Here is a macro-esque shot that I took indoors under soft incandescent lighting.

Clarity and detail are good enough to get the job done most of the time. Much like the rest of BB10, the camera app has a bit of a learning curve. For instance, it’s not tap-to-focus, as it is continually hunting for autofocus. It’s tap for shutter, so you have to make sure the square is green before tapping the display. I uploaded a full 1080p HD video to YouTube, as well as more photo samples to Flickr if you want to see some more. They’re all untouched and unedited, taken straight out of the phone.

Conclusion

I tried to be optimistic about the BlackBerry Z10. This was supposed to represent the rebirth of the company and a real push to, at the very least, be seen as a legitimate number three in the world of smartphones behind Android and iOS. The device has been able to attract some new users, to be sure, but we can already see that they’re starting to run low on momentum.

BlackBerry 10, as a platform, is an overall improvement over previous versions and it’s good to see that BlackBerry is prioritizing the development of third party apps. The phone itself is solid and it performs well, but it still feels incomplete compared to the more mature Android and iPhone offerings already on the market. It lacks a unique selling proposition that would make me want this instead of what Google, Samsung, HTC, Apple and others are giving us.

If BlackBerry manages to survive and if the Q10 gives them a little boost later this year, then I’m hoping that the BlackBerry Z11 and Q11 will be the real stars that the Z10 and Q10 should have been.

Mobilemag Score: 7/10

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