Hasta La Gadget!

A couple of weeks ago, Blackberry announced that a mystery partner had purchased 1 million of its Blackberry Z10 devices. It wouldn’t say who the partner was, but that it was a huge confidence boost for both the company and consumers alike. The announcement was enough to boost its shares up 8.2%. While it was speculated that the mysterious partner had to be a major carrier like AT&T or Verizon Wireless, it turns out that the partner was actually a wireless distributor by the name of Brightstar.

Brightstar is a big, wireless distributor that distributes products all around the world. About 40% of its revenue was composed of Blackberry handset sales a couple of years ago. Brightstar had enough confidence in Blackberry’s new product in order to place such a massive order, and since it operates globally, it has a better chance, than AT&T and Verizon Wireless, to resell all of its Blackberry Z10 devices.

Brightstar also acts as a buffer for companies like Verizon Wireless. Mark Gerber, managing director at Detwiler Fenton, a Research House, stated that Verizon is using Brightstar to “handle the big-box retail and dealer agent channels” for the Blackberry Z10. Gerber believes that Verizon Wireless doesn’t have enough faith in the Blackberry Z10, otherwise it would sell the product on its own.

Operating through a 3rd party is Verizon’s safety net if the Z10 doesn’t do well on its network. It’s a conscientious move on Verizon’s part. Goldman Sachs’s research showed that the Blackberry Z10′s launch on AT&T was disappointing. The firm checked over 20 various AT&T, Best Buy, and Radio Shack stores to confirm their research. However, the firm did say that it wasn’t the product itself that was bad, but the company’s and Blackberry’s lack of marketing support for the device.

[via All Things D]

Which partner purchased one million Blackberry Z10 devices? is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The BlackBerry Z10 is BlackBerry’s newest attempt at chiseling away at market share, and while the device is out now in several countries, including the US, it could take some time to find out if the Z10 is indeed stealing the hearts of iOS, Android, And Windows Phone users around the world. In the meantime, the curious minds at iFixit have gotten a hold of the device and did what they do best.

Of course, this isn’t the first teardown of the Z10, but it’s the first time that iFixit has had a chance to pry it open. Overall, there was nothing too special with this teardown. iFixit was pleasantly surprised by the removable battery, since that’s something we no longer usually see nowadays. After removing the rear panel and the battery, there are just a handful of screws and a plastic casing that hide the internals from curious eyes.

The screws that hold the plastic midframe in place also double as screws holding the motherboard in place, so once those screws are removed, a couple of disconnections is all it takes to pop out the motherboard, meaning that there’s no glue holding the main circuitry in place. The camera module pops off the motherboard with ease as well.

As for the unit’s display, it’s held to its frame with a few screws and a dab of adhesive to keep it in place, but it was also fairly easy to remove as well. However, as with Apple devices, the digitizer and the glass are fused together, making the entire display unit extremely thin. The glass is a hardened variant, but it’s not Gorilla Glass.

The only difficult things to remove were the smaller accessories around the edges of the device, including the headphone jack, power switch, ambient light sensor, and earpiece speaker housing, which are all built into a single assembly that’s held in place with stronger adhesive than any of the other components. Overall, iFixit gives the BlackBerry Z10 a repairability score of 8/10, which is certainly respectable.

BlackBerry Z10 gets torn down by iFixit is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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After a couple of months of Canada and the UK already enjoying their BlackBerry Z10, the device has finally hit the US and is available on AT&T‘s network starting today, making them the first US carrier to make the new phone available to customers. You can now grab the BlackBerry 10-equipped device for $200 after signing a new two-year contract.

Of course, business customers on T-Mobile were able to get their precious Z10s a bit earlier, but that’s quite a niche group of folks that we don’t really count. AT&T is the first carrier to offer the new device to the general public. Verizon will begin the BlackBerry Z10 next week, but if you just can’t wait that long, consider hopping on over AT&T to grab the latest device on the market right now.

The Z10 features a 4.2-inch display with a 1280×768 resolution, resulting in a whopping 356 ppi pixel density, which is quite impressive. Under the hood there’s a dual-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz with 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage space, with the option to increase that by 32GB with a microSD card.

The phone features an 8MP rear camera capable of shooting full 1080p HD video, and a 2MP front-facing shooter that can record 720p HD video, so make sure you look good before you chat with friends or family, because the clarity will point out that bad hair day. Other than that, there’s an 1,800mAh battery, micro HDMI support, and Bluetooth 4.0 on the inside.

BlackBerry Z10 now available on AT&T is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The BlackBerry Z10 was officially launched on January 30th. It immediately became available for customers in UK and Canada, while gradually releasing in a host of other markets as well. The Z10′s performance in the U.S. is termed as the yardstick by which the success or failure of this device, and BlackBerry 10, will be gauged. According to Jeff Johnston of Detwiler Fenton & Co.’s, his checks indicate pre-order volume of the Z10 is light and below expectations in the U.S. AT&T started accepting Z10 pre-orders on March 12 and Verizon on March 14.

This definitely does not mean that there’s a possibility of Z10 sales not picking up at all. The device will be available at AT&T and Verizon retail outlets from March 22nd and 26th respectively. Surely there won’t be any massive lines outside their stores like there are for a new iPhone, but things just might work out for the Z10 at a much more modest scale. Jeff believes that BlackBerry has an awareness problem in the U.S. and that it is not doing as much as it should to get the word out to prospective customers. He adds that they’ve done a good job with the OS but there’s a steep learning curve that might irk newcomers, but does say that once they grow accustomed to the new OS, they’ll probably end up liking it.

If BlackBerry starts burning cash on big advertising campaigns, they’ll be taking a huge risk. With market share already depleting, the company isn’t exactly in a position to burn through millions of dollars if sales won’t even break even. The company is spending on advertising nonetheless, they ran an ad during the Super Bowl. BlackBerry definitely knows that they have to change the mindset about their platform and their devices in the U.S., the question remains, are they doing enough? What do you think?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Nokia’s CEO Throws An iPhone On TV, Promises To Replace It With A Nokia, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop Teases “Beautiful Phones” Incoming, Could This Be The Rumored Lumia 928?,