Slashdot Mirror
Leaked Photo Shows Touch-Screen BlackBerry 10 Phone
alancronin tips this quote from CNet:
"A new leaked photo of the BlackBerry 10 smartphone, or the 'London,' promises a completely different looking BlackBerry than the world is used to. According to the BlackBerry news site N4BB, a photo of the device (which is designed by Porsche) shows a slender touch-screen phone that is the color 'gun metal.' Several apps are shown in the photo, including Facebook, BBM, and DocsToGo. ... The London is the first BlackBerry 10 and is slated to have a TI OMAP dual-core CPU running at 1.5GHz, as well as 1GB of RAM, 16GB storage, and an 8-megapixel camera."
The entire reason I loved my blackberry was its keyboard-centeredness. Why the heck do I want a business phone that has a crappy touch keyboard? Theres android and iPhone for that.
I guess we still get the BES stuff, but which users are actually going to want a blackberry? If youre going to mandate a business phone, why mandate one that sucks at being a business phone?
I mean, I guess what they had wasnt selling phones, and their market share was shrinking-- seems logical to make a change, right? Except they just killed 80% of what made blackberry so popular to begin with. Being just another touch-device clone isnt really the way to claw your way back into the game.
and is slated to have a TI OMAP dual-core CPU running at 1.5GHz
Is this considered good or no?
They should call it the Blackberry 12, since it'll be released one chapter after Chapter 11.
does it have rounded corners?
Well... this is super important for almost no one who uses their phone as what some might call a "tiny computer," because:
1.) UI is ugly in the photo, boxes around icon labels are irritating (though, it might be to avoid ye ol' Apple wrath)
2.) No one cares.
3.) Read #2
I'll be one of many to be stoked about RIMs death, and why you ask? Because every blackberry I ever had worked like shit, except! For the signal, the flashing indicator, and battery life.
Does it feel like a cheap plastic toy when you pick it up?
Leaked photos are sooo 2003. They need to step up their game a bit, maybe have an exciting car chase as the photo-taker desperately tries to make it to a hotspot.
Apple and Microsoft have a patent cross-license deal since 1997. Microsoft agreed to not copy Apple's UI in the deal (which involved a lawsuit about Microsoft Windows copying the Apple UI). That's why Windows Phones don't look like iPhones, and it's why Microsoft is losing in mobile. Apple screwed them on this one, a rare case of the devil overestimating his bargaining power. It's also why despite rampant patent lawsuits Apple isn't suing Microsoft, or vice versa. They have a mutual "all patents" license and for the purposes of mobile patents are on the same team.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Unfortunately the photo was cropped and all I could see is a rectangular thingy.
Anyone saw any "rounded corner"?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
While Samsung is releasing quad core phones, Blackberry is still lagging behind. Their app selection is not all that. While I hope they survive, I'm a realist. It's sad to see a device with such great local device encryption features, which is still uncrackable if setup properly (key + passphrase), resists forensic analysis well go. If I was a drug dealer the 9700 is a great phone. Can buy off Craigslist for $100 and they're disposable at that price. Along with custom certificates and Atomic Helix PGP app, they'ed be great for secure communications. I just wished there was a tor app for them.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-tegra-4-wayne-arm-a15,15261.html
By 2013, NVidia's Tegra 4 gonna be out.
It's rumored to have a Kepler GPU and run 10 times the performance of Tegra2, more or less the equivalent to the TI-chip the Blackberry is based on.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
They should open source their entire platform, allowing people to customize it. Install Linux on it, whatever they want. RIM builds the hardware, and lets people customize the software as they wish. Oh wait. That's already Android.
Does everything have to be a rectangular grid of icons? With a shiny screen?
The video seems to be a video of a phone playing another video showing the battery replacement procedure.
"Gun-metal color"? Right. If they actually made the thing out of Parkerized steel, it would be a great industrial-strength design. But what we're probably seeing is the usual scheduled consumer electronics color rotation from black to white to grey and back to black. Yawn.
RIM have already announced there will be a version with a physical keyboard and a 720*720 screen, for "real" BB users. The BB on-screen keyboard as on the PlayBook is, in my view, better than others, but I agree: as someone who uses a BB for messaging, I am waiting for the keyboard version. Preferably the slider.
Currently the meme is that RIM is dying and I suspect this has its origins in the large and well staffed Apple and Microsoft PR departments. But consider: the difference between a BB phone and Android/iOS is that the BB doesn't phone home all your private information to Google or Apple. A lot of "apps" are basically Trojans for privacy violation. What message do you think that RIM is addressing to corporates, right now?
They left out the best part: QT
Yep. A thin rectangle with rounded corners...and the icons are arranged in a grid!
just go android already. keep the bb email system and bb messenger and the coporate guys would be fine with it. and get all the android apps the users would be happy about.
It looks a fair bit like Motorola's android launcher to me.
Sure, the hardware is a thing. But it's only a thing that supports better software and performance. The main thing is the things people can do with it.
The "wow" about iPhone, and later Android, was "look at all the things I can do with it! And the number of things I can do with it is growing like crazy!"
The thing about Android is "look at all the things I can do with it! with fewer restrictions! and cheaper!"
What does Blackberry bring? Developers? Apps? Freedom?
They bring business maturity. That's about it. Is it enough?
Speech is all very well, but there are many circumstances when it is inconvenient - for the hearing impaired (there are rather a lot of us), in meetings/lectures/seminars, or where ambiguity or being overheard must be avoided, as with user names, passwords etc.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Apple and Google have very carefully shifted the grounds away from considerations of message security and integrity, messaging flexibility, and privacy to - ooh shiny! Angry Birds! But I suspect that eventually people will realise that it's panem et circenses to keep the mass buyers happy. A phone is always a compromise as a media device, which is why screen sizes keep creeping up, and a media device is always a compromise as a phone (too big, battery life too short).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
"...The London is the first BlackBerry 10 and is slated to have a TI OMAP dual-core CPU running at 1.5GHz, as well as 1GB of RAM, 16GB storage, and an 8-megapixel camera."
Ironically enough, the new BlackBerry does not come with an external mic. They finally figured out that no one actually uses these things to talk to other humans anymore, so they left that out in favor of another camera and a larger CPU...
(Anytime we want to stop calling these netbooks and tablets "phones" is fine by me. It's rather obvious these are not simply voice boxes anymore, as evidenced by the "my touchscreen dick is bigger than yours" spec race going on these days...)
If it had a real keyboard and focused on being secure, didn't send my info everywhere, and was completely open, and lets me manage memory, disk space, processes and battery life. And lets me back it up easily to a Mac, and add patches..
In other words has everything I wish android had. I love my HTC Evo 4G but also it provides frustration. My biggest gripes are that it makes it impossible to do maintenance by hiding files or not providing simple utilities. It doesn't let me delete old attachments from main memory and hides the folder it is in (not rooted) so it is always only a few percent free, so sometimes it refuses to download email or even display camera photos. While there is plenty of memory on the sd card.
Oh and I forgot it completely erased all my contacts, twice! I don't understand why it gives me an option to save a new contact to the phone or to Google either. I don't use gmail though I have an account. If used as a backup does it mean it can be restored? etc. There are many people who have similar issues who end up creating clueless birds of a feather clubs on the net.
After you get past the bells and whistles I would prefer a less advertisercentric, more ownercentric. I would like a secure system that offers the ability to easily manage main memory and SD card, encrypt email / phone / voice calls, and transparently integrate with my Mac and Kindle. It should be easy to make a daily backup (like superduper or carbon copy cloner) instead of wrestling with adb once in a while and wondering if it will really restore if something happens. Some way to manage the constant issue of files getting added to the phone until it overflows, since there isn't a time you usually delete things.
What makes one a legitimate business person?
Is that a euphemism for prostitutes and drug dealers?
If you have to write 50 emails a day from a mobile device, you have made a serious vocational error.
LOL
That's why Windows Phones don't look like iPhones, and it's why Microsoft is losing in mobile.
And here we thought it was because the inertia of the poor history of Microsoft phones in general.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
These people are legitimate business users, and we have to support them.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Texas Instrument makes the worst mobile CPU on the market, why is BB so keen to dig its grave deeper?
I'm happy with HTTPS security, I don't work for a government agency.
I've heard rumors that the new phones won't support BES natively, but be part of a new overall BES architecture. Where the "new" BES will be a management console for the "old" BES that you all know and love, and a VPN like service for the new phones/playbook.
IMHO this will help kill BB. The one solid thing you could count on was BES, now you're adding complexity with multiple BES servers, multiple UIs, and hoping it all gels together while you're trying to keep your head above water. That, and the consumer market is shut out as people with Galaxy S3s and iPhone 5s are locked up on 2 year contracts.
RIM is toast.
That's why Windows Phones don't look like iPhones, and it's why Microsoft is losing in mobile.
And here we thought it was because the inertia of the poor history of Microsoft phones in general.
Or it could be Microsoft was late to the finger touchscreen game and held on to styluses for far too long.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Oh No. It's definitely a rectangle and I don't see any sharp point corners....
from my understanding (BB mobile fusion http://us.blackberry.com/business/software/blackberry-mobile-fusion.html#tab-1 )... and since i havnt deployed, just read some info, take with a grain of salt.
there is a separate manager for iPhone and droid devices to deploy BB software to apple store and play store (droid?) and to centrally rule them all through one console. That way if your corporate infrastructure allows for multi-brand (bb, Apple, Droid) phones you can mange them from one location.