CES 2012 in Las Vegas was great time for all of the Mobile Nations crew and we saw some awesome stuff on the way (or already here) from RIM and some third-party manufacturers. We got to check out loads of cool stuff coming in the PlayBook OS 2.0 update like BlackBerry Remote and native email, calendar and contacts, some sweet new games, spend some hands-on time with OS 7.1, BlackBerry Tag and much, much more. Keep reading to see what you missed from all of the CrackBerry coverage at CES 2012.

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This week at CES2012 my video camera battery died early on Day 1 and I realized I hadn't packed my charger. After a moment of panic I remembered that the BlackBerry PlayBook shoots 1080p video!

So to the show floor Joseph Holder and I went, armed with our PlayBooks, and started shooting video. We were confident that the video quality would be stunning; the only thing we were initially concerned with was the microphone pickup. To our excitement the stereo microphones on the PlayBook were amazing.

See for yourself the terrific quality of the videos done with the BlackBerry PlayBook:

Hands on with Seidio's case and charging pod for the BlackBerry Bold 9900
Toddy Smart Cloth annihilates fingerprints
TYLT: Not your average BlackBerry and other mobile accessories at CES2012
First Look: Aftershokz Bone Conduction Headphones
A ride in the BlackBerry Limo at CES!
JayBird stereo Bluetooth for the extreme lifestyle

RIM has announced that BlackBerry OS 7.1 will begin rolling out for devices starting today and over the coming weeks. While we've alreday seen OS 7.1 arrive on Sprint and Verizon (as well as leak for some devices), many users who don't yet have it will certainly be anxious to get their hands on an official version. The new software will include BlackBerry Tag in addition to other new features. Also on the way are updates to BBM, BlackBerry Traffic and BlackBerry Travel.

Press Release

RIM Showcases New BlackBerry 7.1 OS at CES 2012

New BBM, BlackBerry Traffic and BlackBerry Travel Updates Also Released

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA--(Marketwire - January 09, 2012) - (CES 2012) - A wide range of software improvements await BlackBerry® 7 smartphone customers at the BlackBerry® booth (South Hall 3 Booth # 30326) at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2012). Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM)(TSX: RIM) is showcasing the new BlackBerry® 7.1 OS as well as updates to the BBM^TM (BlackBerry® Messenger), BlackBerry® Traffic^TM and BlackBerry® Travel^TM apps. The new OS and app updates make seizing and sharing the moment even easier.

BlackBerry 7.1 will begin rolling out from carriers around the world beginning today and over the coming weeks(1). The new releases of BBM, BlackBerry Traffic and BlackBerry Travel will be available on BlackBerry® App World^TM beginning today.

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Last night I hit up the Aspen Social Club in NYC to check out the happenings at #BBMUglySweater Fan Night. Plenty of BlackBerry users were on hand to check out the festivities and claim the prizes they won from RIM in the #BBMUglySweater contest on Twitter. They were many happy campers heading home with brand new devices just in time for Christmas. We took in some great food and drink, played a bit of Angry Birds on the BlackBerry PlayBook (even former New York Giant Michael Strahan gave it a shot) and had a blast. Check out the video above to see how it went and get a glimpse of some truly ugly sweaters.

Finishing up with our BlackBerry DevCon 2011 mobile pavilion tour, these participants may be , but certainly not least. It was great to meet with everyone and discover the name/and faces behind the applications and other services. So rounding up the last set of interviews are representatives from Perfecto Mobile, TeleCommunication Systems (TCS), Rhomobile, Wikitude and New Toronto Group. It was a highly informative tour and hopefully we shed some light on some useful tools developers can use it order to get the best out of their potential applications. As always, if you want to read more on the companies in this video, all you need to do is click on their names. Thanks for watching!

Continuing on with our mobile pavilion tour at BlackBerry DevCon 2011, we met some amazing people behind some equally amazing products. Part II of our tour doesn’t fail to wow either, as we are introduced to companies that help other companies build and market their applications. Though some were more animated than others, you couldn’t help but feel their passion. This time around, we took a look at App-Promo, Grabba, Xtreme Labs, iSpeech and Marmalade. Marmalade’s President, Alex Caccia, walked us through some of the projects they are currently working on. There was a light hearted moment when I helped him clear a level of Cut the Rope, but it ended up on the cutting room floor. Click on each of the links to learn more about each company. Part 3 is coming up.

The mobile pavilion at DevCon 2011 is a showcase for sponsoring companies in order to show off their wares/applications. This year, the pavilion was apparently smaller than it was in previous years. Nonetheless, they did provide excellent insight to the possibilities; they ranged from application development support, to in app GPS mapping tools, to searching for potential BBM contacts. Camera in hand, I asked them to tell me their story and let the CrackBerry Nation know what they were all about. In this video, we’ll take a quick look at Search 4 BBM, Polar Mobile, Metova and Universal Mind. To learn more about each of them, click on the link above. Stay tuned for Part 2.

What You May Have Missed

Liquid Graphics broke BlackBerry Theme Studio; RIM looking into fixing it
We salute you Gary Klassen, Inventor of BlackBerry Messenger!
Porsche designed BlackBerry to be officially announced October 27th
BASIS International takes legal action against RIM over BBX trademark
#1 reason BlackBerry PlayBook sales are lacking is due to no native email client
BlackBerry DevCon 2011 General Sessions posted online
First Look: BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 Developer Beta!
RIM introduces BlackBerry Jam - a new resource for BlackBerry developers
BBX OS announced at DevCon 2011 today
Breaksclusive: Introducing the BlackBerry KickStand!
Research In Motion offers free premium apps to customers following service interruptions

Contest Reminders

Super Pipa - 20 free copies to give away

During the BlackBerry DevCon general session keynote, Alex Caccia of Marmalade took some time to show off a bit of what the BlackBerry PlayBook can do. It seemed that much of the keynote was about gaming on the PlayBook and here we got a good look at the upcoming Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. I for one and super pumped to check this game out in full as I've been a big Tomb Raider fan for years. The gameplay looks amazing and I'm hoping it will be a hit. Check out the video above for more.

Citrix Receiver for the BlackBerry PlayBook was announced a few weeks back, and during the BlackBerry DevCon general session keynote, Chris Fleck took some time to show it off a bit. Citrix Receiver runs over wifi and allows you to remotely connect to your desktop from anywhere in the world. It gives you full access so you can get things done on the go, allowing you to use Enterprise apps right from your PlayBook. Check out the video above for more.

Alan Panezic came on stage during the BlackBerry DevCon general session keynote to talk a bit on the BlackBerry in Enterprise. He touched a bit on BlackBerry Balance and BBX, then dove a bit more into the BlackBerry PlayBook on BES. The PlayBook can be provisined through the server, giving you a full Enterprise app store and secure apps without an additional needs. The PlayBook creates a specific work folder keeping your work apps all in one place for easy access. Very cool stuff. Check out the video above for more.

Sitting in on a panel today regarding the BlackBerry Runtime for Android App Player, we learned quite a bit about what's to come down the line for Android apps on the BlackBerry PlayBook. It definitely looks like there will be plenty of apps ported over from Android to play around with. One thing that was said was that the number one reason the BlackBerry PlayBook sales have been so poor is due to the lack of a native email client (the number two reason is lack of apps). While this isn't a secret, it's more obvious now that consumers are really after a solid tablet that can provide a native email experience with an app (not with Bridge). We still have no idea when we'll see the native PIM apps like email and calendar some to the PlayBook, but hopefully they aren't too far down the pipeline at this point. We did see RIM show off these native apps back at BlackBerry World this year (see video above) but they are still nowhere to be found. Just goes to show that RIM should have listened to us back at CES when we told them a tablet with no native email would never work :-)

In case you missed the BlackBerry DevCon general session keynote this morning and don't care to watch it in its entirety, we have a few highlight videos on the way. The first is Dan Dodge taking the stage with Mike Lazaridis to talk BBX. He explains how the upcoming OS will be for both phones and tablets and touches a bit on what makes the OS so special. He also gets into a bit of what BBX will bring down the road. Check it all out in the video above, and hang tight as we bring more highlights from the keynote.

For those that attended, watched the live stream or followed our live blog of today's BlackBerry DevCon keynote event, you may have noticed one thing stuck out, and not because it was a focus of the keynote, but because it was absent. There was no mention of the current Java platform on which the BlackBerry Smartphone OS is based. It started to become clear to that the future of Java development for BlackBerry was about to head into extinction. The BlackBerry App Player, which we had previously had a glance at during BlackBerry World, was no where to be found.

Later in the day during a press session we were able to get a few more answers, but they were not what I was hoping to hear. The BlackBerry App player is no more -- once the transition is made to the BBX superphones, none of the current BlackBerry apps will work on them. In my mind the first thing I thought was that the 20+ BlackBerry apps that I have released have just become obsolete. Now while I do understand that even when the BBX phones hit next year there will still be a demand for a few more years to come, the tough realization that apps that I have spent years of my life developing and improving will all need to be re-written on the new platform. Am I upset? Right now it's some pretty mixed emotions. I do see the vision RIM has moving forward with a new platform and new developer tools, but at the same time I think about the long road ahead of me to make the transition.

RIM showed a lot today to try to recruit new developers to platform with all the great new tools, but there was no mention of what they are doing to make things easier on the current developers that are working on the java platform. The current java tools ...  quite frankly ... are poor at best, so I guess we'll have to put up with them for just a little while longer.

Having said all that, I'm not going anywhere. BlackBerry is still my choice of smartphone and my choice of development platform. How do you feel about the current apps not working when BBX is released? Let us know in the comments.