RIM's PlayBook will ship without the core functions that make a BlackBerry a BlackBerry. Photo: Charlie Sorrel
Oh, RIM! What are you doing? According to a leaked internal document, the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will ship without native support for e-mail, contacts or messaging. To use any of these services, you’ll have to either hook up a BlackBerry handset, or access them through the web browser. Read More…
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on March 30, 2011
RIM's PlayBook will ship without the core functions that make a BlackBerry a BlackBerry. Photo Charlie Sorrel
Oh, RIM! What are you doing? According to a leaked internal document, the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will ship without native support for e-mail, contacts or messaging. To use any of these services, you’ll have to either hook up a BlackBerry handset, or access them through the web browser. Read More…
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on March 30, 2011
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Research in Motion announced this morning that it acquired Swedish interface design firm TAT, whose initials stand for The Astonishing Tribe.
RIM clearly plans to use the Swedes’ talent to beef up future versions of the BlackBerry user interface, which despite the addition of touchscreen tech in the last year still seems clunky and quaint compared to iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7. That could make future BlackBerry phones — not to mention the upcoming Playbook tablet — a whole lot more exciting.
That got us wondering: What might the future, TAT-enhanced BlackBerry UI look like?
We have no idea, but if these concept videos produced by TAT are any indication, we’re guessing your next BlackBerry might have:
What do you think the future holds for BlackBerry? Let us know in the comments.
This page: TAT’s vision of the “Future of Screen Technology” includes some pretty eye-popping examples of touchscreens embedded into every aspect of daily life. A man wakes up and checks the news on a stretchable screen that starts out iPhone-sized, but which he pulls on to make it nearly iPad-sized. A woman brushes her teeth while reading headlines and checking her calendar on a touchscreen mirror. A man composes a sport publication on a translucent touchscreen display whose images he can flip around, so coworkers on the other side of the screen can see them. Cool stuff!
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An award-winning writer specializing in technology, science and business, Dylan Tweney is a senior editor at Wired.com and publisher of tinywords, the world’s smallest magazine.
Follow @dylan20 and @gadgetlab on Twitter.
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Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on December 2, 2010
Apple’s found itself in market cold wars with many tech companies, most notably Microsoft, Adobe and Google. But things are really heating up with smartphone maker RIM. In the last 24 hours, RIM has attacked Apple’s technical chops and software philosophy.
First, RIM’s Playbook team posted a video (see below) comparing its forthcoming tablet’s mobile browser to the iPad’s. Interestingly, the video highlighted not just the iPad’s lack of Flash (which everyone knows about), but also its slow page-loading speed, lack of pixel-by-pixel rendering fidelity and lack of support for high-quality JavaScript and HTML5 video.
The implication is clear: Steve Jobs has said that Apple isn’t putting resources behind Flash so it can focus on HTML5 and other open web standards. But the iPad’s implementation of those standards is far from perfect. RIM is now claiming that it has been able to put together a faster browser with better HTML5 performance — and, as a bonus, support for Flash — even though Apple’s had more time to get its browser right.
RIM’s HTML5 emphasis is key for its second attack on Apple, which CEO Jim Balsillie voiced at Tuesday’s Web 2.0 conference: Apple’s highly-touted app marketplace really just masks iOS’s subpar web performance.
“You dont need an app for the Web,” Balsillie said. Since many iOS apps are just frontend clients for web properties — stores, games, media companies, social networking sites — and RIM’s app strength is in documents and productivity, it’s a clear contrast.
Theres still a role for apps, but can you use your existing content? Balsillie asked web companies. Can you use your existing web assets? Do you need a set of proprietary tools to bring existing assets on to a device, or can you use known tools that you use for creating websites?
As for Apple catching up to Blackberry in the smartphone market, when asked what he would tell Jobs if he were there, Balsillie simply said, “You finally showed up.”
This isn’t the first time Balsillie has shot back at Jobs and Apple. After an October earnings call where Jobs crowed about passing RIM in quarterly smartphone sales and denigrated 7-inch tablets (a class that includes RIM’s Playbook) as overexpensive underperformers, Balsillie took to the official Blackberry blog, questioning Apple’s numbers (RIM’s fiscal quarters are slightly different from Apple’s), its software philosophy and Jobs’s treatment by the media.
“For those of us who live outside of Apples distortion field,” Balsillie wrote, “we know that 7-inch tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience.” He added, “We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple.”
It might be surprising that Balsillie taken such a hard line against Apple, considering that Android smartphones are arguably taking a bigger bite out of RIM’s core smartphone business, while Windows Phone 7 is trying to peel away customers too. But targeting Apple makes a lot of sense.
First, no company in technology is more visible than Apple and no person in technology is more recognizable than Steve Jobs. Shooting down Apple and the iPad is news, and doing it on the basis of HTML5 and web support is a strike at the heart of what Apple has staked its claim on. It’s like Pepsi beating Coke in a sip test.
Second, the iPad surprised everyone — including Apple — by its adoption rate among business users. RIM, which has traditionally been very strong in the business world, is eager to stop that trend in its tracks, before companies that were RIM-only decide to go iOS-only.
Finally, Blackberry offers a lot more smartphone models, at different price points and in different form factors, than it did when the iPhone was announced. It’s rebranding itself in the consumer market as a company that’s all about the web and communication. This week’s attacks were aimed at driving that point home.
No more of what Jobs once called “the baby web” for baby-sized smartphone screens. Email, Messenger, text entry, and the full web: that’s the space Blackberry wants to occupy in the customer’s imagination.
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Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on November 17, 2010
RIM has released a video pitching the upcoming PlayBook tablet against the current iPad, and it’s pretty impressive. Clearly the tests were chosen to favor RIM’s own device, but even so, it beats the iPad handily in each one.
Loading a regular webpage, for example, sees the PlayBook finished with everything, rendering and all, while the iPad still ticks along. Next, it’s on to Flash, which the iPad doesn’t do at all. Smartly, RIM chose to use a non-video serving site (in this case Adidas) as most video providers offer iPad-compatible streams as an alternative to Adobe’s proprietary plugin. Even so, the animation on the Flash site stutters noticeably (this is probably Flash’s fault, not the PlayBook’s).
Then we move to Javascript and HTML5, and while the example shown clearly favors the PlayBook, there are plenty of sites where the iPad works great.
Still, the raw rendering speed of the PlayBook’s browser is obvious, and the Flash support will make it useful for browsing restaurant websites on the go (why do all restaurant sites use Flash?). RIM must be proud. It must also be aware that the PlayBook won’t be out until next year, when it will be up against the iPad 2, not the current iPad.
BlackBerry PlayBook and iPad Comparison: Web Fidelity [Blackberry YouTube Channel]
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Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on November 17, 2010
Maybe Flash on a tablet isn’t as bad as Steve Jobs says it is. That’s what Adobe and Research In Motion want you to think after watching the video below.
Taped at Adobe’s MAX conference this week, the segment shows the BlackBerry PlayBook running media apps coded in Adobe Air, which is based partly on Flash. The video also shows YouTube.com playing a video with Flash 10.1 player.
“We’re not trying to dumb down the internet for a small mobile device,” says Mike Lazaridis, RIM’S CEO, during the PlayBook demonstration. “What we’re trying to do is bring up the performance and capability of the mobile device to the internet.”
Though there is no mention of Apple in the video, the comments about dumbing down the internet appear to target the iPad, which does not support Flash. In a famous blog post published April, Apple CEO Jobs explained why Apple was leaving Flash out of its mobile operating system, citing issues such as application crashes and battery drain. Later, when Flash debuted on the Android OS, some independent tests found that Flash was causing crashes on Android devices and that performance was sluggish, but battery drain was not significant.
The BlackBerry PlayBook will be shipping early next year. RIM has not announced a price.
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Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on October 26, 2010
Late yesterday, Verizon and Motorola announced a new Android smartphone with a front-facing QWERTY keyboard, sleek black business-casual look and a 3.1″ multitouch multimedia screen. The Droid Pro is expected to attract a big chunk of Verizon’s existing Android and Blackberry high-end and business users when released in the coming weeks.
My first, beloved smartphone was a first-generation Blackberry Bold; for me, Motorola’s Droid Pro is clearly the handsomest Android phone I have ever seen. (Yes, I like it more than the R2-D2 Droid.) The major differences between the new Droid Pro and my old Blackberry Bold are Android apps and a touchscreen. As long as the Droid Pro’s keyboard is a champ like the Bold’s, the touchscreen isn’t too teeny and its yet-unannounced pricing isn’t too obscene, we can say that it’s improved in every way.
The Droid Pro’s specs are also impressive: Android 2.2., a 1GHz processor with 2GB of storage, Adobe Flash Player 10.1 and support for both Exchange and Google email and calendar programs. It can act as a 3G mobile hotspot (although Verizon has disabled that functionality for current Droid users) or stream media from a server over a Wi-Fi network using the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) standard. Its 5MP camera can shoot still images and video, so you might even have something on your phone worth streaming back.
When the Droid Pro’s finally released, upgraders should make sure they don’t throw their old phones away: Verizon Wireless today announced a new trade-in/recycling program that will appraise your old phone, refurbish or recycle it and offer you a Verizon Gift Card. Even non-Verizon phones can be traded in, so network-switchers can take advantage of it too.
Price and release date for the Droid Pro have yet to be announced; when released, it will be available through Verizon Wireless’s online and retail outlets. You can fully expect that Verizon’s people will be happy to sell you one.
Image from Motorola.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on October 6, 2010
Image by Charlie Sorrel and Tim Carmody
There’s a lot of gadget news about Amazon today, so we’re going to take these items one at a time, in increasing order of uncertainty:
KindleReader.LoadSample({containerID: ‘kindleReaderDiv’, asin: ‘B003X28734′, width: ’640′, height: ’346′});
On the other hand, Amazon’s built up good brand identification with the Kindle, e-books, and E Ink. Will they turn around and say, “oh yeah, multimedia tablets are really awesome, but not, um, more awesome than a Kindle, I mean, um, why not buy both?” Just seems a little surprising. Level of certainty: Pretty cloudy. The source was right about an app store, but as they say, a stopped clock can be right twice a day. If Amazon releases some kind of other media hardware, whether using Android or anything else, it’s equally likely to be a TV box or a smartphone or something else that equally plays to their strength while being a little more differentiated from a dedicated reading machine than a tablet.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on September 28, 2010
A stream of new Android smartphones have helped the Google designed operating system gain market share while rivals such as Apple and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion lost points, according to the latest mobile subscriber report from analytics company comScore.
Among smartphone platforms, Android OS grew to 17 percent share between May and July from 12 percent at the end of April. During the same period, RIM and Apple lost about 1.3 percent share.
The good news for RIM, though, is that it continues to lead among smartphone platforms with 39.9 percent market share, while Apple is firmly in the second place with 23.8 percent share. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile accounted for 11.8 percent of smartphone subscribers, while Palm rounded out the top five with 4.9 percent.
Androids growth has been powered by a slew of new handsets that have launched in the last few months. HTC’s EVO 4G debuted on Sprint in June. A few weeks later, Motorola introduced its second generation Droid and Droid X on the Verizon Wireless network. Meanwhile, Samsung launched its Galaxy S range of smartphones. Last month, Samsung said it has shipped more than one million Galaxy S phones in 45 days since the devices hit retail stores in mid-July.
More than 20 Android phones are available in the U.S. currently.
Despite losing share to Google Android, most smartphone platforms continue to gain subscribers as the smartphone market overall continues to grow, says comScore.
Among all mobile handset manufacturers–including both smartphones and feature phones–Samsung ranked at the the top with 23.1 percent market share in the U.S. At the end of July, 234 million Americans used mobile devices. Of these, 53.4 million people have smartphones, up 11 percent from the end of April, says comScore.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on September 17, 2010
Happy news for iPhone- and iPad-using fans of the $10 standard flavor of office/productivity suite Documents To Go: Yesterday, version 4.0 was released for iOS. The $15 Documents To Go Premium hit 4.0 last week.
These were the first updates of the application following Blackberry-maker RIM’s partial acquisition of Documents To Go creators DataViz. RIM had announced that it had reassigned the majority of the company’s employees to developing applications for Blackberry smartphones and the Blackpad tablet; this had cast some doubt on future updates of Documents to Go for other platforms.
Still, this may be the last major update Documents To Go will see for iOS. We can assume that 4.0 was mostly in the can when RIM bought DataViz’s assets early this month. If RIM does indeed let multi-platform development of Documents To Go slide, that creates an opening for many would-be/could-be competitors — including Microsoft Office.
DataViz keeps Documents To Go updates coming [MacWorld]
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on September 15, 2010
Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Torch won’t be in hands of consumers till next week but a website has taken the device apart for a closer look.
CrackBerry.com disassembled the Torch for a look at the device’s slider mechanism that helps pull out the keyboard, the bumper antenna that attaches to the board and the magnesium tray that the Torch’s display is encased in.
RIM launched the Torch on Tuesday as a $200 touchscreen phone (with contract) that would be available exclusively on AT&T’s network. Unlike the Storm and Storm 2, earlier touchscreen models from RIM, the Torch has both a touch sensitive display and a keyboard packed together in a slider mechanism–similar to the Palm Pre.
The video below shows the Torch’s keyboard slider, which is apparently rated for 15,000 cycles.
Head over to CrackBerry.com to see the rest of the photos.
Photos: CrackBerry.com
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on August 5, 2010
Cellphone battery dead? No problem: Just borrow a charger from a friend. Oh, wait — you can’t, because your friend doesn’t have the same phone as you, and his charger won’t work with your phone.
That annoyance will end next year, for Europeans at least. Thanks to the efforts of the European Commission, most cellphones sold in Europe will have a one-size-fits-all charger starting in 2011. So far, 10 major cellphone makers, including Apple, Motorola, Samsung and Research In Motion, have signed on to the agreement.
American users will have to wait. Without a government agency setting a deadline, it is up to handset makers to make the switch to a single standard. All consumers can do is let their old chargers gather dust in a drawer somewhere, while hoping manufacturers will eventually converge on a standardized charger.
“For the FCC, this is probably number 5,000 on their list and it is legislative priority number 10,000 at this point,” says Joe Banos, chief operating officer for Wilson Electronics, which makes cellphone boosters and antennas. “We believe the U.S. will ultimately follow Europe here, but the question is when.”
Today each cellphone ships with its own charger. Different companies use different connectors — and often different models from the same company do too, making it difficult for users to borrow a charger. And when it’s time to toss the phone, the charger goes into the bin too.
A universal charger means consumers don’t have to get a new charger with every mobile phone. As a bonus, it will be easier to borrow a charger when in need.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on August 4, 2010
Research In Motion’s BlackBerry operating system is long overdue for a makeover. RIM fans have been waiting for the upcoming BlackBerry OS 6 to modernize the BlackBerry user interface. Now a video from the company shows what some of those features could look like.
BlackBerry OS 6 will have universal search, a better media interface, social feeds that bring together Facebook, Twitter and chatter from BlackBerry messenger, a richer web browser and easier to manage RSS feeds.
The new features shown in this video bring some polish to the BlackBerry. But much of what the company is touting–pinch and zoom in the browser, and search–are all what Android and Apple iPhone users have had for months.
Still this is a step forward and a sign that RIM is trying to keep pace with the market. The company is yet to announce the launch date for the OS 6.
Separately, RIM launched ‘BlackBerry Protect‘, a remote backup and find feature that’s similar to the service that Motorola and Apple offer for their phones. Like Motorola, RIM will offer the BlackBerry Protect for free so consumers can back up contacts, calendar, tasks and message and restore or locate their phone using a computer if the device is misplaced, lost or stolen.
BlackBerry Protect will be available in limited beta this week and is expected to be available to all users later this year.
Photo: (Honou/Flickr)
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 12, 2010
Google’s open source Android operating system ranks fourth in terms of market share among smartphone platforms in the U.S. but is growing at a faster pace than its rivals.
About 13 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers used an Android phone in the quarter that ended May, up 4 percent from the previous quarter, according to comScore’s Mobilens service.
Research In Motion’s BlackBerry remained the number one smartphone platform with 41.7 percent share among consumers.
Apple ranked number two with 24.4 percent share and Microsoft third with 13.2 percent, while Palm rounded out the top five with 4.8 percent.
Android’s growth should come as no surprise to mobile enthusiasts. More than 20 Android phones are available in the U.S. currently. Handset makers such as LG and Samsung that have been slower than rivals Motorola and HTC in adopting Android are now planning to launch new Android devices.
Earlier this week, LG said it will have two Android smartphones and an Android-based tablet available by the end of the year. Samsung has already announced that its first 4G Android phone on Sprint will be available this summer.
This focus on Android has taken its toll on other mobile operating systems. Almost all platforms, with the exception of Android, lost some market share in the quarter. BlackBerry market share was down 0.4 percent, while Apple lost about 1 percent. The data does not include the iPhone 4, which launched in June.
Android’s growth doesn’t mean other smartphone systems are losing ground, says comScore. The number of people who own a smartphone in the U.S. grew 8.1 percent last quarter to 9.1 million people, which indicates that the overall pie is growing.
Photo: (bump/Flickr)
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 8, 2010
