BlackBerry Leap Smartphone Unveiled In India

Canadian manufacturer BlackBerry has unveiled its Leap Smartphone in India. The mid-range Smartphone, which was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, will be available in the market next week.

However, the company has not revealed the price of its new 4G-enabled handset yet. In foreign markets, the Smartphone is priced at $275 (approximately Rs 17,000).

BlackBerry Leap sports a 5-inch HD (720x1280p, 294 PPI) touch display. Powered by a relatively older 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor, the phone has 2GB RAM and 16GB flash storage in addition to a microSD card slot that supports card up to 128GB.

Leap runs BlackBerry 10 OS (version 10.3) and supports BlackBerry Blend desktop software. It supports Android apps and comes with both Amazon Appstore and BlackBerry World.

The phone sports an 8MP rear camera with auto-focus and flash and support for 1080p video capture, and a 2MP fixed-focus front-facing camera that supports 720p video capture.

BlackBerry Leap comes with a 2800mAh battery with a claimed backup time of 25 hours with heavy use.

In terms of connectivity, the phone supports 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy and EDR, GPS, FM radio and 4G (FD-LTE 1800MHz only).

BlackBerry Classic launched in India

BlackBerry has launched its long-awaited Classic Smartphone in India. The company has priced it at Rs 31,990. 

The Classic is targeted at BlackBerry loyalists who still use older versions of its physical keyboard devices such as the Bold. The phone features all legacy keys including the menu, back and call answer and reject keys in addition to a touch display.

With the Classic and the recent launch of its Passport Smartphone, BlackBerry is in some ways taking the company back to its roots, focusing mainly on the physical keyboard, which made the company's devices popular among messaging and email junkies.

The BlackBerry Classic sports a 3.5-inch square touch display with a resolution of 720x720p. Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus processor and 2GB RAM, the phone comes with 16GB storage expandable via microSD card up to 128GB. The USP of the phone is its 35 key backlit keyboard.

It runs BlackBerry 10 OS version 10.3.1 and comes with Amazon Appstore in addition to BlackBerry World to download Android apps.

The Classic sports an 8MP auto-focus camera capable of recording 1080p video and a 2MP front-facing camera.

It comes with a 2515mAh battery with a claimed talk time of up to 11.7 hours and standby time of up to 14.5 days on 3G.

In terms of connectivity, the phone supports 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, 4G (only FDD-LTE), FM Radio and GPS.

The BlackBerry Classic is designed to give users a distinct experience that every BlackBerry QWERTY loyalist and high-productivity business customer will love. This device brings the best of BlackBerry features and the keyboard functionalities familiar to BlackBerry Bold and Curve users on a secure and productive platform, with the added performance and agility that power professionals need to be competitive in today's busy world.

BlackBerry launches Classic Smartphone

The Canadian mobile technology company, BlackBerry has launched its long-awaited Classic, a Smartphone it hopes will help it win back market share and woo those still using older versions of its physical keyboard devices.

BlackBerry said the new device, which bears striking similarities to its once wildly popular Bold and Curve handsets, boasts a larger screen, longer battery life, an expanded app library with access to offerings from Amazon.com Inc's Android App store, and a browser three times faster than the one on its legacy devices.

Chief Executive, John Chen said BlackBerry had listened to its fans and brought back the command bar functionality that helped make its legacy phones easy to navigate.

When the company initially introduced its new BlackBerry 10 Operating System and devices early in 2012 it put more emphasis on touch-screens, alienating many fans of its physical keyboard.

Those who moved to the new physical keyboard phones that BlackBerry launched later were unhappy that command keys such as the Menu, Back, Send and End buttons, along with the trackpad had been dropped.

With the Classic and the recent launch of its Passport Smartphone, John Chen is in some ways taking the company back to its roots, re-emphasizing the physical keyboard.

The Waterloo, Ontario based company, which also unveiled a new suite of enterprise applications and software bundles targeted at major corporate clients, said the Classic is on sale immediately on Amazon.com and shopblackberry.com.

Thousands line up to buy Blackberry Bold 9790S

Thousands of Indonesians jammed into a glitzy shopping mall to get hold of the first BlackBerry Bold 9790s being sold worldwide.

Fearing a riot, hundreds of police were deployed outside, tying up traffic in the heart of the capital for hours.

With a 50 percent discount on the $540 phone for the first 1,000 buyers, lines started forming in front of Pacific Place mall on Thursday night. By daybreak, impatient shoppers started rattling the gates.

And when rumors spread that the new smartphones - commonly known as Bellagio - had already sold out, the crowd of 3,000 went crazy. Several people fainted in the crush.

Indonesia, a nation of 240 million people, has experienced a come-from-nowhere tech frenzy in recent years.

With 6 million users, BlackBerry dominates the smartphone market.

RIM offers free apps to BlackBerry customers

Canada's Research In Motion Ltd will offer free premium apps worth more than $100 to appease BlackBerry customers frustrated by service disruption last week which ran for days and affected millions.

Research In Motion said the complete selection of premium apps would become available to download at BlackBerry App World for four weeks beginning October 19.

Enterprise customers will also be offered one month of free technical support as an apology for the outage.

The offering, to compensate for a system failure that left tens of millions of Blackberry users on five continents without email, instant messaging and browsing, could be expensive for RIM and it remains to be seen how many customers will see the offer as an acceptable response.

Analysts have said the company faces a wider problem from the damage to its reputation and loss of corporate customers who no longer think they can rely on the device.

"We've worked hard to earn their (customers') trust over the past 12 years and we're committed to providing the high standard of reliability they expect," said RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis.

"We are taking immediate and aggressive steps to help prevent something like this from happening again."

RIM co-CEOs Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie apologized last week to millions of Blackberry customers for the four-day outage which tarnished the company's reputation and set back its drive to catch up with the likes of Apple Inc and its iPhone.

Some mobile operators such as Spanish group Telefonica SA have already said they will compensate customers, although analysts believe they will also be looking at whether they can pass on some of those costs to RIM.

The apps include games such as Bejeweled, a translation service and the music discovery tool Shazam.

Francisco Jeronimo at IDC said the decision was a clever move by RIM because it would help customers to discover the app service. He said the company was likely to have struck a deal with app developers to keep the cost down.

"More important than the offer itself, is that RIM is showing goodwill and being humble. They recognized the problem, apologized and now they are compensating their users."

Wealth managers prefer Apple over RIM

Wealth managers prefer using Apple products for business rather than Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices, a survey by Aite Group showed.

Of 402 financial advisers polled, 45 percent said they would choose an Apple iPhone or iPad, while 14 percent would pick a BlackBerry.

The research firm, which focuses on financial services, conducted the survey in March, well before the recent RIM outage which left large pockets of BlackBerry users around the world without access to email and other functions.

The study found that using mobile devices was increasingly important to advisers, many of whom service clients with hand-held devices who have access to online brokerage services.

Nearly half the advisers surveyed said having access to business applications was an "important" or "very important" part of their technology strategy for 2011.

BlackBerry services improved after 3 days' outage

BlackBerry services improved in several regions including Europe, the Middle East and India on Thursday after three days of outages that have incensed users.

Canada-based Research In Motion (RIM) has blamed a backlog of emails from Europe for the glitches which have starved millions of users around the world of instant access to emails and messaging.

"From 6:00 am BST (British Summer Time, 0500 GMT) today, all services across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as India, have been operating with significant improvement," a statement on BlackBerry's UK website said.

"We continue to monitor the situation 24/7 to ensure ongoing stability. Thank you for your patience."

RIM said on Wednesday that an initial technical failure had prompted a build-up of messages in its network, triggering a cascade of problems around the world that affected many of the firm's 70 million subscribers.

"It is a backlog issue," RIM software vice president David Yach said, ruling out any rumours of sabotage or hacking for the problems that started on Monday and continued despite initial claims that the issue had been resolved.

BlackBerry's UK service to be closed if required

BlackBerry said it would work with mobile operators to switch off its popular messenger service if they were ordered by authorities to do so during civil unrest, after police singled out the system as a key tool used in last month's riots.

Appearing before politicians investigating the large-scale disorder that swept Britain in early August, executive Stephen Bates of BlackBerry-owner Research in Motion said the company would comply with orders given in special circumstances such as threats of terrorism or mass criminality.

"From our perspective we comply with the law and if the instruction would be to close down the mobile networks which is the method by which that would be enacted, we would then comply, we would then work with those mobile operators to help them meet the obligations as defined by that act," Bates said.

Police and parliamentarians said at the time of the unrest that social media, in particular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), had been used by rioters and looters to incite and coordinate violence.

BBM appears to have been preferred over Twitter and other social media sites because its messages are encrypted and private.

Speaking when police were still grappling with nights of violence in London and other major English cities, Prime Minister David Cameron said Britain could consider disrupting online social networking during civil unrest, a move which is widely condemned as repressive when used by other countries.

Bates said the company had a strong view that communications and social media were a force for good and it didn't see it "being a good way forward" to suspend social networks during periods of large-scale disorder.

Alexander Macgillivray, responsible for public policy at Twitter, told the committee it would be an "absolutely horrible idea" to do so, and quoted police as saying they used it for good during times of crisis.

Richard Allan, director of policy in Europe at Facebook, said social media allowed families and friends to know they were safe.

RIM has previously said it cooperates with local law enforcement and regulatory officials, but it has declined to say whether it would hand over chat logs or user details to police.

BlackBerry PlayBook price slashed by $150 at Best Buy

Last month Best Buy appeared to be complaining that its stockrooms were full of unsold Hewlett-Packard TouchPads. A few days later HP announced it was ending tablet and smartphone production. The price of the TouchPad was then slashed to virtually nothing, resulting in the devices flying off the shelves in a matter of hours.

Could it be that all the space taken up the TouchPads has now been filled with similarly slow-selling BlackBerry PlayBooks? The reason fir this suggestion is because Best Buy knocked $150 off the cost of the 64GB version in a sale, bringing it down to $550 from a hefty $700.

The 16GB and 32GB versions have been discounted too, by $50, giving them price tags of $450 and $550 respectively. The 32GB PlayBook is now at the same price as the 64GB device – $550. It’s hard to believe there’s anyone out there who won't prefer the 64GB version.”

Research In Motion’s PlayBook has had something of a rough ride since its launch in April this year. Reviews have been mixed, while just a month after appearing on shelves, almost 1,000 of the tablets had to be recalled due to unspecified faulty hardware issues.

The Canadian company has also been having a hard time persuading networks to carry the device. Just last month Sprint announced that it was scrapping plans to bring the 4G PlayBook to its network. It is currently with no major US carriers.

RIM will be hoping the sale price will shift a few more of the devices. And Best Buy will certainly be happy to have some more stockroom space available.

RIM launches new BlackBerry Torch smart phones

Research In Motion has unveiled two new and powerful versions of its touchscreen BlackBerry Torch, including an all-touch model, as it seeks to regain ground lost to Apple and Google.

The new phones, along with an upgrade to its Bold model shown earlier, are part of what the Canadian company called the biggest global launch in its history as it seeks to claw back North American market share from Apple's iPhone and a slew of devices running on Google's Android software.

The refreshed lineup is designed to buy RIM time until it introduces a radically new software package for its smartphones next year.

RIM is slashing 2,000 jobs from its global workforce to reduce costs and streamline operations after posting a fall in profit and a dismal earnings outlook in its last quarterly report.

The three touchscreen phones, running on the new BlackBerry OS 7, boast improved screen displays and pack a 1.2 GHz processor from Qualcomm, the most powerful ever for a BlackBerry phone. They also have a dedicated graphics processor that should make video and gaming sharper and more responsive.

The browser is 40 percent faster than the original Torch, RIM's last major phone launch, which hit shelves almost a year ago.

All three devices will be launched by carriers around the world by the end of August, RIM said. The slider Torch will be exclusive to AT&T in the United States, the carrier said.

The all-touch Torch is RIM's first attempt at the popular style since two versions of its Storm model failed to excite.

BlackBerry Smartphones trying to keep up with Apple iPhone and Google Android

BlackBerry, whose handheld smartphones revolutionized the way business people stay in touch with the world, has unveiled a new line of phones - just days after it announced 2,000 job cuts, revamped top management, and saw its stock hit a five-year low.

The new models, with touch screens, slide-out keyboards and a faster, more versatile operating system, were designed to appeal to BlackBerry's core audience of business users, while keeping up with increasingly some stiff competition: Apple's iPhone and phones that run on Google's Android operating system.

Research In Motion, the Canadian company that sells BlackBerrys, is profitable and its sales are rising - but it still has a tremendous problem. Apple and Android are eating its lunch. Smart phone consumers who expect the Web at their fingertips have turned away from Blackberry toward its more Internet-friendly counterparts.

Now some analysts see RIM as a has-been, a company that gave the world constant access to email on the go, but couldn't turn it into mass-market dominance.

"They were very late to make a major transition. They made great phones that focus around email, but not around the Internet. And that's where Apple and Android are way ahead of them," said Alkesh Shah, an analyst at Evercore Partners in New York.

The new RIM lineup includes three versions of the BlackBerry Torch (models 9810, 9850 and 9860), a multimedia handheld whose large touch screen makes it look much like an iPhone with extra buttons. Updated versions of the BlackBerry Bold - models 9900 and 9930 - take a more down-the-middle approach, combining a new touch screen with the kind of keyboard that had millions of users trying to type messages as they raced through airports or walked down the street.

The company is hardly about to go under. Most companies and government agencies still issue BlackBerrys, not iPhones, to their employees for business use. And BlackBerrys are still wildly popular in other parts of the world - much more popular than Apple in the Middle East and parts of Asia and Europe.

The company promises a new operating system next year, called QNX, designed to compete directly with Apple, Google, and other companies such as Motorola and Samsung. That'll be crunch time for BlackBerry.

RIM reveals 3 new BlackBerry touch phones

BlackBerry maker, RIM has revealed more about its BlackBerry 7 OS and given us a good look at the first three phones that will run on the new operating system: the BlackBerry Bold 9900, the BlackBerry Torch 9810, and the BlackBerry Torch 9850. The phones are using a new interface modeled after RIM’s BlackBerry Tablet OS, which RIM hopes will help it better compete with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones.

BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930:
The Bold 9900 was unveiled back in May. Following the traditional design of the Bold line, the 9900 has a 2.8-inch 640×480 (VGA) screen with a full QWERTY keyboard in tow. The device has a 1.2GHz processor, 8GB of onboard storage and a MicroSD card slot if you want more. The rear camera is 5MP (no front camera) and it can record 720p video. We also know from the unveiling that the phone will include a NFC chip, which means it could be used as a wireless credit card, assuming RIM has a plan to utilize this technology on a broad scale. The phone will support 3G on Sprint and AT&T.

BlackBerry Torch 9810:
Following the Torch, which came with BB OS6 last year, the Torch 9810 has a 3.2-inch “high resolution” touchscreen, a 5MP rear camera with autofocus and “HD” video recording, and a vertical slide-out QWERTY keyboard. RIM has improved the processing speed of the new Torch, up from 600MHz to 1.2GHz, likely responding to complaints that the last one was rather sluggish.

BlackBerry Torch 9850/9860
The Torch 9850 is the first decent looking fully-touch phone from RIM. The phone has a 3.7-inch screen, which is the largest of any BlackBerry smartphone, but relatively small compared to the 4.3-inch Android phones that dominate the market. The phone comes with Liquid Graphics technology, which supposedly means that the screen will be more responsive, a 1.2GHz processor, and 4GB of internal storage with a MicroSD slot if you need it. Like the other models, it will have a 5MP rear camera with autofocus, but doesn’t appear to have a front-facing camera.
BlackBerry 7 OS:
RIM claims that BlackBerry 7 will redefine the platform, offering much better web browsing and 40 percent better performance than BlackBerry 6 smartphones. However, it doesn’t, however, mention if the phone will utilize gestures in the fluid and intuitive way that the BlackBerry PlayBook does.

RIM unveils the BlackBerry PlayBook

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is taking on iPad in the table computer game with a "PlayBook" aimed to capitalize on its strength.

RIM is calling its 7-inch, camera-packing tablet the BlackBerry PlayBook. CEO, Mike Lazaridis showed off the long-rumored device during the keynote of RIM’s BlackBerry developer conference in San Francisco.

RIM says its new tablet will arrive in the U.S. in early 2011, and in overseas markets in the second quarter of next year.

Expectations are a 0.9-pound tablet that’s 9.7 mm (or 0.4 inch) thick, complete with a pair of cameras: a 5-megapixel camera in the back, and a 3MP lens in front, both capable of recording HD video.

The 7 inch display - the same size as that on the just-announced Samsung Galaxy Tab - will boast a resolution of 1024 by 600, and it’s a capacitive multitouch display, good for such multi-finger gestures as punching and zooming.

The "no-compromises" PlayBook will run on a new tablet OS designed by QNX Software Systems which RIM acquired back in April, and it’ll be powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor, complete with a whopping 1GB of onboard RAM. The PlayBook will also support multitasking and Flash as well as multimedia-friendly HTML5 Web standards.

The PlayBook will arrive with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support, with both 3G and 4G versions coming "in the future”. The PlayBook will also connect to a nearby BlackBerry via Bluetooth for viewing e-mail, calendar, to-do items or contacts - meaning that you’ll be able to tap out messages on the PlayBook and fire them off from your handheld BlackBerry.

We can also expect "nonproprietary" microUSB and micro-HDMI ports, with the PlayBook capable of outputting full-on 1080p video via HDMI, RIM says.

A slick promo video for the PlayBook shows features such as tabbed browsing, an app task bar, threaded messaging, on-the-Web YouTube video, and tablet-sized e-mail and event interfaces - all very iPad-like, with the added twist of the PlayBook acting as a BlackBerry companion in addition to a stand-alone slate.

But we’ll have to wait for more details on the BlackBerry PlayBook until the tablet’s launch date which is un-announced yet.

RIM to launch World Phone called BlackBerry Tour

Research In Motion is all set to add another smartphone to its BlackBerry lineup as it aims to win market share among both executives and mainstream consumers despite tough economic conditions.

The new model is known as the BlackBerry Tour and falls somewhere between the BlackBerry Curve, which has proved very popular with consumers, and the BlackBerry Bold, which RIM has aimed at high-end corporate users.

RIM co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie said in an interview that the new device will soon be launched with Verizon and Sprint in the United States and Telus and BCE's Bell unit in Canada.

Even though the device isn't drastically different from many other BlackBerry handsets in appearance - it has the familiar candy-bar shape with a full keyboard - Balsillie said the Tour is a big step forward.

It is what RIM calls a "world phone," which means it can easily access voice and data services on networks outside the user's home country. This has proven popular with business users in the past.

To appeal to the retail market, the Tour is loaded with multimedia features similar to those found in the BlackBerry Curve and Pearl, including a photo and video camera and media player.

Unveiling products that cross customer categories is proving increasingly important to RIM and it is continuing to make deer inroads into the broader retail market.

However, the company is also being careful not to alienate the corporate users who have been its mainstay and who rely on its smartphones to send wireless e-mail securely.

At the same time, rivals such as Apple and Palm in North America and Nokia in Europe are launching new products and aggressively pricing their phones to lure users.

BlackBerry App World

BlackBerry App World is the name of Research in Motion's yet-to-be launched mobile application storefront.

The company officially unveiled the name - BlackBerry App World- for the store, which is set to go head-to-head with Apple's iTunes App Store and the Android Market.

According to a company spokesperson, the newly branded site should be online soon. As for a public launch of the store, www.BlackBerry.com will also feature a mailing list for users who want to be notified when it goes live. For that BlackBerry fans will have to sign up at www.blackberry.com/appworld .

At the same time, the spokeswoman said, RIM will be relaunching its BlackBerry developer site.

BlackBerry App World is RIM's attempt to emulate some of the iPhone's phenomenal success with consumers, who can choose from thousands of applications in the iPhone apps store on iTunes.

Blackberry Storm costlier to manufacture than iPhone 3G

According to an analysis by technology research firm iSuppli Corp, Research In Motion's touchscreen BlackBerry Storm costs almost $30 more to produce than rival Apple Inc's iPhone 3G. iSuppli said that the Blackberry Storm has a materials and manufacturing cost of about $203.

RIM launched the Blackberry Storm late last year to compete with the popular 8-gigabyte iPhone 3G. iSuppli Corp said the Storm's total component count stands at 1,177, while the iPhone's is 1,116.

iSuppli’s Teardown Analysis Service report said that the Storm's total per-unit cost includes all parts and manufacturing, but excludes intellectual property (IP), royalties, licensing fees, software, shipping, logistics marketing, and other channel costs. The Storm's exact $202.89 total consists of $186 for components and other materials, and $16.07 for manufacturing. The total is $27 more expensive than what it costs RIM to manufacture each BlackBerry Bold.

However, the bill of materials for the Blackberry Storm totals up to $202.89; the Storm has a suggested retail price of $250 and is currently being sold with a $50 rebate from Verizon store, while the iPhone 3G costs approx $174.33 in components despite a similar retail price.

It’s an interesting point that even though the Storm and iPhone seem at first blush to share most of the same parts- LCD touchscreen, camera, cell phone chips, flash memory, GPS- Apple seems to be in a position to reap more profit of each device than RIM.

Models like the Blackberry Storm, as well as the earlier BlackBerry Pearl are all laden with multimedia features to attract non-business users.

Dell to fight with iPhone and Blackberry - set to announce Google Android and Microsoft Windows Mobiles

Dell is going to be the latest electronics maker to enter the smartphone market, following in the footsteps of Apple. Dell is reportedly entering the smartphone market. Dell would face stiff competition from Apple, Research in Motion, and Palm, among others. RIM and Apple hold 70 percent of the U.S. market for smartphones.

Dell is expected to announce two iPhone and Blackberry competitors sometime next month. The phones will run on Google Android and Microsoft Windows Mobile respectively.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Dell will introduce in February at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona two new mobile phones, set to go head to head with market leaders Apple and Research In Motion.

One of the phones will be touchscreen-only similar to Apple's iPhone, while the other is a slider-style phone with a full QWERTY keyboard, similar to the T-Mobile G1. The other technical specifications are not available yet.

Dell could launch its first device in February.