Hasta La Gadget!

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

Comments

It wouldn’t be a BlackBerry press event without something totally unexpected and semi-weird thrown in the mix. Today, at BlackBerry’s media conference revealing BlackBerry 10, the company appointed Alicia Keys as the new Global Creative Director.

Her first act as GCD was to talk about how much she loves BlackBerry 10 at today’s media conference. Her other responsibilities are somewhat unclear — just like will.i.am’s role at Intel.

According to Keys, she’ll be working with app creators, designers, carriers, and more to make sure BlackBerry is the most efficient, cool and simple platform to be on. She proved just how “BlackBerry” she can be by wearing a tuxedo-type outfit, complete with black pants, black jacket, and white button down.

Keys was a long time BlackBerry user in the past, but jumped ship for “something sexier.” The way she explains it, she was carrying two phones for a while, “playing the field,” but now she’s exclusive in her relationship with BlackBerry.

If so, that exclusivity began today, as she was Instagramming photos from either an Android device or iPhone just yesterday. And she has been tweeting from Twitter for iPhone in the past week as well.

TechCrunch asked Alicia Keys directly which phone she used during her rough patch with BlackBerry and she declined to answer. “I don’t think it’s necessary to disclose which phone I used,” she said. “It was another phone.” It was clearly an iPhone.

For now, she seems pretty focused on combining your work phone with your play phone, which is something BB10 does very well. However, it’s unclear just how much Keys will bring to the company other than celeb status.

Hopefully, she’ll be able to refrain from Instagramming until the Facebook-owned app makes its way to BlackBerry. We’ll be keeping an eye on it in case she falters.

Liked what you saw? Even happier then, as a Brit, you’ll likely be getting your hands on it months before your US cousins. UK networks have started to announce availability for the handset, with EE, O2, Three and Vodafone already confirmed to be stocking the Z10. Retailers that will also be selling the new BB10 hardware in the British Isles include Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4U.

Retailer Phones 4U will launch both color options (exclusively, at least initially) although it hasn’t ventured a contract-free price just yet. The Carphone Warehouse, meanwhile will be offering the Z10 free on contracts of £36 per month on the major networks.

Vodafone will offer the Z10 for £29 on the £42 a month Red Data plan, including unlimited calls and texts as well as 2GB of internet. It’ll be free on the £47 a month variant of the plan, or cost £69 one-off payment on the £37 per month plan. Three UK hasn’t revealed any details beyond that it’ll be stocking the handset.

While all Z10 devices sold will be ready for 4G, according the Waterloo crew, the BlackBerry Z10 will be available to utilize EE’s existing 4G service immediately. The price? It’ll be £50 on a £41 per-month 24 month package, with 1GB of mobile data, as well as unlimited UK calls and texts. No word just yet on whether Orange and T-Mobile will be offering cheaper bundles later. We’ll update here when we hear more pricing details from the other players.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, RIM

Comments

If you like what you’ve seen so far from RIM BlackBerry’s big launch event today, then you might want to know when you can get it? Those in the US might have hoped the rumors weren’t true, but indeed, you will have to wait until March before you can get your hands on BlackBerry 10. Though when it does land, customers of AT&T, Verizon, Sprint (only Q10 confirmed) and T-Mobile (Z10 confirmed) will all be able to get onboard. BlackBerry’s giving its home turf a little bit of a head start with a February 5th release date and Bell, Rogers, Koodo, Telus and Virgin Mobile confirmed as carrying. But — as had already been hinted at — it’s the UK that gets the goods first, with the Z10 and Q10 both available starting tomorrow on all the major carriers. US pricing will depend on each operator, but expect to pay around $200.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, RIM

Comments

Source: T-Mobile

For years now, the BlackBerry OS has occupied something of a special state, almost feeling as if it were thrown down into a pit and locked into a bar of carbonite, preserved in stasis for future generations to see. Want to show your kids what using a smartphone was like in 2006? You just needed to find a Bold on display at the local electronics store and let your little ones gaze wide-eyed at a sea of menus and tiny buttons.

BB7, then, was a disappointment for many, feeling like a bare-minimum update to those versions that came before rather than the complete QNX-based retooling we’d all been waiting for. The PlayBook showed us what was possible with a clean-sheet approach to a BlackBerry OS, and we wanted that on a phone. Now, two years after the release of that tablet, here we have it. It’s BlackBerry 10. It’s a wholly new experience, very different even than the PlayBook, and in general it’s quite good. But is it good enough to thrive in a world dominated by iOS and Android? Let’s find out.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, RIM

Comments