Hasta La Gadget!

After taking so long to transition to its next-gen OS platform, the company formerly known as RIM has an awful lot riding on its first BlackBerry 10 handset, the Z10. The handset launched at the end of January in the U.K. and early February in Canada (and is due to make its official U.S. debut this month). Not a great sign, then, that some U.K. phone retailers appear to be cutting the price of Z10 tariffs, a mere month after launch — suggesting demand isn’t as strong as hoped, and that the device isn’t as competitive against the high end of Android and iOS as BlackBerry needs it to be.

Both Carphone Warehouse and Vodafone have slashed tariffs, according to the Telegraph. It also appears that Phones 4u is offering cheaper deals now. BB10 is BlackBerry’s attempt to turn around its sliding smartphone fortunes by offering a device to compete with the likes of the iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy SIII. BlackBerry’s global smartphone marketshare fell to just 3.5 per cent in Q4 2012, according to analyst Gartner, down from 8.8 per cent in Q4 2011, while Samsung and iOS took 52 per cent of all smartphone sales in Q4 2012.

Carphone Warehouse initially priced the BlackBerry Z10 from £36 per month on pay monthly contract, bundling the cost of the handset into that tariff. It is now offering the phone from as little as £29 per month, although that tariff includes a £29 up-front free for the handset. The Telegraph also says Vodafone has introduced a new web-only deal for the Z10, costing £33 per month (this tariff also requires an up-front fee of £129). Phones 4u is also offering the Z10 on a £29 per month contract (again with a £29 charge for the handset), having initially launched the phone on contracts starting at £36 per month. It is also offering even cheaper tariffs, of around £20 per month, but with a much higher up-front fee for the device.

The Telegraph quotes James Faucette, an analyst at Pacific Crest, who said the tariff cuts move the Z10 away from the highest margin segment of the smartphone business. “We believe that meaningful price cuts so soon after launch, while probably at the initial discretion of the carriers, is likely to relegate the Z10 to being a mid-tier device with very low gross margins,” he said.

BlackBerry has been making a lot of noise about Z10 sales but hasn’t backed up its hype with any hard numbers, saying only that demand had exceeded expectation and that the Z10 is selling in “large numbers“. We’ve reached out to BlackBerry, Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4u for comment on the tariff reductions and will update this story with any response.

Asked how sales were going in the Z10′s launch market, the U.K., at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona last week, BlackBerry’s U.K. & Ireland MD Rob Orr also shied away from sharing any numbers, saying he was unable to provide much detail ahead of BlackBerry’s quarterly results.

Early sales in the U.K. have been “very positive”, he told TechCrunch, adding: “I’m in a quiet period so I’ll caveat my statement with the fact that our fiscal year ends on [March 1st] and we publish results on the 28th. Regulated from a quiet period perspective I can’t share too much detail but I’m very pleased with the results, the partners are very pleased with the results. Take a look at some of the feedback on Phones 4u’s site or Vodafone’s site are very positive.

“The feedback from our enterprise customers has been brilliant. Really really good. They love what we’ve done with BES 10, they’re aligned with the approach that we’re taking, they’re cracking on with all their internal trials and their user testing and all the stuff that enterprises do before they do mass rollouts. So I’m really pleased. Couldn’t really have asked more from the support I’ve had in the market.”

Expect to get more concrete details on exactly how positive (or not) the BB10 launch has been when the company announces its fiscal Q4 and fiscal full year results at the end of this month.

While the introduction of cheaper monthly tariffs may not help BlackBerry’s bottom line in the long run, it may help to drive a few more Z10 sales in the short term to help buoy up its results. In the mean time, all the vague, non-quantifiable statements aren’t helping dispel the sense that RIM isn’t yet doing enough to dig itself out of the smartphone doldrums.

Canon today announced the successful creation of a new full-frame CMOS sensor, designed exclusively for shooting video. The new sensor can capture full-HD video with extremely low noise in settings where it has been hard for traditional cameras to even operate at all in the past. The sensor will have immediate benefits for astrophotography and for use in security systems, but the developments here could eventually help improve the quality of professional and consumer cameras, too.

The new sensor from Canon features large pixels, each of which measure around 7.5x those found on the sensor Canon uses in its EOS-1DX DSLR. The larger pixels are paired with new noise reduction technologies that counteract the added noise effect of using larger pixels, which allows for full HD video shooting in environments as dark as an outdoor setting with just a crescent moon providing illumination. That means it can capture video with fully visible objects even in situations where the human eye would be hard-pressed to make out any definite shapes.

Canon has already built a prototype device to test out the new sensor, and captured things like footage from a room where only lit incense sticks provided any light, the Geminid meteor shower and other night sky scenes. The prototype would be most useful in the immediate future for astronomical and nature photography, medial research and security implementations, but through “further development,” Canon imagines similar CMOS sensor tech will also be able to greatly improve other more creative pursuits.

Low light video is already an impressive feature of full-frame DSLR cameras, but a sensor like this that takes things to the extreme could take nighttime video capture to a whole new level. Imagine greatly reducing the cost of filming at night, for instance, or, depending on how things progress, bringing similar improvements to mobile and smartphone shooters. We’re still a long way off from that, but this is a very impressive first step, as you can see from the sample video available on Canon’s own site.

Apple’s landmark $1 billion damages award over Samsung has been partially vacated by presiding judge Lucy Koh, FOSS Patents reports. The judge has orders just north of $450 million be struck from the $1 billion total, an amount which relates to 14 Samsung products involved in the case, pending a new trial to determine appropriate damages for those specific devices.

Koh said that a new trial has to be held to determine damages on those products, which include the AT&T Galaxy SII, the Galaxy Tab, Nexus 4G and others, based on the fact that the court isn’t able to make adjustments to the amounts owing based on infringement by those products for legal reasons. In the second trial, which will be decided by an entirely new jury, Apple could wind up being awarded more or less in damages based on their evaluation of the per-product cost of infringement for that group of Android smartphones and tablets.

Apple is still entitled to an award of $598,908,892 from the part of the damages decision that Koh has determined should stand, though FOSS Patents suggests that no actual money will change hands until the result of this new, second trial is decided. Apple will also be able to exercise its option to pursue additional damages based on post-judgement royalties, and pre-judgement interest, pending the new jury’s decision.

Wacom, the leading player when it comes to pressure-sensitive input devices aimed at photo and digital art professionals, has teased an upcoming mobile tablet product on its Facebook account. In response to what Wacom characterizes as outspoken customer feedback, the company says it’s working on a a device with “a pressure-sensitive professional pen, smooth multi-touch, an HD display, and other valuable features that you haven’t seen in other tablets.”

The tablet device is said to be something Wacom is working on “24/7,” with a target launch date of sometime this summer. Wacom provides the underlying technology behind a number of current tablets with pressure-sensitive stylus input, including the Surface Pro and Samsung’s Galaxy Note line, so it’s no stranger to doing pressure sensitivity on mobile devices. The company’s own hardware has generally been limited to peripherals, however, like its Bamboo, Intuos and Cintiq line of USB-powered drawing tablets, all of which require a host computer to operate.

Now, it looks like Wacom wants to branch out into an own-branded standalone tablet device. The tease shares nothing about what platform the device would be based around, but Android is a good bet. Penny Arcade co-creator Mike “Gabe” Krahulik also recently articulated at length his love for the Surface Pro and its built-in Wacom tech for creating digital art, so a device based on Windows 8 also isn’t outside the realm of possibility.

The only challenge for Wacom might be keeping a standalone device affordable. The Cintiq line of drawing tablets with built-in screens it currently offers start at $899 for the 12WX, which has a 12.1-inch display, but again requires a connected computer to function. Getting a self-sufficient Wacom tablet to a level where it meets the standards of the company’s demanding pros probably won’t come cheap, but the level of tech and the supply chain associated with the necessary components has also matured considerably since the 12WX was introduced in 2007. The proliferation of tablets and smartphones have helped putting more advanced technology in ever-smaller packages increasingly affordable.

I reached out to Wacom to see if they could provide more detail on this upcoming product, and will update if they respond with additional information.

We didn’t see a new phone from Sony at MWC this year, though it did take the opportunity to show off the Xperia Z (pictured) it demoed early this year at CES, but a new rumor suggests we’ll see a mid-year upgrade in a few months time that packs Android 4.2, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset with 1.8GHz processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage.

The leaked specs come from a tipster providing info to Xperia Blog, and also suggest the C670X will be smaller than the Xperia 7, with a 4.8-inch screen compared to the announced device’s 5-inch display. In most regards, the C670X sounds like a beefed up Xperia 7, however, with a more powerful processor, Adreno 320 graphics and double the on-board storage, while retaining a 13 megapixel rear camera and the same 1920 x 1080 resolution. The device’s pixel density will be higher, however, since those same pixels are fitting in a smaller screen, making for more crisp text and graphics rendering.

If true, this new handset would be pretty much on par with HTC’s flagship One smartphone, which has a 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600 chipset, and an Adreno 320 GPU. No word on whether the C670X would also inherit the Xperia Z’s impressive water resistance, which could be a tipping point factor for buyers looking to make a decision between the two.

These leaked specs should be treated with a healthy dollop of skepticism (it was accompanied with a render from the setup guide from the Xperia Z, which admittedly doesn’t depict the Xperia Z itself), but they’re far from extreme, and Sony fielding a phone in 2013 that takes advantage of the latest in mobile processor technology does make sense.