Hasta La Gadget!

In case you missed Thorsten Heins keynote yesterday, RIM’s betting on BB10 becoming the next big thing in mobile computing. Part of Thorsten’s plan to put BB10 on top involves deep integration of third party social apps like Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare into the new OS. BlackBerry has always been a productivity platform first and foremost, but with RIM touting BB10’s abilities as a social platform, we wanted to know more about the plan to make it happen. So, we sat down with T.A. McCann, RIM’s VP of BBM and Social Communities, to find out how he’s going to reach his CEO’s goal of a flowing, social OS and the challenges of getting there.

Continue reading The Engadget Interview: RIM’s T.A. McCann on how BB10 is going social

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile

The Engadget Interview: RIM’s T.A. McCann on how BB10 is going social originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Sep 2012 19:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In addition to sharing new details about its forthcoming BlackBerry 10 OS, RIM used today’s BlackBerry Jam keynote to make an announcement about App World. The company just revealed that in addition to applications and games, the store will sell music, movies and TV shows — a move that brings it more in line with rival stores like Google Play and Apple’s App Store. That should please App World’s 80 million subscribers (a nice little figure RIM dropped in its keynote just now). Another stat: there are currently 105,000 apps in the store, with 3 billion downloads logged since the store’s opening. And, RIM says, BB 10 applications will join the herd soon: the company will begin accepting submissions on October 10th. Get it? BB 10 on 10/10? Clever, Thorsten.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile

BlackBerry App World to sell music and movies, open to BB 10 app submissions on October 10th originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Sep 2012 12:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, it’s finally here. Sort of. It’s been a long and winding road for BlackBerry 10, and as has been RIM’s way, the company continues to out new BB10 details just a bit at a time. As you may recall, we got a good look at RIM’s original Dev Alpha hardware back in May, and were able to swipe our way through a good bit of BB10 a month later. It’s BlackBerry Jam time now, though, and RIM gave us a more thorough look at the OS than ever before, and we got to see it running on a new Dev Alpha B handset. We couldn’t pry loose any details about the hardware inside the new dev phone (other than it’s got a BB10-standard 1280×768 screen), but we did get a few fresh facts about the software running on it. Once again, RIM reminded us that the software we saw was not the final version, but that shouldn’t deter you from reading on past the break and seeing a video of BB10 in action.

Continue reading RIM reveals more details about Blackberry 10

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile

RIM reveals more details about Blackberry 10 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Sep 2012 12:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it’s easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don’t escape without notice, we’ve gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!

Continue reading Refresh Roundup: week of September 17th, 2012

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Software, Mobile

Refresh Roundup: week of September 17th, 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 23 Sep 2012 20:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While the two events are entirely unrelated, a major service outage coinciding with potentially the biggest mobile of the year hitting stores worldwide is just plain old unlucky. Users of RIM’s BlackBerry service in the EMEA region are at the wrong end of a network problem affecting BBM, email and internet. At the moment it doesn’t appear to be of the vast and crippling scale as last time, but small consolation if you’re one of the unlucky ones. RIM has acknowledged the issue, and you can bet the farm on the fact there is more than a handful of slightly stressed engineers on the case, hoping to keep customers from making that impulse purchase. Let us know in the comments if you’re affected.

Update: We’ve just received this official statement from RIM in the UK:

“Our apologies to any customers impacted by the BlackBerry service issue today. We can confirm that services have been restored and are now operating normally.”

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

BlackBerry outage affecting users in Europe, Middle East and Africa (update: service restored?) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Sep 2012 06:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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