Hasta La Gadget!

After delays and a software preview, RIM BlackBerry finally pulled the wraps off of it’s new hardware and operating system that we’d been looking for the end of January to bring. In this week’s edition of our e-publication, we take a look at all of the wares that the Canadian company unveiled in order to determine if it’s enough to reinvent the outfit. We also rundown the history of the unit formally known as Research in Motion to paint a complete picture of the road leading up to this week’s proceedings. Of course, there’s more than just BlackBerry stuffs to peruse. Hands-On visits NAMM 2013, Weekly Stat tallies up earnings season and we get cozy with the Pebble Smartwatch. There’s plenty of time for a bit of weekend reading, so head to your favorite repository to snag the goods.

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Filed under: Announcements, HD, Mobile

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This week there’s no hiding the fact that the public remains uncertain that they’ve been convinced by BlackBerry 10 after its first launch event. The company known until this week as RIM has re-branded itself as BlackBerry as they should have done long ago, this also creating an unacceptable amount of confusion for the consumer at large. Now we’ve got a “new” operating system on a couple of “new” smartphones created by a company with a “new” name – investors certainly must be praying for some additional tricks to be pulled out of the company’s sleeve quickly.

The pricing of the all-touch smartphone BlackBerry has revealed this week as the BlackBerry Z10 has a price point of $199 – that’s in general and not solidified as subsidized or off-contract. Several carriers in the USA and many abroad have let it be known that they are ready for BlackBerry 10 action without precisely targeting timeframes or pricing on their units, with many questions about how much business users will be paying both initially and through the course of time for their BlackBerry 10 machines and service.

When you experience a launch event for a brand new rebirth of an operating system complete with two new hero devices for that OS, you see one of two things. The first is a clean “this is what we have and this is why you want it” showing that depends on the quality of the products and their solid presentation of their total package – BlackBerry did not do this. The second way of presenting a new era in your company is to bring in a collection of videos that do not reveal new information while you show the products you’ve got here and there between odd announcements about new staff members and special offers for “early adopters”. This is what BlackBerry did.

BlackBerry did not inspire confidence in the public to the degree that they needed to, and the products they showed this week were not as groundbreaking as the position RIM has been in recently required. While BlackBerry has a chance to ride BlackBerry 10 out for a few seasons more, the products and services we’ve seen so far cannot be the full extent of the company’s offerings. BlackBerry needs to show something wholly unique and they need to do it soon.

BlackBerry 10 = BleakFuture is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Turns out BlackBerry’s proud claim that the new BB10 phones are launching with 70,000 bespoke apps was a bit of a lie—with one of the company’s own men admitting that up to 40 per cent of these are frantic Android port jobs. More »

Welcome to Wednesday evening everyone. Today was RIM’s big day, as it rebranded itself as BlackBerry and launched the latest version of its mobile OS, BlackBerry 10. We were there at the launch event to take it all in and get some hands-on time with the new handsets the company has introduced, and you can catch all of the news from the show in our BlackBerry 10 event wrap-up. Be sure to read through the hands-on posts, because it seems that BlackBerry is doing some interesting things with its new phone.

Of course, there were plenty of other headlines to cover throughout the day, with Dropbox announcing a new feature called Documents Preview. Speaking of Dropbox, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer had some not-so-nice things to say about the service today. Zynga’s chief game designer has left the company after four years, while Twitter has improved photo and video viewing in its website interface. Nintendo slashed its Wii U sales predictions today, and the white Nexus 4 took some time to pose for the camera once again.

A trio of Galaxy Tab user agent profile worked their way into the spotlight today, and Toyota has recalled 1.1 million vehicles. Rovio was spotted teasing its new “Escape from Hoth” update to Angry Birds Star Wars, and Netflix is planning at least five new shows a year to compete with HBO. A giant asteroid will be zooming past the Earth on February 15, while Apple has secured a trademark for the layout and design of its stores.

Qualcomm shared quarterly earnings today, as did Facebook, Electronic Arts, and Lenovo. IBM’s Watson will soon be heading off to his first university, while a new trailer for INJUSTICE: Gods Among Us dropped today. Foursquare delivered a bunch of different Best of Foursquare lists today, while Ticketmaster has announced that it will be ditching CAPTCHA. Finally tonight, Cory Gunther spends some quality time with 2014 KIA Forte, Chris Burns delivers his review of the Acer Iconia W510, and Chris Davies asks if RIM even realizes what went wrong with its business. That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, we hope you enjoy the rest of your night folks!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: January 30, 2013 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Today BlackBerry demoed what it’s calling BlackBerry Balance, a clever way of separating one’s personal and work lives in one device. You don’t see it as much these days but carrying two phones—one for business, one for pleasure—was commonplace not too long ago. I remember having a BlackBerry 6200 alongside my Sidekick 2; and I’m sure a lot of you remember those days as well. More »