Hasta La Gadget!

BlackBerry’s top brass eagerly danced around the issue of a U.S. launch date for its new Z10 smartphone during its grand BlackBerry 10 unveiling, but the folks at Bloomberg may have shed some new light on the Canadian company’s plans. Bloomberg reports that AT&T is preparing to release the BlackBerry Z10 on March 22, though AT&T has been unsurprisingly quiet on the matter.

If other recent reports hold true, AT&T’s Z10 won’t be by itself for long — it’s been said that T-Mobile is gearing up for a mid-March Z10 launch of its own (though a leaked carrier roadmap has the launch pegged for later in the month), and Verizon Wireless is expected to push its version out the door sometime in April. On the other hand, Sprint has chosen to skip the all-touch Z10 entirely, opting to carry only the QWERTY keyboard-packing Q10 later this year.

With general interest in BlackBerry waning over the past few years thanks to some ambitious competitors, RIM has its work cut out for it if it wants to make another splash in the United States. If comScore’s most recent mobile market share report is to be believed, BlackBerry devices only account for 5.9% of the U.S. smartphones in use (down from roughly 7.8% in October 2012). Granted, RIM still seems to have a better handle on things than Microsoft and its Windows Phones, but a solid domestic launch could see the company solidify its position as the third major mobile OS.

Of course, part of BlackBerry’s continued resilience has to do with its performance in developing markets, and CEO Thorsten Heins recently shed some light on the company’s plans for shoring up its positions there.

According to a recent Q&A with Bloomberg, Heins and the rest of the company don’t intend to take on low-cost handset manufacturers like ZTE and Huawei, which have made significant inroads not only in China but India and parts of Africa as well. Their major draw is their ability to churn out reasonably robust, sub-$100 Android smartphones, and that’s the sort of game BlackBerry doesn’t seem eager to play.

“This is not BlackBerry,” Heins said, adding that this year would see the release of multiple LTE-enabled BlackBerry 10 devices “geared towards those price bands where people need to be.”

While the company could surely pick up some points for churning out low-cost, no-frills hardware in the right markets, its current approach seems to be doing well for now. The company has already released the Z10 in India, and despite the fact that the device costs Rs 43490 (roughly $794) Heins says the Z10 was sold out within two days.

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.

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Most of the worry about BlackBerry’s market share has centered around its once-certain corporate and government clientele: when even stodgy institutions have either embraced Bring Your Own Device policies or have switched platforms outright, nothing has seemed safe. The company may be clawing back some stability through a newly approved deal with Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security. The government agency has reportedly agreed to buy 5,000 BlackBerry Z10 phones for its staff, all of which will be locked down with Secusmart protection for data, messaging and voice. We wouldn’t call it a full comeback when there’s been just a few weeks for such deals. Still, the purchase is a very public endorsement for BlackBerry at a time when it’s not clear that large-scale customers will remain faithful.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Blackberry

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Source: AllThingsD

Dropping a smartphone is an absolutely horrifying experience. And on my first day in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, it happened to me with my BlackBerry Z10.

As much as I hate to admit, it was a dumb move on my part. Unfortunately, tragedy can strike with as simple an act as brushing one’s elbow across the table, and that’s all it took for me to knock my smartphone right onto a hard surface — facedown in a perfectly horizontal position. If you’ve ever been through such an accident, you know the few seconds it takes to pick up the phone and survey the damage can be incredibly nerve-wracking and one of the most suspenseful moments of your life.

I’m happy to say that this particular story has a positive ending, as I turned the phone over to see if I would need to call BlackBerry HQ in a panic. To my shock, it was completely fine. There wasn’t a single scratch or ding, and the touchscreen was just as responsive as ever. It would’ve been a different story had it fallen onto a concrete floor, but this still significantly increased my opinion of the Z10’s durability.

Had my Z10 come face to face with concrete, I would’ve been in a nasty predicament. Not only would I have had to pause or put the kibosh my 30-day trial run with the BlackBerry Z10, but I’m also on the other side of the world in a foreign country. While getting a new phone isn’t impossible, it’s expensive, time-consuming and frustrating. Yep, this was how my 10-day international adventure began, but how well has it gone for me since?

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Blackberry

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Everybody knows what’s at stake for BlackBerry. The Z10 is its shot to stop its considerable bleeding and shut everyone up. But launching a brand new OS with brand new hardware isn’t easy. And it’s even harder to match expectations when both have been delayed again and again. More »