Latest News

BlackBerry Live 2013 is in full gear and there’s more news coming at you today. Apart from the new QWERTY/Touch Q5, BBM for Android and iOS, 120,000 available apps, BlackBerry has announced that adoption for BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 has gained momentum. Unfortunately, there’s no new stats, only that “the growing number of organizations testing, adopting or reaffirming commitment” to BlackBerry.

BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 gives IT admins the ability to securely manage their organizations devices, including BlackBerry, iOS, and Android. We previously heard that Canadian Tire deployed “thousands” of BB10 devices (Z10 and Q10), but today’s press release noted a few more Canadian companies have embraced BB10, namely BMO Financial Group, Torys LLP, and the Canadian Diabetes Association. In addition, the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DOITT) and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have backed the platform.

BMO “endorsed BlackBerry 10 as their platform of choice” and Claudette McGowan, VP of Digital Workspace Services at BMO, said “We are placing BlackBerry 10 orders with our North American carriers. BlackBerry remains our enterprise standard and we’ve begun deploying within our environment.”

BlackBerry has over 76 million subscribers and yesterday it was announced that there’s over 60 million BBM users. During their Q4 2012 earning, BlackBerry declared that 1 million Z10s have been shipped, but this number should dramatically increase as more countries have recently released the Z10 and Q10.

Source: MarketWire, CNW

As promised, the BBC has brought BBC iPlayer app to Windows Phone users today. It’s an HTML 5 wrap of its mobile site, not a native app, and is only available to those who have a Windows Phone 8 device. Sitting at version 1.0.0.0, BBC iPlayer is broken down by “category, schedule, featured and most popular” and allows you to stream BBC TV and radio content from the past week.

Download BBC iPlayer here from the Windows Store
Via: WMPU

The Samsung Galaxy S4 went on sale in Canada on May 3rd and carriers and retailers quickly witnessed their stock deplete. Samsung Canada even noted that due to high demand for the flagship Android “the initial supply may be limited. We expect to fulfill inventory to meet demands in the coming weeks.”

Before the big release, Samsung expected to sell 10 million units. Although there’s no official announcement from Samsung HQ, overseas reports from Chosunilbo of Korea have an unknown Samsung exec claiming that “As of the end of April, we supplied four million Galaxy S4 handsets to telecommunication operators around the world… As of Friday, we have sold more than 6 million units, and we predict that we could break the 10-million mark by as early as the end of this month.”

Samsung usually creates a flashy image – see here, here and here – to celebrate such a momentous accomplishment. It’s certainly possible and this would make the GS4 the fastest selling Android ever.

Every Canadian carrier has included the Galaxy S4 in their linep: Rogers, Bell, TELUS, Fido, Virgin, Koodo, WIND, Mobilicity (not yet for sale), Videotron, SaskTel, Eastlink and MTS.

Source: Chosunilbo
Via: SamMobile

Now that Nokia and BlackBerry have made their big announcements, the tables turn to Google. Tomorrow will be the kickoff of Google I/O, their annual Android developer conference, and we’ll be there live to give you all the details. Surely there’ll be some sort of hardware news, possibly the upgraded Nexus 7 tablet or perhaps the official announcement of the white Nexus 4. Maybe there will be some new OS updates and Games announcements, or even a streaming music service to compete against Spotify.

Nothing is certain, but we’ll give you all the details as they unfold. If you can’t make it to the Moscone Center in San Francisco, but want to follow along, Google has decided to live stream all the moments for everyone to witness. The event starts at 9:00am PDT (12:00pm EST) and you can check out it the here at the Google I/O landing page.

The BlackBerry Z10, BlackBerry Q10 and now we have the BlackBerry Q5.

The BlackBerry Q5, previously known in leaked images as the R10, was the only new device announced today at BlackBerry Live 2013. This entry-level BlackBerry 10 smartphone is heading straight towards “selected markets in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America sometime at the beginning of July.” There’s no word on a Canadian release, but the Q5 and its physical QWERTY/touchscreen would be a solid addition to any carrier lineup.

Any.DO is largely considered the first truly beautiful Android app.

Depending on who you ask, the to-do app pushed the boundaries of what was possible, both in design and performance, on the Android platform when it debuted in late 2011. Since then, the company has grown to 12 full-time employees and expanded to iOS and the web in 2012.

But its major success, and the majority of its user base, still rests on Android, as its early entry and consistent upgrade schedule has engendered a sense of loyalty from its five million users. Today, the company is announcing a $3.5 million seed round of funding lead by new and existing investors, including Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s company, Innovation Endeavours.

Any.DO has also updated its Android app to allow former (or present) Astrid users to import their tasks. Wunderlist released a similar tool last week.

Part of today’s Lumia 925 announcement in London was a new app coming soon to Windows Phone 8. Called Oggl, it’s a social network by the makers of popular iOS camera app Hipstamatic.

The app allows users to take photos and apply filters, much like Hipstamatic or, yes, Instagram, and will natively allow for sharing to the aforementioned Facebook-owned service. Its mandate is fairly brought — “a community of creative people capturing and curating their lives through photography,” and its grandiose language attempts to engender a more mature dynamic than Instagram, but at its core it’s still a photo-based social network. Oggl appears to be one of the first third-party apps to have access and will allows users to post their images on Instagram.

The app will be launching in the coming weeks, and we’ll have a thorough hands-on with it when it launches. The app will be available across the WP8 ecosystem so, unlike Smart Camera, this won’t be a Lumia exclusive.

Via: Engadget

Most Canadian carriers released the Samsung Galaxy S4 a couple weeks ago, but today it’s WIND Mobile that has started selling this flagship Android. The price, as previously stated, is $399 on the WINDTab or $699 outright. One of the selling points that WIND is focussing on is their all-in talk/text and data plan for $30/month. If you’re interested in scoring the GS4 make sure you check out our in-depth hands-on review here.

Source: WIND

The Nexus 4 in White has popped up in various corners of the world, but not yet officially announced. This unicorn device has now been captured on film, both in pictures and video, at an event called The Mobile Show in Dubai, specifically at the Qualcomm booth. TechView notes that the N4 is running Android 4.2, which is an older OS as the current Nexus 4 is at 4.2.2. However, it looks real a reflective backing seems to shine a bit more than the back version, but the source notes that “the front is still black and takes the charm away from the device.”

Unfortunately, still no word on when/if this colour will be available to the masses. One can dream of an announcement coming at Google I/O tomorrow. Video below…

BlackBerry announced “a new social engagement platform within BBM” this morning called BBM Channels. It basically digs a bit deeper into your BBM relationship and allows BBM users to quickly connect to the things that interest them by creating ‘channels”, specifically targeting businesses, brands, celebrities and general groups. Similar to other social platforms, BBM Channels allows you to “follow” them to receive updates.

BBM with BBM Channels is available now in the Beta Zone and can be used on BlackBerry devices running BlackBerry 5 OS and higher, to BlackBerry 10 users. It also should be noted that BlackBerry intends to bring BBM Channels to Android and iOS when the app becomes official in the Summer. Full features of channels below: