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317 Comments

Brainstorming BB10: Are you using BlackBerry Link, and if so, is it up to snuff?

Posted by Bla1ze on 10 May 2013 9:46 pm

Before the release of BlackBerry 10 we learned early on BlackBerry would also be revamping their desktop offerings and replacing BlackBerry Desktop Software. The new app was to be called BlackBerry Link and would come with a revamped UI and was meant to be more user friendly than the aging BlackBerry Desktop Software solution, as well it was built to offer some additional features like remote...

137 Comments

Brainstorming BB10: Please fix Speed Dialing on the BlackBerry Q10!

Posted by Kevin Michaluk on 8 May 2013 3:50 pm

OK, time for a friendly rant in the spirit of Brainstorming BlackBerry 10. This one is about speed dialing on the BlackBerry Q10. It's driving me nuts. Compared to speed dialing on an older BlackBerry like the Bold 9900, speed dialing on the Q10 has taken a step backwards that I *hope* can be fixed up soon. Be sure to watch the video above for the walk through from A to Z, or you can keep...

86 Comments

Latest report from Bluefin supports a bullish stance on BlackBerry

Posted by Chris Umiastowski on 8 May 2013 6:17 am

So far this week we’ve seen some negative comments out of the usual bearish Wall Street analysts. If you follow the stock, you know who these guys are. They tend to avoid any kind of balanced analysis, always hammering on whatever negative points they can find. Wall Street analysts are not typically experts on how to gather supply chain data, nor are they experts in how to measure sell through...

119 Comments

Will Q10 demand drive a huge turnaround in BlackBerry’s financial results?

Posted by Chris Umiastowski on 6 May 2013 1:02 pm

Last quarter, with only one month worth of Z10 shipments, BlackBerry shipped one million devices running the new BlackBerry 10 platform and posted better than expected results - particularly gross margin. Now that the Q10 has hit a few markets, could things get even better? Could BlackBerry return to a level of profitability worth of Wall Street respect in the next couple of quarters? I suspect...

76 Comments

Vining for attention

Posted by Kevin Michaluk on 5 May 2013 4:32 pm

I confess. I like Vine. I used it yesterday for the first time and have been having some fun the past 24 hours making my own Vine creations (yes, I've been walking around the past 24 hours with 3 phones in my pocket... Z10 / Q10 / iPhone 5). You can check out my first Vine attempts below. The roof top one is pretty epic. *Note - It appears embedded Vines don't seem to play too nice on the CB10...

165 Comments

Drunken Drop Test with the BlackBerry Q10

Posted by Kevin Michaluk on 4 May 2013 12:46 pm

Since posting our BlackBerry Q10 Review, I have been using both the Z10 and Q10 as I try to determine which phone I actually want to use as my main BlackBerry 10 phone for the months ahead. All week I've been working on a longer Which Should I Buy: BlackBerry Z10 or BlackBerry Q10? editorial piece that will be hitting the CrackBerry blogs in the next few days, so I've been putting the Z10...

100 Comments

One Week with the BlackBerry Q10

Posted by James Richardson on 2 May 2013 8:54 am

I was lucky enough to get my hands on the BlackBerry Q10 a good few days before it first went on sale at Selfridges in London. To say I was excited would obviously be an understatement. But what I was looking forward to the most was seeing if I could go back to using a hardware keyboard after getting so used to the wonderful one on the Z10 that I've had for around four months. You'll find my...

182 Comments

I highly doubt Thorsten Heins thinks the tablet market will die

Posted by Chris Umiastowski on 30 Apr 2013 3:24 pm

Yesterday, according to Bloomberg, Thorsten Heins dropped the following snipped: "In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore.” As usual, the media is jumping all over this with headlines that take the comments to an extreme. Hey, whatever gets the click for those guys. I’m all about the balance. We reached out to BlackBerry to get some kind of clarification on...

60 Comments

From the Editor's Desk: A week to remember

Posted by Kevin Michaluk on 30 Apr 2013 8:05 am

I'm a little late getting up my weekly From the Editor's Desk post, but you can't blame me - it was a CRAZY week. Between having a good chunk of the Mobile Nations team in NYC for #TM13 at the same time as we had to work on our BlackBerry Q10 Review, it made for a non-stop week of action. No complaints from me though. I love being BUSY, and we had some special guests join us last week which...

198 Comments

What tens of millions of Q10 sales mean for BlackBerry

Posted by Chris Umiastowski on 29 Apr 2013 6:42 pm

If you haven’t yet watched the interview with Thorsten Heins on Bloomberg, you should definitely watch the short clip. Adam already posted a summary here and the video is embedded. “We expect several tens of millions of units”, said a confident BlackBerry CEO on camera. That’s a huge statement to make, and from what we’ve seen of the man so far, he is a man of action. He is not one to exaggerate...

136 Comments

Now that's what I like to see... Apple telling you to buy a BlackBerry

Posted by Kevin Michaluk on 29 Apr 2013 8:04 am

Well, not quite. But close. The illustrious Rene Ritchie, Editor in Chief or our iOS sibling site iMore, pointed out this morning that if you visit Apple's Youtube channel, there are Verizon BlackBerry 10 ads running on it. Sure enough, I clicked over to Apple's Introducing iPhone 5 video, and upon hitting play was greeted by this Verizon BlackBerry 10 ad. This is pretty funny (to me at least),...

199 Comments

Will the BlackBerry Q10 be a brand new cash cow?

Posted by Chris Umiastowski on 23 Apr 2013 12:01 pm

BlackBerry has come a long way in the last few months. The company is finally back on the market with a full touch phone, the Z10. And what an awesome device it is! The new BlackBerry 10 OS is smooth and beautiful. The app store is starting to resemble something competitive. The company has announced its largest order ever, for a million BackBerry 10 devices. And in the first quarter of...

26 Comments

From the Editor's Desk: Get ready for #TM13!

Posted by Kevin Michaluk on 22 Apr 2013 8:03 am

Long time readers of any and all of our Mobile Nations sites will remember the Smartphone Round Robin. It was a cross-site editorial event where we took a break from our regular day to day beat, swapped phones, and sounded off on the competition in an unbiased fashion. It was a great event, we loved it, you loved it, and you've been bugging us literally daily to do it up again. And we have...

64 Comments

Strong results from Verizon Wireless but do they need to diversify?

Posted by Chris Umiastowski on 18 Apr 2013 11:59 am

This morning Verizon Communications posted a great set of financial results for Q1. In the wireless business, Verizon added 667,000 new subscribers, activated 7.2 million smartphones and posted an 8.6% year over year rise in wireless service revenue. Out of the 7.2 million smartphones, Verizon disclosed that 4 million were iPhones. This means the other 3.2 million were some other platform,...

232 Comments

What’s really going on with Detwiler’s false accusations, and how BlackBerry is handling it beautifully

Posted by Chris Umiastowski on 12 Apr 2013 10:44 am

BlackBerry’s stock was hammered yesterday due to a report by research firm Detwiler Fenton, who claimed that Z10 devices were being returned in unusually high numbers. From Wednesday’s closing price to the lows on Thursday, BlackBerry lost over $1.25 per share. It closed at $13.55, down from $14.69 the day before, for a loss of nearly 8%. The claim seemed absurd, essentially saying that in...

190 Comments

Hey BlackBerry - we need multiple alarms in BlackBerry 10!

Posted by Adam Zeis on 10 Apr 2013 1:35 pm

One big item on my short list of gripes for BlackBerry 10 is the lack of alarm settings. On most devices I've used you have the option to set more than one alarm rather than just the one that is allowed on BlackBerry 10. I keep an odd schedule some days, so being able to set multiple alarms is a key feature to me - something that can't be achieved right now on BlackBerry 10 without a third-party...

45 Comments

A happy ending to this Made in Manhattan BlackBerry Z10 story

Posted by Kevin Michaluk on 10 Apr 2013 10:39 am

Bye bye annoying tie straps; Hello awesome BlackBerry Z10 demos! In case you missed Part 1 of this real life story, go back and read it. The quick recap? I was pleasantly surprised when I walked into the Best Buy at 43rd and 5th in Manhattan on Monday night and was greeted by a prominent BlackBerry Z10 display. The happy tale quickly turned into a BlackBerry horror story of sorts when I...

69 Comments

Looking at BlackBerry’s Q4 gross margin spike

Posted by Chris Umiastowski on 9 Apr 2013 3:49 pm

When BlackBerry announced its Q4 results on March 28 we celebrated a Street-beating earnings result. Even if you ignore the tax benefit that the company recorded, BlackBerry delivered much better financial results than expected. A big part of that beat came from the gross margin line, which came in at 40% versus the low 30's estimates. In the financial press release, the company said the...

29 Comments

UK EE BlackBerry 10 customers to get a 4G boost

Posted by James Richardson on 9 Apr 2013 5:28 am

Here in the UK we are still new to LTE. In fact, as things currently stand we still only have one network that offers 4G and that's EE (formerly Everything Everywhere). Things are stepping up a notch however as the mobile network has announced that they are to double 4G speeds as well as doubling the 4G network capacity to meet the needs of customers in the future. If you are one of the cool...

145 Comments

Opportunity squandered and saved - Another BlackBerry 10 story made in Manhattan

Posted by Kevin Michaluk on 8 Apr 2013 6:53 pm

The tale I'm about to tell you is real and occurred literally just minutes ago. Like the real life Made in SoHo BlackBerry 10 story I relayed here on CrackBerry the other week, this one also shows much opportunity for BlackBerry and challenges to overcome. The triple A batteries in my headphones died this afternoon, so I walked to the nearest Best Buy on 43th and 5th in Manhattan to pick up...

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