Hasta La Gadget!

Despite the fact that BlackBerry Z10 was announced on 30th January in New York City, the U.S. market gets it substantially late. The device was almost immediately available for customers in the UK and Canada, while it was gradually released in a host of markets around the world. The delay in its release is caused due to carrier testing, but as promised, the Z10 will be available in the US this month. T-Mobile confirmed their launch date of the Z10 earlier today via Twitter, pegging it at March 26.

The @TMobileHelp Twitter gave out this information in reply to a prospective customer’s tweet. The BlackBerry Z10 will be compatible with T-Mobile 4G LTE network. The March 26 date makes absolute sense, since T-Mobile is conducting a special event that day. As far as the Z10 is concerned, its true that its fate rests in the hands of the U.S. market. It has done relatively well in other markets. The company says that initial response is good, but we’ll only really truly know if the Z10 has made it based on its performance in the U.S. market, a market dominated largely by Apple and Samsung. Can we expect it to outdo significantly better rivals such as the Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5? Time will tell.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: UK Retailer Prices BlackBerry Q10 At $800; Available April 26, Twitter Turns Seven Years Old Today,

BlackBerry Z10 users can sideload Android apps on their device, the BBRY’s new smartphone allows that. This means that users have access to apps that are otherwise not available for BlackBerry, apps such as the insanely popular Instagram. A new report indicates that users who sideloaded Instagram on their devices are facing a problem. If they sign out of Instagram on BlackBerry Z10, they’ll not be able to sign back in again. So if you’re one of those users, don’t sign out as you’ll literally be locked out of Instagram on your latest BlackBerry smartphone. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: ZTE Quantum For Sprint Leaked, HTC E1 Is Official Name Of HTC 603e ,

When Blackberry 10 was officially launched, Blackberry managed to deliver on their promise by having 70,000 apps available for download. However it felt more like quantity versus quality, but we expect that to change over time. Now if 70,000 apps isn’t enough for you, you might be interested to hear that in an interview with the Australian Financial Review, Blackberry CEO Thorsten Heins revealed that Blackberry World should be packing a little over 100,000 apps by the time the Z10 is launched in the US market.

Considering that this means Blackberry needs to hit that figure in the new few weeks, we wonder if this will be possible, especially since it was only in January that Blackberry 10 was officially launched. Once again while Blackberry might be able to hit those numbers, the main question is whether the main and big name apps will be there, and if quality apps will outnumber the shoddier ones. We guess we will have to wait and see, but in the meantime Blackberry 10 users, how do you find the quality of Blackberry 10 apps available in Blackberry World now?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: T-Mobile Hints At Going Contract-Less On March 26, AT&T Introduces New Data Plans Starting At $300 Per Month,

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has dismissed the iPhone for slowly innovating, arguing that while BlackBerry 10 owes iOS for its groundwork on touch devices, Apple’s aging UI leaves it passé. “Apple did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market, they did a fantastic job with the user interface” Heins told The Australian Financial Review as the Z10 made its debut down under, but argued that “the rate of innovation is so high in our industry that if you don’t innovate … you can be replaced pretty quickly.” That’s something Apple should fear, Heins argues.

“The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old” he concluded. In contrast, Heins claimed, BlackBerry 10 is better at multi-tasking than Apple’s phone, .

The CEO wouldn’t be drawn on specific sales figures, pointing out that BlackBerry is in a quiet period ahead of announcing its latest financial results. However, he did re-confirm that the company is considering the potential for licensing BlackBerry 10 – assuming it could find other manufacturers sufficiently interested in using it on their own devices – but said that, right now, the focus is on the roll-out of the Z10.

Hardware we shouldn’t expect to see delivered any time soon is a tablet, though. Here, Heins gives Apple a little more credit: “Kudos to Apple, I think they really managed to own that space, so it doesn’t make sense for me to just take this head on” he conceded. “I need to figure out, for my enterprise customers, for my consumers, for my BB10 audience, what can I do that provides them a mobile computing experience in the form factor of a tablet, which goes beyond just the puristic tablet experience.”

That stance echoes comments by Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, who has repeatedly said that the Finnish firm will only wade into the tablet space once it can find a sufficiently unique angle to take with it. “I think the profit pool is very very thin,” BlackBerry’s Heins mused.

BlackBerry CEO: iPhone is old news is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

More than a few weeks after its launch, the Blackberry Z10 is finally nearing its release date, with it going up for pre-order for T-Mobile business customers and AT&T subscribers earlier this week. As we reported yesterday, the handset also became available for pre-order from Verizon at 8AM this morning. It will be available in stores March 28.

Verizon boasts a black version of the Blackberry Z10 in addition to the white one offered by AT&T. The handset costs $200 with a two-year contract, a price that many feel is too steep for a phone that the company is hinging so much on. While many handsets have been launched at this price point, including the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S III, Blackberry isn’t a major player in the market, leading some to question the wisdom in the pricing. You can read more about this in our write up here.

If you’re a Blackberry faithful, however, or want to give the platform a shot and aren’t afraid to drop $200 and take on a new 2-year contract, you can head over to Verizon and place your order now. Still undecided? Read our review of the Blackberry Z10 to get a better idea of whether it’s the phone for you.

The BB Z10 features a 4.2-inch 1280 x 768 display, as well as a 2-megapixel front camera and an 8-megapixel rear camera with an LED flash. Inside, users will find a Qualcomm MSM8960 1.5GHz dual-core processor and 2GB of RAM, as well as 16GB of internal storage. There’s a microSD slot for storage expansion with support for up to 32GB.

[via PC World]

Verizon now accepting Blackberry Z10 pre-orders is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.