Hasta La Gadget!

As RIM gradually inches towards the eventual launch of its new mobile OS, the company’s now pinned down a concrete date for BlackBerry 10‘s full unveiling. It’s the other side of 2012 and will happen “simultaneously in multiple countries around the world” on January 30th. No specifics on those lucky territories just yet, but RIM’s official blog states that we’ll hear availability (hopefully both prices and dates) for two new BB10 smartphones at the event. There’s no full press release just yet, but you can see what CEO Thorsten Heins has to say about it after the break.

Update: The press release is now out — we’ve added it below.

Continue reading BlackBerry 10 launch event to be held on January 30th

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, RIM

BlackBerry 10 launch event to be held on January 30th originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Nov 2012 07:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While RIM has already taken to directly rewarding developers who write for BlackBerry 10 in order to stock up its app catalog, it’s about to offer a slightly stronger incentive for the gaming crowd. An upcoming Got Game Port-a-Thon starting November 16th will give producers $100 for every game successfully ported to the upcoming platform, with the perks climbing the more titles make the leap. Three or more ports net a BlackBerry PlayBook, and the first handful who port five or more get a Dev Alpha device to test their creations in a truly native environment; particularly avid developers porting 10 or more games will even score a trip to the Game Developers Conference this March. The catch, as you’d imagine from the telethon-inspired label, comes from the fixed timeframe. There’s just 36 hours open for submissions once the event starts, which will have most developers scrambling to get their code ready in advance. If RIM gets all its developer ducks in a row, however, we’ll have no shortage of fun (or distractions from work) when the first BlackBerry 10 devices hit the shelves.

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Tablets, Mobile, RIM

RIM plans 36-hour event giving away cash, PlayBooks to game developers porting to BlackBerry 10 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 10 Nov 2012 19:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As if RIM wasn’t already having enough trouble struggling for relevance with BlackBerry phones, there’s yet another thing about the handsets that makes them a bit less appealing compared to iPhones and Android devices: you could actually be allergic to a BlackBerry, in the most literal sense. More »

Following the Pentagon’s decision to continue using BlackBerry smartphones this year, Research In Motion has just received a security clearance from the U.S. government for its upcoming BlackBerry operating system. The FIPS 140-2 certification has been awarded to RIM’s BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry Enterprise 10, which means that the U.S. government has approved and endorsed BlackBerry devices running on the new platform to be used by government agencies nationwide. This marks as the first time for RIM to receive such certification for its products ahead of launch. In case you didn’t know, the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) is being used by various organizations that are constantly dealing with sensitive information.

The FIPS 140-2 certification, which was recently awarded RIM, is the minimum criteria required for products used by US government agencies. Still, this is a big win for the BlackBerry maker. “Achieving FIPS certification for an entirely new platform in a very short period of time, and before launch, is quite remarkable and a testament to the dedication of our security team,” said David MacFarlane, Director, Security Certifications at RIM. “BlackBerry 10 will deliver security, a superior user experience, the ability to separately manage corporate and personal data on the same device, and ease of manageability for IT managers in an enterprise or government environment.”

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: RIM introduces new icons to Blackberry 10, BlackBerry 10 tested by 50 carriers, on track for Q1 2013 release,

While Blackberry 10 on paper sounds promising, on the UI front we couldn’t help but feel that perhaps RIM could do a better job. If you’ve seen any of the screenshots of the OS so far, you might have seen some of the icons used which to be honest leave much to be desired. Of course it is possible that those icons were merely used for the Dev Alpha devices which means that we have yet to see the final Blackberry 10. However it seems that many designers have complained to RIM about the icons and it looks like RIM has decided to do something about it.

The company has since created a guideline for app icons, giving developers an idea of how to go about designing the icons. Pictured above is a screenshot of how the new icons in Blackberry 10 could look like (pictured left) versus the old icons (pictured right). According to the guideline, the size of icons has been reduced from 150×150 to a smaller 114×114 which we think looks a lot better. There is a chance that things could change when Blackberry 10 is officially released early next year, but for now what do you guys think of the new icons? Yay or nay? Or did you actually prefer the old look?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: BlackBerry 10 tested by 50 carriers, on track for Q1 2013 release, Blackberry 10 bootup screen revealed in photo,