Hasta La Gadget!

If you’ve already signed up to Google’s experimental field trials, you might have started to notice people you know appearing within search queries. Expanding on shipping and flight results offered previously, Google’s pulling that information from your Gmail account, meaning that you’ll be able to poll for contact numbers, addresses (and more) through the search box. Of course, only you will be able to see the results and the beta feature can even link up to voice search. It currently supports all of your Gmail contacts, while Google+ connections are in the pipeline for future field tests. You can sign up to the trials at the second link below.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Google (Google+), Google Field Trial

Last year we told you about an official Back to the Future LEGO set that was coming down the line. Well, it will arrive on July 18th, but if you are eager to take a look, here it is.

Brick News has scored a first look at the official LEGO set. You might remember the first version proposed through LEGO Cuusoo last year. Well, this official DeLorean has a lot more going on – though it looks quite a bit less like the one in the movie than the originally proposed design.

It will come with Marty McFly and Doc Brown minifigs, and with this set you can build all three versions of the DeLorean from the movies. Pricing for the set will be £35 (~$50 USD). So what do you think?

If you’d rather have a more accurate LEGO DeLorean, you can always head over to Ichiban Toys and order up one of their model kits.

[Nerd Approved via LEGO Gizmodo]

BlackBerry didn’t break out its individual BB10 device sales in its quarterly earnings report released earlier this morning, but during its conference call to discuss its performance CEO Thorsten Heins revealed that it shipped 2.7 million handsets during the quarter, which is not a great number. Nokia shipped 5.6 million Lumia devices in Q1 of 2013, for instance, and AT&T reported 4.8 million iPhone activations alone during its Q1 reporting.

BlackBerry shipped 6.8 million phones in total during the quarter, so the new BB10 devices represented just under 40 percent of total new device sales. The total number of devices shipped was already fairly unimpressive, but it’s perhaps more worrying that BB10 made up a big chunk of those sales, despite the Q10 only being available in most areas for a fraction of the quarterly period. This also marks the first full quarter of sales for the flagship Z10, so it’s really the first true barometer of the health of that device available to investors and observers.

Here, then, is the problem: The Z10 has been available for a full quarter in its primary target markets, and with a device like that, launch is generally your most successful period over the entire device life cycle, since you have the most buzz and consumer attention (perhaps barring a holiday bump). Analysts will not look kindly at 2.7 million in sales for a brand new operating system, which is probably further divided between the Z10 and the Q10.

Already, BlackBerry stock is suffering a huge hit, down 24 percent ahead of market open. That’s not likely to turn around now that we have a better idea of how RIM’s big bet on a brand new mobile operating system is faring in terms of consumer sales.

(Credit: Louis Gray)

Google’s next version of Android may have taken its latest bow courtesy of a batch of leaked screenshots.

Images obtained and posted by Sammobile purport to reveal an early Android 4.3 build running on the Google Play Edition Galaxy S4. The screenshots clearly display the Android version number as 4.3, while the model number of GT-i9505G refers to Google’s new “pure” version of the Galaxy S4.

Another screenshot shows that Google is apparently sticking with the Jelly Bean moniker for Android 4.3.

This isn’t the first time Android 4.3 has surfaced in the wild. In May, photos found on the xdadevelopers forum allegedly showed a Nexus 4 phone equipped with the next Android OS update.

So when should Android users expect a dose of 4.3?

Earlier rumors claimed Google might announce the latest update at its I/O conference on May 15. But the conference came and went without any such unveiling. The … [Read more]

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BlackBerry got off to a roaring start with with the Z10, which shipped a million devices in its first three weeks on the market and led many to predict there’d be at least 3 million shipped this quarter (the first full quarter of Z10 availability). That turned out not to be the case, as the company said during an earnings call for Q1 2014 that it managed to get just 2.7 million BlackBerry 10 OS handsets out the door, despite the Q10 having joined the Z10 on shelves for a good part of that period. Those figures make up just 40 percent of its handset numbers, meaning most of the 6.8 million phones it shipped consisted of cheaper last-gen products. They refused to break those numbers down between the Q10 and Z10, so that’s all we have to go on at this point — but taken with its announcement of an $84 million loss, it’s far from encouraging.

Update: Apologies, folks. Our original headline said 2.7 million were sold, whereas in fact the figure indicates shipping numbers. The post itself is unchanged and accurate. For reference, BlackBerry’s actual sales to end users lagged behind shipments by around 30 percent when they revealed the previous set of figures back in March.

Filed under: Cellphones

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