Jolla smartphone with Sailfish OS!

The "Jolla smartphone", if you've never heard of it, a company formed by a group of former Nokia employees that refused to let go of MeeGo after the Finnish mobile manufacturer abandoned it, has announced the launch of the first smartphone based on the new Sailfish operating system, called Jolla. It will be launched on November 27 by Jolla in partnership with Finnish telecom operator DNA.

Jolla's website notes that the Jolla smartphone is priced at Euros 399. The company plans to handover 450 pre-booked Jolla phones on November 27 and the rest would be available at DNA Kauppa outlets in early December, the statement said.

Inside is a 1.4GHz dual-core processor made by Qualcomm and 1GB of RAM. There's 16GB of storage and a microSD card slot underneath the rear cover for adding more. A 2100mAh battery is removable, includes a 4.5-inch (540x960 pixels) display, the Jolla smartphone will sport an 8-megapixel autofocus rear camera alongside an LED flash, while there is a 2-megapixel front-facing camera as well. It also features changeable smart covers.

The Sailfish OS

Sailfish is closest in likeness to BlackBerry 10 OS. It's got no navigation buttons to speak of and is therefore gesture based.

Everything is about swiping, so apart from swiping up and down between the three aforementioned sections, there are three main things you can do. Swiping from the left or right edge of the screen will take you from an open app back to the homescreen, swiping from the top of the screen closes the app and swiping from the bottom displays your notifications.

The homescreen displays apps in a very similar way to BlackBerry 10, as you open more apps they get smaller to fit on the screen. However, if you have more than nine open, you can only see your most recent. The app tray at the bottom of the homescreen can be customised to your favourite apps.

From this initial hands-on we came away with the impression that Sailfish OS has a great deal of potential. It has a huge leg up from the core work already done by Intel and Nokia and its UI is genuinely innovative while taking a mixture of the best aspects from other platforms. On the hardware side whether the ‘Other half’ functionality of covers can be a genuine differentiator is less clear cut, but we can see it being popular in younger age groups. 

That said where the real battle lies for Sailfish is not in convincing people it is a viable platform, but that it is preferable to the existing heavyweights. Our feeling is Jolla will have to reduce its handset price to achieve that, provide tight Android app integration from the outset and pick its markets carefully.

Aside from this the other battle is with three more newcomers: the Samsung/Intel funded Tizen, Firefox OS and Ubuntu. The first two will also have phones out in 2013 with the latter expecting to debut in early 2014. 

BlackBerry joins hands with Micromax, Spice, Zen, Celkon for pre-installing BBM

BlackBerry announced that it has partnered with a lot of mobile manufacturers across the globe to pre-install its BBM application on phones manufactured by them and the list includes a few of the Indian companies. Micromax had already launched an ad campaign to proclaim that BBM would come pre-loaded on the devices from this conglomerate.

"BBM will soon come preinstalled on a variety of Android-based smartphones from leading OEMs across Africa, India, Indonesia, Latin America and the Middle East," BlackBerry said in a statement.

Beginning next month, Android smartphones from Be, Brightstar, Celkon, EVERCOSS, IMO, Micromax, Mito, Snexian, Spice, TECNO, TiPhone and Zen will include BBM preinstalled, it added.

BBM will continue to be available as a free download from Android app stores, including Google Play.

Also, to improve the chatting experience, BlackBerry had updated BBM within a month of its release and it even managed to get an overwhelming response from customers. Subscribers can expect support for BBM Channels and BBM Voice and Video calling as well.

BlackBerry Introduces the New BlackBerry Z30 Smartphone with 5” Display and BlackBerry 10.2 OS

Candian smartphone maker BlackBerry unveiled its premium flagship Z30 phone in India, pricing it at Rs 39,990, as it took on competition from iPhone and Samsung to save its dwindling market share. The company is also offering 12-month EMI options for purchasing its latest device.

The BlackBerry Z30 which features a 5-inch display with 720 x 1280 pixels resolution runs on Blackberry 10 OS version 10.2. It is powered by 1.7 gigahertz Snapdragon S4 Pro processor and has a 2880 mAh capacity removable battery.

It sports 8 megapixel rear camera and 2 MP front camera and comes with a 2880 mAh capacity removable battery. It has 2 GB of RAM and an internal memory of 16 GB that can be expanded to 64 GB with microSD card.

"BlackBerry Z30 is the ultimate smartphone for the urban youth and consumers who are looking for a bigger screen size, long-lasting battery and a best in class productivity experience, offers a unique and engaging user experience with features like the powerful BlackBerry Hub, its exceptional touchscreen keyboard and industry leading browser," BlackBerry India Managing Director Sunil Lalwani said.

Analysts feel that this festival season the Z30 will face strong competition from other flagship smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 & Galaxy S4, Apple iPhone 5s, 5c, LG G2 and Sony Xperia Z1.

BlackBerry's BBM takes top spot on Apple's App Store

Credit : Cnet 

BlackBerry BBM racks up 10M downloads in first 24 hours. BlackBerry Messenger fans new and old propelled the BBM app to the top of Apple's App Store just a day after its launch. But the app doesn't appear to be making much of a ripple in the Google Play store, and isn't listed in the top free apps list.

Bocking noted there have been 60,000 five-star reviews out of 87,000 total reviews. It is the No. 1 app on the App Store's free apps list. Curiously, as of Tuesday morning, the BBM app hasn't made the same impact on Android's Google Play store, where it isn't listed in the top free app category. But, we don't know how quickly Google Play updates its top free apps list.

There was significant demand for the iOS and Android version of BBM, with 6 million registering ahead of time to get information on the app. There was so much interest that BlackBerry had to institute a wait list for people who hadn't registered ahead of time.

BBM has been a rare bright spot for a company that recently retreated from the consumer market, focusing largely on big business and government customers with its devices and network services.

Finally: BBM rolling out in Google Play & iOS App Store!

Credit : Blackberry

BlackBerry has finally released its BlackBerry Messenger for iOS and Android. The company says that users should see it appear in Google Play, the Apple App Store, and in select Samsung App Stores. It will be free to download.

BlackBerry had previously said that the Android and iOS versions would be released on September 21 and 22, respectively. It took them a month longer to actually do it.

The company says that so far, 6 million people have signed up for information about the Messenger app and it touts that 1 million Android users were “using the unreleased version of BBM for Android.”

Here’s the roll out details from BlackBerry:

• Download BlackBerry Messenger for Android or iPhone.
• Install the app, open it, and enter your email address.
• BlackBerry will email you when you’re next in line for access

If you managed to sign up on BlackBerry’s Messenger site, the company says that you’ll be able to use BBM immediately without waiting in line.

This is certainly good news for BlackBerry — and it definitely needs all that it can get. The launch of BBM for iOS and Android comes as BlackBerry struggles to save itself from a prolonged decline so debilitating that the company was recently forced to publish an open letter assuring customers of its longevity.

Is this the fall of Blackberry?

The end of a Smartphone giant! A shock to some, and a predictable outcome for others, it was obvious that the path blackberry has chosen will either take their ship of glory struggling in the sea of smartphones and the storm of iOS and Android to the shore or it will finally sink. And right during this storm, the co-CEOs of RIM decided to step down and leave the company in a limbo.

Blackberry needed that magic again that could take them away from their economic breakdown; we waited and waited for that time, but it never came. And now it seems that Blackberry has finally given up on the smartphone race and admitted its defeat.

But what truly brought about this eventual decay that forced BlackBerry to forfeit and sell off to Fairfax Financial Holding for $4.7 billion?

My personal opinion says that Blackberry is itself responsible for it; various small aspects and fatal miscalculations like poor pricing proved to be one of the many factors that eventually lead to their downfall. Let's have a look!

Operating System: Strike one!

Blackberry had to take care of three things and most important of them was their OS, the central nervous system of a smartphone. Blackberry always underestimated the power of Android and iOS, they were satisfied with their OS and never showed any interest in upgrading it, until the market exploded with iOS and Android which finally made them realized the biggest mistake they’ve ever made. Even Nokia’s with its ever-faithful Symbian OS started running out of options and finally adopted windows as their life-saver. Blackberry also panicked and introduced the BB 10 to the masses in the year 2011. Unfortunately, they were a little too late for the party as Android and iOS had the cake, and ate it too.

Hardware: Strike two!

Blackberry never had much power under the hood to keep up with the competition like Apple and Samsung, while they were fighting with each other to stay first in the race by adding more power in their devices Blackberry was thinking slow and steady wins the race; but this was not the case with Apple and Samsung and they were launching device after another to show how much of 'technology' they could give on your palm. BlackBerry finally launched a noteworthy smartphone in the form of BlackBerry Z10. It placed BlackBerry right in the competition; it was smart in all the right sense and complimented the all new operating system; it also gave BlackBerry a new direction, when they finally gave up their typical QWERTY keypad design for a full-touch interface. We thought BlackBerry had finally arrived. We were horribly wrong, again.

Pricing: Strike three...and you are out!

Desperate times require desperate measures, but Blackberry never took it seriously. BlackBerry was always known to flaunt a hefty price tag for their handsets. For the outdated hardware and software that came bundled, the prices were outrageous; BlackBerry stuck to their pricing, and did the same for their “would’ve been lifesaver”, the BlackBerry Z10. A phone that had all the potential to take things forward for BlackBerry, the Z10 was priced absurdly high at of Rs.42,000/-!! Taking the hardware and price into consideration, a customer could easily get the all-powerful Samsung Galaxy S4 or the iPhone in the same price that was equipped with more firepower and housed Android or iOS as an OS.

The share of BlackBerry Limited in the Indian smartphone market dropped to 2% during the April-June period of 2013 down from 7% a year ago, according to IDC. Even the launch of new models by BlackBerry Limited with a new OS could not prevent the decline in its market share and rather than rectifying their mistakes, BlackBerry launched two more smartphones, the Q5 and the Q10. Both handsets based on its signature QWERTY layout, the phones were meant to be BlackBerry's second grace, and yet again, the poor pricing led it another wave of failure sweeping them off.

The final nail in the coffin: BBM!

Once people used to buy Blackberry just to use BBM, it was once ACE Card for the Blackberry. It was a rage internationally with teenagers purchasing BlackBerry for the sole reason of using the instant messaging service. BBM finally found its worthy opponents in the form of instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, WeChat etc. that are hosted for free on numerous operating systems but BBM is still not free in Blackberry devices.  As far as Android and iOS are concerned they should have launched BBM few years ago and cemented their feet in the market, and yet they failed at doing so.

There were many other reasons for their failure as well like the mediocre Apps market as compare to Android and iOS, arguably the worst camera among smartphones and not so good customer services made sure that their glory was short-lived.

There could have been various saving graces for BlackBerry; the right upgrade at the right time, lower pricing, introduction of BBM for Android and iPhone among various other things. BlackBerry failed, and so did its legacy for being one of the top contenders in the smartphone market.