Blackberry 10

[hanker565]

Anyone excited for the new Blackberries coming out? Release is slated for this Wednesday. Leaked images look pretty good: http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/01/28/blackberry-z10-n10-renders/

 

[GreenFrog]

I sure as hell am. Considering jumping from my iPhone to the Z10 and getting rid of my work bb, which is a gigantic heap of steaming ****.

Maybe my company will pick up the dime on my phone bill?!

 

[hanker565]

Yikes, definitely consolidate. I did the two phone thing for a while before consolidating on my current Galaxy. Your balls will thank you the next time someone releases a bad cell phone/radiation study...

 

[hanker565]

Oh and my company pays for it

 

[ter1413]

Nice looking phones......2 years too late!

 

[MikeDT]



Nice looking phones......2 years too late!

I'm thinking that. TBH I don't think I've actually seen a Blackberry phone in about 2 years. I read about the BB Playbook tablet, never saw one though, and that didn't seem to do very well.

 

[xpress]

Our local provider invited our company to a roadshow of sorts, to demo the new upcoming devices.

We had a 45 minute overview on BB10, and I'm not impressed.

The biggest feature is "Peak".
You can preview your emails/text/messages without leaving the screen you're currently on.
Convenient, but not revolutionary.

The camera tools are neat, but nothing you couldn't download via various app stores.

The predictive keyboard text looks good, but again, has been readily available on other platforms for quite a while.

The menu screens are far from attractive, and seem very dated.

To me, a phone comes down to roughly four things.
1) Reliability
2) Battery life
3) Application availability
4) Size

1 - IOS and Android have become extremely reliable, while the reports are still showing blackberries with the most failures.
2 - Battery life is a joke across the board. Few phones (Razr Maxx) have decent battery life. I'd gladly sacrifice weight for a larger, 1.5 day capacity. The 9900 has a horrible battery, and everyone knows it.
3 - The applications on BB (and I can assume Windows) are pitiful relative to Android and IOS. I'm sure it has X-gazillion applications, but it seems the apps we USE aren't available. If they are, it's a year later.
4 - I don't want to walk around looking like I have a raging erection. Give me a 4-4.25 inch screen. I'd much rather look like I'm walking around with a semi.

 

[JohnGalt]

bb10 is the phone equivalent of duke nukem forever

 

[Joffrey]

Ha, yeah maybe a little late. However, I want to replace my Iphone4s and am looking for a decent alternative to Iphone 5. the new Nokia and most Androids are too big (haven't totally written them off yet though). So this is another option. I don't currnetly have tons but I'm Worried about apps though (as I would be with a Nokia).

 

[jarude]

Too little, too late, blah blah blah. Sucks because this will affect the region I live but its almost as if RIM/now Blackberry has honestly tried to **** up so I don't feel too bad for them.

The best they can hope for is to hang on to the corporate user market. There's no reason for anyone else to use BB10.

In other news:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2013/01/30/blackberry-alicia-keys-creative-director.html

U.S. singer Alicia Keys has been named the global creative director for BlackBerry, part of the Canadian smartphone firm's major launch announcement on Wednesday.

"She believes in the product and technology," BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said in a statement. "We are excited she will be bringing to us her enormous capabilities, as well as a vast network of relationships in the entertainment, social media and business communities, to help shape our brand and grow our business."

Dafuq. If Diplo doesn't succeed, Keys will! Eagerly awaiting the first shot of her caught using an iPhone in public.

 

[MikeDT]

The last BB phone I saw was just over two year ago. And that was an unlocked AT&T Storm been thrown off the roof of a school by a frustrated expat American teacher, because China Unicom wanted a stiff monthly fee to provide Blackberry service. Without the BB service, a BB phone is practically useless, apart from making phone calls. I don't think you can even get BB service here now, I'm sure RIM pulled out of the PRC. And just left it to Android, Apple and Microsoft.

 

[Rumpelstiltskin]

 

[btau]

RIM have burned me with the last two devices I got & with the playbook (that I bought at launch for over $800 & was done with in half an hour due to the terrible, TERRIBLE on screen keyboard.)
That or my current BB work phone which crashes to "SOS ONLY" once every two or three days with no warning.

I'm looking forward to watching them declare bankruptcy or getting acquired and torn to shreds.

 

[Joffrey]

I really hope they survive as I'm wary of a Android and iOS only market. They don't need to become a major player, they just need to keep chugging along. Same with windows phones

 

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Blackberry 10 gets help from Android with 28,000 repackaged apps


This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about Android apps running on a Blackberry, but the all-new Blackberry 10 that was announced and shown off this week is getting more than a little help from the green robot. The Playbook enjoyed Android app support thanks to sideloading in OS 2.0, but today we’re hearing nearly 30,000 apps have already been “repackaged” to run on Blackberry.

This week the new Blackberry 10 launched with what they claim is an app store full of 70,000 apps. During a Q and A session BlackBerry VP Martyn Mallick mentioned that roughly 40% of those are actually Android apps that have been re-purposed and repackaged for BB10. According to PC Mag this has been confirmed and while not a permanent solution to a bigger problem, should help their launch look better to potential customers.

Apparently the Blackberry Android toolset is providing an extremely quick and easy way for developers to essentially tweak their apps to be used on Blackberry 10. There’s no back or exit button involved either, everything is gesture based by changing a few lines of code. The apps can look weird and out of place, but at least they work.

All they are doing is porting direct Android apps to a toolset that remaps the menu and back buttons to a BB10 gesture, then makes it work on their new mobile OS. This certainly isn’t a good model moving forward, but it’s a start. Dialog boxes, popups, menu button areas and more are all out of place using this method and hopefully Blackberry get their own apps soon enough. Blackberry certainly has made it easy for developers to get their apps on the platform, but this isn’t the plan for their future.

With Android having over 700,000 apps in the Play Store, more on iOS, and roughly 100,000 for Windows Phone, Blackberry has a lot of work to do. 70,000 is a good start, but they have their work cut out for them. Thoughts on this repackaging idea?