Derek Kessler is Special Projects Manager for Mobile Nations. He's been writing about tech since 2009, has far more phones than is considered humane, still carries a torch for Palm (but BlackBerry's alright, too), and got a Tesla because it was the biggest gadget he could find. You can follow him on Twitter at @derekakessler.
This is BlackBerry's newest smartphone: the BlackBerry Leap. Sporting a 5-inch 720x1280 IPS LCD display, an 8MP rear camera, and 16GB of storage, the phone offers quality mid-range specs at an affordable $275 off-contract. We've been told the phone's built by Wistron, the manufacturing arm of Taiwan-based Acer. It has a Foxconn feel to it, but this is more the entry-level design...
Big Red has a new chief, with John Stratton replacing Dan Mead as CEO of Verizon Wireless. Stratton comes from within Verizon, having previously served as the company's President of Global Enterprise and Consumer Wireline. Mead will stay with Verizon to oversee the sale of the company's wireline assets, and then plans to retire. Verizon Wireless is still a subsidiary of Verizon...
Not content with legally prevailing over Typo on multiple occasions, BlackBerry is dragging Typo back into court of the iPhone case maker's second iteration of their Typo keyboard. The first edition was barred from sales for copying the Q10 keyboard design, which Typo ignored, which ended with them being hit with an $860,000 fine. Now the Typo2, which looks less like a BlackBerry...
AT&T's added another tier to their Mobile Share Value data plans: 7GB for $75. Of course, that's just for the data, but if you're thinking about grabbing a new smartphone at the same time and go with AT&T's Next payment plan option for a new smartphone, they'll cut the $40 smartphone access charge down to just $15/month. That equals out to $90/month in service charges for 7GB...
The top five carriers in the United States will on Feb. 11 implement new unlocking procedures for smartphones, tablets, and other cellular devices sold on their networks. The new unlocking standards were set forth by the CTIA in late 2013 and, though a voluntary commitment by the carriers, define the conditions under which carriers must unlock your devices — and it's all looking good...
Way back in March 2014, BlackBerry won an argument in court that saw the makers of the Typo keyboard barred from selling their wares, and Typo's ignoring of that order has resulted in a court-ordered penalty. For selling the suspiciously-familiar iPhone keyboard case when they were explicitly told not to, Typo's been ordered to pay BlackBerry damages to the tune of $860,000. Of...
It's official, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler wants to reclassify internet service providers as utility providers under the FCC's Title II authority. The move aims to preserve the principles of net neutrality in law, barring ISPs from blocking, throttling, or prioritizing traffic. Said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler: "I am submitting to my colleagues the...
Alec Saunders, formerly the BlackBerry VP of Developer Relations and the QNX, has landed at Microsoft. Specifically, after having left BlackBerry back in October, Saunders is now a "Principal Technical Evangelist" at Microsoft Ventures, Microsoft's venture capital arm. Said Saunders in a blog post announcing the move: "So it was natural that one of the first companies I reached...
In a ruling that's resulted in a $40 million fine, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's smacking down TracFone's speed throttling of customers that were paying for unlimited data service. The case in question only applies to TracFone, but it helps to reinforce a precedent that could apply to even the larger carriers in the United States. While AT&T and Verizon don't offer...
Sprint's taking the fight straight to T-Mobile and is offering customers of the Un-carrier a guaranteed minimum trade-in credit of $200 for their current working T-Mobile smartphone. That's in addition to the current contract buy-out offer (though T-Mobile ditched traditional contracts nearly two years ago) or up to $350 in credit to pay for their new Sprint phone. The offer's good...
AT&T has revamped their AT&T World Connect $5 monthly international calling package to offer unlimited calls to Mexico. The news comes just days after AT&T got approval from the Mexican government for a $2.5 billion acquisition of Iusacell, Mexico's third-largest cellular carrier. Said AT&T Mobility Chief Marketing Officer David Christopher: "We're always looking...
The later you get into CES, the weirder it gets, and CES 2015 has been no exception to that rule. After the surprise revelation that Audi had an LG webOS smartwatch we had to wonder what else there could possibly be.
The big announcements of CES 2015 are out of the way, and that means it's time for the real surprises. If we're honest, most of the announcements this year were relatively tame — iterations on what's come before.
There's a new BlackBerry Passport in town, and it's meant for AT&T's network. The phone sports a redesigned case on the outside, but on the inside is for all intents and purposes identical. But why a new design? Because AT&T wanted it that way. Here it is compared to the standard Passport where you can really see the differences between the two — AT&T's has a lot more...
Today at CES 2015, BlackBerry announced that Android Wear support will soon be coming to BBM, and we went wrist-on to check out how it works. And, well, it works almost exactly like you'd expect. You get all the appropriate notifications on your connected Android Wear smartwatch (in this case it was demoed on a Moto 360), and the ability to reply. BBM takes advantage of a lot of what...
CES 2015 has officially begun! That's right, the biggest tech-stravaganza of the year is under way, and if you thought all the big announcements happened yesterday… well, you're wrong. There was more today, and there'll be more tomorrow!
CES technically doesn't start until tomorrow, but that doesn't mean the news can't get underway. And that it has, with announcements and reveals large and small across the spectrum of consumer electronics.
BlackBerry's further enhancing their enterprise standing with the release of cross-platform new management and productivity tools for BlackBerry, iPhone, and Android. The Secure Productivity bundle for businesses using BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES10 or BES12) and offers support for using a device as a two-factor VPN authentication token, BBM Protected for secure and encrypted...
Productivity is the heart of the BlackBerry experience, and to help enhance the productivity of their enterprise customers BlackBerry today announced a number of new enterprise apps that are coming to the BlackBerry 10 platform and the just-officially-announced BlackBerry Classic. The BlackBerry Classic launch today has strongly featured enterprise, even pulling several high-profile...
After teasing for ages, BlackBerry today finally and officially announced the BlackBerry Classic. The phone combines the best of BlackBerry 10 with a design that melds together the modern BlackBerry Q10 with the classic navigation keys and trackpad loved on the BlackBerry Bold 9900. It's a heck of a BlackBerry, and you should definitely check out our comprehensive review of the...