Hasta La Gadget!

What’s in a phone? If it’s the BlackBerry Z10, then it’s plenty of Qualcomm gadgets and a surprising mixture of components already seen used in Samsung’s Galaxy S III, with a new teardown of the BlackBerry 10 smartphone suggesting the Canadian firm may well have cribbed some design inspiration from South Korea. UBM TechInsights whipped off the Z10′s covers and dug around the parts bin raiding inside, with Qualcomm apparently ousting one-time BlackBerry best-buddy Texas Instruments for the most part.

Where TI was previously a mainstay for processors and chips in BlackBerry phones, the Z10 instead looks to Qualcomm for its 1.5GHz dualcore processor, 3G/LTE modem, GPU, power management chip, GPS, and more. TI is relegated to providing the WiFi/Bluetooth/FM combo chip, while Samsung donates the flash memory and RAM.

Perhaps more interesting than the origin of the components is the decision process BlackBerry (nee RIM) seemingly made in how they were combined, something which is supposedly strongly reminiscent of Samsung’s assembly strategy with the Galaxy series. Various parts – from the processor that’s also in the LTE Galaxy S III, to the new WCD9310 audio codec in the same phone – seem to indicate that BlackBerry certainly knows who its key rivals are.

“It’s not certain if these decisions the designers made on what semiconductors, ICs and other modules to use were by design or by accident” UBM concludes, “but based on the relative success of the Samsung Galaxy S3, it isn’t a bad model to draw from.”

If you’re more interested in how the BlackBerry Z10 – and BlackBerry 10 as a platform – performs when the phone is in one piece, check out our full review.

[via Gizmodo]

BlackBerry Z10 teardown tips Samsung inspiration is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We’re pretty sure you’ve heard of the BlackBerry Z10 by now, but have you heard of Solavei? Let us jog your memory: Solavei is a virtual operator (MVNO) here in the US which rides atop T-Mobile’s GSM / EDGE / UMTS / HSPA+ network and offers unlimited voice, SMS and data for $49 a month, contract free. The company further sweetens the deal with discounts when you sign up friends. As for the Z10, you probably know that it’s already on sale in the UK and Canada but isn’t supposed to land on US carriers until mid-March. Well scratch that, because starting today Solavei is teaming up with GSM Nation to bring Blackberry’s flagship to its customers. We’ve confirmed with Solavei that pricing for the handset is a hefty $999 (unsubsidized, clearly). The company currently offers the ATIV S for $605, the Galaxy S III for $575, the Nexus 4 for $405 and the Ascend P1 for $391, to name a few. It also welcomes unlocked phones. Full PR after the break.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Blackberry

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Source: Solavei

One of the portions of BlackBerry’s BlackBerry 10 launch event that created a lot of chatter with BlackBerry fans is the fact the company secured a deal with Skype to allow its application to be made available on the BlackBerry 10 platform. During our time with the BlackBerry Z10, we noticed Skype was absent from BlackBerry World, even though the company said Skype was committed to making its application available on BlackBerry 10.

It looks like there wasn’t something wrong with our eyes as Skype has yet to officially launch on BlackBerry World, which Skype has confirmed its application is still being worked on as they “are working closely with BlackBerry to ensure the Skype for Android app runs great in the BlackBerry 10 environment.”

Yes – you read right that last sentence correctly. The Skype application that will be made available on BlackBerry 10 will be a port of the Skype for Android application. Considering Android applications ported to BlackBerry 10 aren’t fully optimized to be used on the OS, the new Skype application could be more of a letdown than we originally anticipated if BlackBerry and Skype don’t work together to make sure all of the app’s kinks are ironed out before it’s released into BlackBerry World.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Possible Samsung Galaxy S4 Camera Images Spotted On Google+, Steve Wozniak Thinks Apple Is Behind On Smartphones,

It looks as though yesterday’s report of demand for the BlackBerry Z10 was spot on as BlackBerry is announcing some good news in regards to its start in the U.K. and Canada.

According to BlackBerry, its new BlackBerry Z10 has been breaking records for the company left and right. In Canada, where the Z10 was made available yesterday, BlackBerry had its “best day ever for the first day of a launch of a new BlackBerry smartphone.” The Z10′s launch in Canada was “more than 50% better than any other launch day in our history in Canada.”

Over in the U.K., the BlackBerry Z10 has also seen some impressive sales as BlackBerry has seen “close to three times our best performance ever for the first week of sales for a BlackBerry smartphone.”

The BlackBerry Z10 is expected to be released in the U.S. this March, while its physical keyboard sibling, the BlackBerry Q10, shouldn’t be expected possibly until May or June. In the meantime, you U.S. readers can read our review of the BlackBerry Z10 and our hands-on of the BlackBerry Q10 to help whet your appetite for when these two devices are finally released.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Official Tamagotchi App Will Make Its Way Onto iOS And Android Soon, Leaked T-Mobile Roadmap Reveals Nokia Flame 4G For 24th April,

When the company formerly known as RIM first announced that they’d be working on the system that would eventually become BlackBerry 10, it was a year and a half ago. It takes a long time to develop an operating system, even when it’s a mobile operating system meant to operate with far fewer abilities than a full-powered desktop OS – but that’s not where BlackBerry went wrong. The company known as BlackBerry fell apart the moment they announced a new operating system more than a week before they showed it working in the real world.

The original name for BlackBerry 10 was BBX – lost to the company when they discovered someone else that thought to put those three letters together before RIM did. Each time an incident like this happened over the past year and a half, RIM lost another brick of confidence in the public. They’ve had so much bad press between the announcement of BBX and here in 2013 where they’ve announced the OS (again) that it should be considered no less than a miracle that they’ve gotten so very many developers to join their team with BlackBerry 10 apps.

Of course about 40% of those apps are simply converted iterations of Android apps, but who’s counting? Giving away free special edition smartphones to developer initiatives helps!

Now while the all-touch half of the BlackBerry 10 party is already out in Canada and the UK with the device called BlackBerry Z10, it’s been made clear that the earliest we’ll see BlackBerry 10 in the wild in the USA will be the end of March. This is also only the Z10 piece of the puzzle. The BlackBerry Q10, that being the QWERTY keyboard-toting BlackBerry 10 hero device here at the start of the OS, has been confirmed by BlackBerry to be hitting the market in April.

According to the Associated Press article published with Mercury News, BlackBerry’s CEO Thorsten Heins has suggested an 8-10 week window between the launch of the Z10 and the Q10. That would place the release for the Q10 back to May/June. Just a few months shy of two years after the first announcement of BlackBerry 10!

That’s no way to work in this modern mobile-minded market. A successful company like Samsung releases a new smartphone every few months – weeks in some cases – and refreshes a piece of hardware at least once a year (we’re nearly up to the Samsung Galaxy S IV here in 2013 after a new Galaxy S hero phone for several years in a row.) Apple has gotten to the point where they release a new iteration of their one singular handset, the iPhone, every single year without fail.

Will you join the BlackBerry 10 party with a Z10 at the end of March or the beginning of April if it does indeed see release in the USA? How about a BlackBerry Q10 several weeks after that?

BlackBerry 10 March release: far too late is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.