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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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.

The post BlackBerry Q10 Shows Up on Fido Website, Launch Imminent appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

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?

The post Blackberry 10 Hits 100,000 App Milestone appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

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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After missing out on the iPhone yet again, it looks like T-Mobile will be doing more business with BlackBerry in 2013. More specifically, a report from N4BB claims that T-Mobile will be carrying the BlackBerry Q10 come May 2013.

Since the release of BlackBerry 10, the Z10, and the Q10, it was believed that T-Mobile would have the BlackBerry Z10 while Sprint offered the BlackBerry Q10. However, a representative from the BlackBerry Experience Forum revealed to N4BB that the Blackberry Q10 would be arriving on T-Mobile sometime in May of 2013.

If you have not been keeping up on all things BlackBerry, here is the rundown on the second smartphone to have BlackBerry 10:

• Full QWERTY keyboard (physical)
• Dual-Core 1.5GHz – Snapdragon S4 Plus
• 3.1”, SuperAMOLED display, 720 x 720 resolution at 330 PPI
• 8MP rear facing camera, Auto Focus, 5X digital zoom, 1080p HD video recording, 2MP front facing camera, 3X digital zoom, 720p HD video recording
• 2GB RAM, 16GB Internal Storage, microSD Slot up to 64GB
• Dual Band 802.11 a/b/g/n, 2.4/5GHz, 4G Mobile Hotspot
• Assisted, Autonomous, and Simultaneous GPS
• BlackBerry NS1, 2100mAh Removable Battery
• Accelerometer, Magnetometer, Proximity, Gyroscope, Ambient light sensor
• NFC, microUSB, microHDMI-Out, Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy, 4G LTE
• Dimensions (LxWxD): 119.6mm x 66.8mm x 10.35mm

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When it comes to Blackberry 10, so far all we have seen is high-end devices, with Blackberry 7 devices making up the low and mid-ranges. Now CEO Thorsten Heins has clarified that this isn’t going to be changing.

“You will not see us getting into the 50-, 60- buck phone segment. This is not BlackBerry”. That means midrange and highrange is all you will get.

Is this a smart move though? True, Blackberry has typically attracted business folks and the elite. That said, with the iPhone, Android handsets and many others breathing down Blackberry’s neck, branching out beyond this image wouldn’t necessarily be a bad move.

Reaching out to the lower end market with a highly capable OS could have actually helped win over some new fans, while the expensive price of the BB10-based Z10 might alienate some of those users in the developing world, one of the markets where Blackberry is most popular.

What do you think of this news, does it surprise you that Blackberry is targeting the high end and mid-range only? Will this prove to be a mistake in the long run?

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The post Blackberry Won’t Sell Sub-$60 Handsets, Says CEO appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

As a quick refresher, the BlackBerry Z10 features a 4.2-inch 768 x 1280 pixel display, a dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon Krait 1.5GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage and a microSD slot for additional storage. There’s an 8MP camera on the back with LED flash and a 2MP camera on the front for video calls. Naturally, it comes with the usual assortment of LTE, WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC radios in tow.

As far as the contents of the box, there aren’t too many surprises. Aside from the phone itself, you get a stereo headset, USB cable, wall adapter, and documentation. The elongated battery looks a little different than most and boasts a capacity of 1800mAh. The rubbery textured back is similar to what we’ve seen in previous Berries, but it does feel a little extra rubbery this time around. The phone did feel lighter than expected, even after I put the battery in, but it still felt quite solid in the hands.

My initial impressions are mostly positive, but the 4.2-inch display feels comparatively small in a market flooded with 4.7+ inch Android devices. There’s also a definite bezel around the display, since BlackBerry 10 requires those gestures to originate from beyond the screen. I’ll be putting the Z10 though its paces for the next while and the full review will follow shortly thereafter.

The post Video: Unboxing the BlackBerry Z10 Smartphone appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

This comes by way of BlackBerry European MD Stephen Bates. He says that BlackBerry wants to be seen as a “high-end” company first and foremost, so it will only be launching flagship devices like the Z10 and the upcoming Q10. However, they are going to “evolve that portfolio to enter the mid-tier” at some point. They won’t, though, get “to the entry level tier for some time, certainly not this year.”

Given that a substantial part of BlackBerry’s current market share comes in the form of cheap prepaid phones on cheap prepaid plans, they’re not giving up on the entry level just yet. That said, that end of the market is just going to be stuck with a BB7 Curve for the foreseeable future. Indeed, “it was important for us to show that we’re not giving up on BB7…. we launched BBM voice and it connects into the BB10 world where we’ve added video and screen sharing.”

BB10 will get to the entry level market eventually, assuming that BlackBerry is still around to see it. Just know that if you want some BB10 action this year, it’s at the higher end with the Q10 and Z10.

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Just over a week ago, RIM (Research In Motion) went through a couple of huge changes. First off, they have officially changed their public brand from RIM to BlackBerry. This change was mainly to help put BlackBerry at the center of the company. Secondly, the company launched BlackBerry 10, the Z10, and the Q10.

Despite the company’s new direction and products, Apple Insider is reporting that Home Depot is planning to replace about 10,000 BlackBerry smartphones with iPhones. A Home Depot representative went on to add that this move will only affect store managers, district managers, other corporate-level staffers, and field ops. Therefore, the other 60,000 Motorola devices used for mobile point-of-sale, analytical, walkie-talkie, and traditional telephony purposes will remain unchanged.

This is not the first time that BlackBerry lost a large “contract” for devices. In October of 2012, the Department of Homeland Security announced that 17,676 ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) employees will now be receiving iPhones instead of BlackBerrys.

BBRY stock was down 0.47 (-2.77%) on February 8th. The stock has increased by 9.57 (+138.29%) since July 18, 2012.

Is BlackBerry 10 and the Z10 going to save BlackBerry from extinction? Will other companies and consumers follow Home Depot and drop BlackBerry? Let us know in the comments below.

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