It's been FOUR years since I've personally attended Mobile World Congress, but I made the voyage this year and am now writing to you from Barcelona, Spain. I'm not alone for the trip. Also joining me from the Mobile Nations team are Daniel Rubino, Phil Nickinson, Alex Dobie, Richard Devine and Andrew Martonik (for info on where to follow us, INCLUDING BBM CHANNELS, click here). And be...
With Facebook’s massive $16 billion acquisition of WhatsApp this week stirring things up, Rene Ritchie asked me to join him on the Vector podcast to discuss what it all means for the world of mobile instant messaging. With BBM being the originator in this space, I have a lot of STRONG opinions on this subject that I share during the show. It's definitely a worth listen. If you've...
Our friend J_Caloy is back with another video. This one is a little bit sad though... After Hating on the Z10 and Hating on it even more, JC has now said BYE BYE to his BlackBerry Z10. What did he replace it with? Well, you'll just have to watch the video and find out. Be sure to share the video! :)
It's been a while since we've thrown down a CrackBerry podcast, but we're back in full force! Adam and Bla1ze join me on this one and we talk OS 10.2.1, the rumored BlackBerry Z3, BBM Channels and much more (including all the toys I've picked up over the last few months). I'll be heading off to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in just a few days and we should hear more on the Z3 very...
Well, at least we got his attention. Following our post on CrackBerry yesterday about T-Mobile's recently-sent mailer encouraging BlackBerry users to "upgrade" to the iPhone 5s, it seems company CEO John Legere has been getting a tweetful on twitter from BlackBerry users. Just a little while ago he acknowledged his BlackBerry customer base with the following tweet: BlackBerry users, I...
BlackBerry CEO John Chen spoke during the company's last conference call about the low cost, built by Foxconn for emerging markets device, dubbed Jakarta. Today, N4BB posted some alleged renders of the Jakarta, which they say could hit the market has the BlackBerry Z3. Following that, BBin posted some rumored specs for the device, as follows: Display - 5" display, 540 x 960 pixels...
A longtime CrackBerry reader forwarded me the mailer he just received from T-Mobile, trying to persuade him to upgrade to the iPhone 5s. T-Mobile positions the upgrade for BlackBerry users by saying "Switch to iPhone 5s and get powerful communications and productivity apps — with the ease of use that Apple is known for." Of course, powerful communications and productivity are words...
It was one of the quickest contests we've ever run, but I think it was a fun one too. I'm a big believer in Picture Password on my BlackBerry. So much so that I flat-out showed my password on video for the world to see. Over a thousand of you took a stab at my password and maybe surprisingly, quite a few of you got it dead on. I promised the first person to get it right would be the...
Make it an extra-special Valentine's Day for your sweetie. Win this contest and we'll hook you up with a $200 pre-paid Amex card!
Take this one with a grain of salt as it hasn't been officially announced, but I received word via a reliable source today that BlackBerry's former CIO, Robin Bienfait, will be coming out of retirement soon and moving over to the competition. Specifically, she'll be taking up the roll of Chief Technology Innovations Officer at Samsung Telecommunications America. Robin was BlackBerry's...
Executive Vice President of BBM, Andrew Bocking, has left BlackBerry. Bocking had most recently been the head of the BBM team after moving from his position as Executive VP, Software Product Management and Ecosystem at BlackBerry where he played a huge role in bringing BB10 phones to market. It hasn't been confirmed if he was fired or chose to depart on his own, but BlackBerry has...
Save 20% on ALL BlackBerry Cases and Accessories this Valentine's Day by using coupon code "sweet20" at checkout!
Long time readers of CrackBerry will know the name and voice of Craig Johnston. Going back six years to February 2008, it was Craig Johnston who co-hosted CrackBerry Podcast Episode 001 with me. Craig was active on our podcasts for several years and occasionally would drop a post here on the blogs, imparting his immense knowledge of BlackBerry's history to our CrackBerry audience....
This past Friday, FastCompany published an editorial titled Is BlackBerry Actually Going To Turn It Around? Featuring several interview quotes from BlackBerry CEO, John Chen, and supporting quotes by me (I spent an hour on the phone with the story's author earlier in the week), it's a positive piece that seeks to examine why we are seeing a turn around in the company's share price since...
And can you explain it to them in 45 seconds or less?!
If I had my way, we'd have a quality page up on the internet about every single topic and question you can imagine that's related to BlackBerry. So when you come to the site or hit up Google (even Bing!) and search for something BlackBerry related, the odds are high that you'll land on that quality page produced by the #1 destination for everything BlackBerry, CrackBerry.com. That's...
I'm a big fan of T-Mobile's CEO, John Legere. He does the kind of shit that I would likely do if I were the CEO of a big company that's in a similar position. I mean, I don't see him doing really ballsy things like eating raw onions, punching muggers in the face or baring it all on youtube, but he knows how to attract attention to himself. Recently he got the attention of the...
One of the handy dandy new features in BlackBerry OS 10.2.1 is the ability to turn on the Flashlight in a uhh.. flash from the Quick Settings drop down menu. On taller phones like the BlackBerry Z10, Z30 and P'9982, after you upgrade to 10.2.1 the Flashlight app is automatically added to the Quick Settings drop down (this is the menu you see when you're on the homescreen and swipe...
The Big Game. The Superb Owl. Super Bowl XLVIII. It's on, TODAY. And you can watch it from your BlackBerry. If you plan to be out and about when the game kicks off, you can easily tune in right on your BlackBerry (or Android, iOS & Windows Phone) thanks to the NFL Mobile app. The only setback is that you'll have to cough up the $5 subscription fee, but that shouldn't be too much to...
Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the official launch of BlackBerry 10. We're also coming up on the one year anniversary of BlackBerry's first-ever Super Bowl commercial. This Sunday the Broncos will be battling it out against the Seahawks in Super Bowl XLVIII, and this year there will be no new Super Bowl commercial from BlackBerry. In lieu of a new one, I figured we could...
