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RIM Unveils BlackBerry 10, Its Big Turnaround Hope
Nerval's Lobster writes "Research In Motion has whipped the curtain back from BlackBerry 10. The revamped operating system is widely perceived as RIM's best chance at staying relevant in a smartphone market dominated by Google Android and Apple's iOS. Once a significant player in mobility, RIM watched its earnings and market-share crumble over the past few years. BlackBerry 10 abandons the longtime BlackBerry user interface, centered on grids of icons, in favor of one built on the same QNX technology that powers RIM's PlayBook tablet. The BlackBerry 10 home-screen offers 'live tiles' that dynamically refresh with updated information, and RIM is playing up how users can move between apps and alerts by swiping and flicking the screen. Other features include BlackBerry Balance, which divides the 'personal' and 'corporate' sides of the phone, as well as an updated BlackBerry Messenger. More details in the article."
RIM also announced they are rebranding themselves as BlackBerry. If you like pictures, omfglearntoplay sent in an article that delivers. Gimmicks of the launch include hiring Alicia Keys as their "Global Creative Director."
Not only that, but it means us developers will no longer be getting RIM-jobs ... at least not the kind that pay us.
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I heard that in celebration of actually shipping the product, they're preloading them with a port of Duke Nukem Forever. Is this true?
I've never been a BB fan (never owned one) but I was given an iPhone and a BB10 beta to play with. The BB10 feels way better, and I mean waaaay better. With the iPhone it feels like you spend most of the time clicking on the menu button moving to another app. On the BB10 you swipe left or up and as if by magic all your other app(s) are there, still running.
technically HP, Dell and others sell a lot more computers than Apple. but the Mac business makes more PROFITS than everyone's PC business combined
market share is useless if you lose money on it
same with Android. only samsung is making any money. Moto, HTC and others are losing money or barely breaking even.
Using the corporate tie in allows the corp to push apps and settings to the phone and wipe them upon termination. If I set my iphone up to pop my corp mail, its on my phone and they can't do anything about it when I quit. With the BB they can nuke the corp data from orbit. Still don't want them in my enterprise though. All of the pointed headed people asking what happened to their email and messaging the next time they have a 4 day world wide outage.
To be fair, any decent app is going to be available to both iOS and Android, and probably Blackberry eventually.
There's a large amount of garbage in both app stores, certainly there are more trash apps on Android, but there are plenty on both.
What, because it won't have a level application that doesn't work? Who gives a damn. How many apps do you need anyway??
iPhone is overated. This coming from the owner of an iPhone. The only reason I purchased an iPhone is that there was no good carrier support for Android, BB didn't appeal to me and MS didn't know what they were doing yet.
Their stock price says it all.
Last september/october it was around $6-$7 a share, now it is more than doubled.
New Economic Perspectives
They showed a keyboard version. They just haven't announced launch dates for it yet.
It's a feature users were asking for. It's not because you don't see value in it that there isn't value.
The feature protects your personnal data from you're work and vice versa. It "APPEARS" to cover the issue of mobile device security in work places where intellectual property is mission critical to protect. That just being a general overview. You can get more details on their web site.
This is like debating McDonalds vs Burger King in a story about a taco stand on main street that served 5 customers yesterday at lunch time. I think the three blackberry users still left are going to get annoyed at you guys for going off topic.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
market share is useless if you lose money on it
You forgot to add "... in the long run". Market share without profits can be very useful if the purpose is to drive other companies out of the market over a relatively short time period. Ask Amazon. However if a company is competing solely on price but cannot drive others out of the industry (think airline industry) then competition will drive most/all of the profits out of the industry. Apple doesn't compete primarily on price whereas Windows PC makers primarily do. If Apple were to dump OS X and sell Windows on their computers instead, their profit margins would evaporate faster than you could say "shareholder lawsuit". Same if they dumped iOS for Android.
RIM knows this and that is why they aren't going to Android. If they do there is nothing to make them stand out from Samsung, HTC and the rest and their profit margins are very likely to disappear.
The funny thing is, Apple actually implemented multitouch app switching way back in iOS 4.3, but they haven't enabled it on the iPhone—presumably because smartphone screens are a bit small for their 3+ finger gestures.
You can use Activator (available on Cydia) to enable it, though you'll have to wait for the new jailbreak coming out in a few days. Speaking of jailbreaking, if you like BB10's app previews you could give Auxo or other app switcher replacements/enhancements a try as well.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
I think they will have a fighting chance as long as the Android compatibility works well. I'm skeptical of this because Android apps don't even work that consistently across different Android handsets. But I guess we'll have to wait and see. If the apps work, and they have quality hardware (good battery, good signal, good specs, doesn't break) at a competitive price, then I could see a lot of people going for a BlackBerry again.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
There is BB10 BES.
Their stock price says it all.
No it really doesn't. Their stock price is not based off of any fundamentals, merely opinion and short term speculation. Their competitive position has not changed and it remains unclear if consumers will buy their latest products in sufficient volume.
Last september/october it was around $6-$7 a share, now it is more than doubled.
So did SCO when they announced their lawsuit against IBM. Their stock price jumped and then steadily dropped as people realized they were doomed. Stock prices do not in the short term reflect objective facts about a company, merely opinion. If their stock continues to grow for the next 3 years then and only then will you have a valid argument.
Looks like they are trying to compete directly with Apple and Samsung. Looks like around $650 in Canada ($150 with 3 year shackles.. which is about $500 credit towards a phone). If businesses go back to them, yeah it could work at that price (it's not as though they are paying more than an iPhone they are already supplying their sales guys with), but a bit cheaper would have given an extra push.
$359 Nexus 4 vs $650 Q10 for me as a consumer.. the Nexus wins out for sure. Then I can buy the next Nexus as soon as it comes out and hop to the next cheapest carrier at that time.
I didn't read anything about it being locked, but I assume it's carrier locked (that's the norm in Canada). That's BS for travelling. Maybe big corps don't mind paying roaming fees, but I tend to grab a cheap sim card any time I cross the boarder and save myself hundreds in roaming and data fees.
Admittedly I'm not the target market, but at this point I'd think it'd be best for BB to appeal to as broad a market as possible. If they could profit at $350/phone then they should saturate the market, rather than pricing high now, then dropping the price like the Playbook. Nothing makes your product look more unappealing than staging it as a premium product then dropping the price because it doesn't live up to the premium status.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
I haven't played with a BB10, but this is exactly how Palm WebOS behaves and it is, indeed, fantastic. Fat lot of good it did them when few developers would write apps for the platform.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
The camera on a smartphone has evolved to having near quality of a professional camera. That said it is NOT a professional camera. When I take a picture with my phone I want it to capture the moment decently and for the size of a dime they go far beyond what anyone realistically needs. If I wanted amazing quality photos I would use a camera with proper optical zoom, etc. Basing a smart phone on 1 feature of which should not be primary is hardly advisable. That would be like not buying the perfect car because the horn sound isn't a perfect pitch. Sure you use it and some days more than others, but it is not core functionality and should be weighted as such.
I had a blackberry before my Galaxy S2.
It did everything I needed just fine, I moved on to get the larger screen and a better web browser, not because of any shortage of apps.
As far as demanding uncompressed images from a cell phone camera, that's laughable. The camera quality, while improving is so bad that there really is little benefit to RAW. If you want RAW, get a real camera.
If your company is involved in litigation and you have work email coming in to your personal device, then under FRCP (if in the US) your personal phone could be imaged and examined for relevant documents. With balance their is a complete separation of work and home.
Our BES server needed a kick twice in 4 years. We did feel the RIM outages, but the BES server was rock solid. Me thinks you were doing something wrong.
"The BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps supports Android 2.3.3 applications" and this should speed-up the number of available apps for BB. Android 2.3.3 features that aren't supported are listed here.
Who is using their camera on the phone to do such high quality photos? The lens on phone cameras alone make uncompressed images worthless.
Runs QNX, and uses the QT libraries. Not linux, not open, but at least not as far away as other mobile OSs. In fact could be close enough to simplify porting apps to or from it from other OSs.
The world doesn't wait for or revolve around the USA. If the UK carriers can launch tomorrow and Canadian carriers can launch in just a few days then there is no one to blame but the US carriers themselves.
If I print my corporate email, it's on paper, and they can't do anything about it when I quit. Or export the data. Or photograph the screen.
You don't want to hand everybody the keys to the kingdom, but I feel like all the emphasis on securing smartphones is a bit like installing steel security doors when you've got loads of single-pane windows everywhere. The security chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and it's usually not hard to find a much bigger security deficiency that's worth targeting before losing sleep over email on people's phones.
Now, pushing corporate apps can be very useful if you've got a large number of employees, but I'm pretty sure there are options for doing that with iOS and Android.
You may think it's fine but I bet your corporate security group has other feelings on the matter.
The whole point of capitalism is that you have multiple companies competing to serve the customer. And you want less of that? A nice monopoly maybe?
In any case, I suggest you have a good look at the underlying OS, and at the developer tools (Ripple for example, is the W3C's recommended tool for testing web apps, not just BB10 web apps). There is a lot going on under the hood that makes BB10 useful.
From the tests done (and in my experience) the Z10 has the most standards-compliant HTML 5 mobile browser, and also one of the fastest. It also has full multi-tasking and multi-threading within apps. It's built on QT, which makes apps much more portable (QT is coming to Android and WinPhone in Q3). Heck, RIM even ported DOSBox, I assume to make a point about Apple's control-freakery.
It's not just a think layer of interface logic, its a mature OS that's quite possibly already in your car, with great development tools and none of the crappy iOS restrictions on emulators/simulators.... It's not perfect by any means, but it's pretty good.
Resolution doesn't make up for the small lenses in any small camera. Ask any photographer. More Glass = Better Picture. It gives you better aperture and more light. No chips can make up for the lack of light in uber small lenses, point&shoots included. Therefore no smartphone will ever have the quality of a pro camera. Resolution sure, but those pixels will be garbage.
you were doing it wrong. BES isn't about mail/calendar as much as about policies, including custom policies for apps.
a dick head
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
same with Android. only samsung is making any money.
Will this fucking lie ever die, or does it have to be KILLED WITH FIRE?
Source: LG Electronics 4th Quarter 2012 report
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
i'm glad screens are getting bigger, more chance of bigger physical keys. 3 BB models would be great, no kb, full kb and slide kb.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I've had a BlackBerry since 2005 and I don't recall any 4-day outages. In fact, on the 2 or 3 occasions that it was out for a day or so I was only down for an hour or two, and if you read their press releases this makes sense as the outages rarely affect everyone. Similar things have happened with Apple, as I recall. However, when my phone was swiped from my pocket, I felt good knowing that all of sensitive data was safe. Just like with Carrier IQ was found installed on so many phones, it was not installed on BlackBerry. From my perspective, it is the iPhones and Android phones that are riddled with issues.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
If you get an IT job that requires a security clearance, it's very likely that you will have to deal with that "crazy dividing line." Corporate IT Security likes to be able to have full control over a device and its data when little things like national security are involved. One of the most reliable and less-intrusive ways to accomplish this is with some type of "personas" system, which has been successfully implemented by several different packages for many years.
This is also why I carry two phones, but by my own choice. I could use my corporate phone for everything, but I'd rather keep my personal life and my work life as separate as possible. Two separate phone numbers, two separate email accounts/clients, etc etc etc... Also, the mental separation is huge. When I go on vacation, I leave my corporate phone on my desk.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
I used to have a Blackberry Curve. I now have an iPhone 4S. I like my iPhone, but it has some definite drawbacks over my old BB Curve. The Curve's battery would last for a week or more, my iPhone I'm lucky if the battery lasts 2 days between charges. The Curve seemed to be able to get e-mails without incurring roaming charges, when I traveled I could inexpensively text, phone and email. With my iPhone I get big bills, since if Wifi isn't available I have to turn on data roaming to download email. I also found the email and the keyboard much more productive on the BB. If BB still has these advantages, I'll probably go back to BB. If now the battery sucks and it runs up roaming, then I'll probably go to the next Apple phone.
"more glass" means a wider front lens with the ability to capture more light.
I have an 85mm F1.4 lens originally designed for 35mm. The front element is 72mm across. No matter how good the lens is on a phone (and some are *very* good) it won't be able to gather as much light as this lens.
The BB unveiling was streamed live on CNBC and I watched it. Some observations...
1) The CEO - Thorsten Heins - has absolutely zero charisma. I understand that English probably isn't his first language but he didn't look very comfortable during the presentation. Yeah, we're there to see the phone but getting someone with some presentation skills would have helped.
2) All that aside, they have done a very nice job on the phone. True multitasking. Personal and Business sandboxes. Full encryption. Nice screen. BBM now has a video client similar to Skype.
3) BBM video - was it just me or was the audio not working for the guy in London? The video looked fine but I don't recall hearing him say anything.
4) Apps - I'm tired of hearing about "apps" all time time. Look - no matter what phone you get you're going to have access to more apps than you can shake a stick at. Everyone (Apple, Android, Microsoft, Blackberry) has a collection of about 50 apps that most people want or need. The rest of it is a combination of copies of those 50, niche products, and utter shit. Everyone has Angry Birds, Skype, WhatsApp, Evernote, Dropbox, etc. Just get the phone you like and don't worry about the apps.
5) Good move releasing a phone with and without a physical keyboard. Having had a BB in the past I have to admit that having a physical keyboard is a nice feature. If you don't type on it that much you probably don't need it.
6) I think they said it was going to cost $149. That undercuts Apple and Samsung by $50.
7) No mention of memory, storage, processor, camera specs, etc. I think that was a mistake. That kind of stuff is important to a lot of people (well, me anyway). It would be nice to know if it has an SD card. How does it stack up against the iPhone or Galaxy 3? If they want people to switch they have to show why the BB is a better phone.
Overall it looks like a great phone and I hope they do well with it.
a few minutes before you get fired, your device is remotely wiped... good buy personal contacts, apps and data.
Apple is a dominant player in the mobile OS and device market. There are many metrics by which to define "dominant", and Apple and their products excel at most of them. The only one where they are reasonably behind Android on is total unit market share, and even on that, their weakest metric, Apple is the #2 player, and a major one at that.
To say the OS isn't popular is to hide your head in the sand while shouting "total unit market share is the only thing that matters" over and over.
Google has a lead in that metric, and they deserve both that and all the spoils that come with it. But let's not be silly fanboys about it, shall we?
Most phones have a very small sensor, while digital SLRs have much larger ones. All else being equal, a larger sensor can sense more light with less noise. Yes, you're not going to fit the 40mm sensor of an SLR into a camera where it's usually around 3mm.
LG credited demand for smartphones that run on faster "LTE" networks, which are taking off in South Korea, Japan and the United States. It sold 14.4 million mobile phones during the three months, with smartphone sales accounting for half of the volume. More than 70 percent of its mobile revenue came from smartphone sales.
There you go fanboi. If you were to google you could find all of the information you needed, instead of brow beating someone. http://news.yahoo.com/lg-electronics-post-profit-smartphone-sales-043621356.html
Look at that the darn URL even tells you you're wrong.
Why are you using a tele for landscape? I generally use my 24mm 2.8 (ancient manual Sigma) for landscape, and I've had my eye on a 15mm prime for a bit too. For landscape you want wide (or ultra wide), for models you want tele, for street shooting you want "normal" (40-50mm, though I prefer 24-28mm for this too).
Fringing depends on the lens, not how large the aperture is. Worst case, you have to stop the 1.4 down to 2.8, to clean up the picture and regulate CA, and generally a fast lens hits the sweat-spot before the largest aperture of a comparable slower lens. Faster also give you more options, and more versatility. I might never want to go to 1.4, but its there just in case.
I agree with your sentiment though. Speed isn't the be-all-end all, the quality of the glass is. I'm a Pentax shooter, and they have two (three now) recent 50's, a 1.4 and a 1.7. I own the slower lens, and had to hunt for it a bit since it takes pictures I find more aesthetic than the 1.4 (better contrast, renders a bit warmer, sharp wide open, where the 1.4 needs to be stopped down a bit). And old Leica 50mm 2.0, or a Zeiss Jenna 2.8 will probably take better pictures, and have better glass, than my 1.7 or the 1.4. Sadly the Leica and the Zeiss cost 10x what I paid for my lens. Some lenses are almost mythic in their quality, seek these out instead of hunting for mere numbers.
Lens porn aside, you want to compare actual images (RAWs if you can find them), and read both subjective and objective reviews.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey