First get your spoons and cereal bowls out, because Google’s released the SDK file for developers to take a look at Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Next get super pumped up at the thought of running Android apps on your brand new BlackBerry PlayBook. Get a weird feeling in your hearing at Plantronics Infamous Wall of Ears. Hammer away at your social brain with more unique details about the HTC Facebook phone. See as both Facebook and the infamous Farmville game get hacked via their fanpages. Some BlackBerry users are getting their handsets dipped in real gold while others are ready to toss them in the garbage as a Verizon BlackBerry outage leaves everyone stumped. Check out the latest in developers to cash in Android apps with Adknowledge and a 95% profit share. Have a close and personal look at a very odd device with our unboxing and hands-on of the Motorola Roadster. Finally, see a fantastic analysis of our modern slab reality in the article General Purpose vs Use-Case Specific Tablets by Ben Bajarin. All this and MORE on The Daily Slash!
For years, suit-and-tie circles have bowed to BlackBerry as the king of corporate communication, but iOS has been creeping in on enterprise territory, calling into question RIM’s sovereignty in the boardroom. The folks at Deutsche Bank Equity Research struck the most recent blow to RIM’s enterprise dominance with the announcement that they’ll buck BlackBerry for iPhone, following a trial using Good Technology’s secure email app. The company tested the app in conjunction with Microsoft Exchange Server, delivering AES 192-encrypted email and calendar data to employees, and, according to the firm’s research analyst, the iPhone proved an easier and faster solution to BlackBerry. Last summer, AT&T announced that 40 percent of iPhone sales are enterprise, and we just reported on RIM’s possible move to devices beyond the BlackBerry. We’re not saying it’s off to the guillotine with the old standard bearer, but it definitely looks like there are new contenders for the enterprise crown.
One way to show that the current economy has no effect on you is to flash your new gold coated Blackberry in front of your peers. It’s also a sure fire way to bring down a passenger plane if you do it on a sunny day.
Amosu Couture, a company specializing in covering electronics in precious metals and gems, has now announced that the Blackberry Bold 9780 is the latest device the company has decided to “customize” with it’s own special treatment. Amosu Couture already offered the Bold 9700 in gold, but the 9780 will now also have it’s keys coated in gold as well.
The 24ct. gold coating will be available for £1250 if you want a brand new one, or £550 for and existing handset. It’s unknown how the gold will affect the functionality, but if you’re willing to pay to dip it in gold I doubt you’ll care much. And if you feel the gold 9780 is just too loud for you, don’t fret I’m sure Amosu Couture will have a more subtle Swarovski coated one for you just around the corner.
RIM’s been hyping AIR apps and web apps for the PlayBook for a while now, but there’s a chance much bigger things are in the works: BGR says the company wants to add in Java compatibility for legacy BlackBerry apps, and that among other options it’s considering using the Dalvik virtual machine found in Android to get there. That makes a lot of sense — Dalvik is one of the most advanced Java(ish) virtual machines out there, and it’s open-source, so RIM could conceivably take it and tweak it to work with existing BlackBerry apps, which are built in Java. Clever, clever.
But that’s not all: BGR goes on to speculate that using Dalvik will also allow the PlayBook and future QNX devices to straight-up run regular Android apps, which is obviously a much bigger deal than simply using the same virtual machine. Exactly how or why BGR’s making that leap is unclear, since running Android apps on the PlayBook would require porting much more than just Dalvik, but it’s out there. In fact, it’s been out there since December 7, when Fortunepicked up a note from Gleacher & Company analyst Mark McKechnie suggesting that RIM was planning to offer Android compatibility, so we’re curious if this rumor’s just taking another trip through the internet meat grinder. Honestly, our bet is that RIM is far too proud to offer Android compatibility and that it’s just investigating Dalvik as a Java environment, but we’d love to be proven wrong — we’ll see what happens.
Details on the new Blackberry Messenger 6 may just have been leaked from an Indonesian source KomBB. This BBM6 social platform style direction that RIM is heading is very exciting since they’ve been nothing but business for so long. Gamematchi is reportedly developing games for the new BBM6 platform.
Here are some of the features rumored:
- The ability to play games and use your BBM user name as your gamer name
- Cross chats between users over BBM
- When tasks are completed in these new games, user statuses will change to show the completed task
- BBM6 groups will be able to handle more members
- BBM6 will be supported on all devices running OS 5+
RIM seems to be working hard to show that they too can have some fun and aren’t all business. Improvements in their phone processors and graphics cards for 2011 also indicates their aim to better support gaming.
International financial institution Deutsche Bank has declaratively said there’s “no going back” to RIM’s Blackberry after a successful iPhone trial run. Apple gains more momentum in the enterprise market and strengthens it’s play to replace Blackberry in the minds of many corporate users.
Deutsche Bank has been running it’s iPhone test trial over a two month period using Good Technology’s secure e-mail application says Deutsche Bank Equity Research’s Chris Whitmore. The e-mail software uses a custom interface built on top of Microsoft Exchange, with the appearance comparable to the Gmail app on the iPhone. The bank has also been testing the iPad internally as well.
The experience was so good over the trial run that the company was convinced it had found it’s solution. Whitmore noted that the result of the trial “was a fantastic experience as it was easier/faster to access data (touch UI) than on the Blackberry. It was also great to only have to one device for personal and corporate e-mail access.”
There are some negatives as the application is not currently capable of downloading e-mails in the background, requiring users to open the app to check for new e-mails. As well as status alerts for new messages. But in the eyes of Deutsche Bank, the “positives far outweigh” the negatives and expects the iPhone implementation will be deployed company wide.
Deutsche Bank is just one of many major banks, including Bank of America, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Standard Chartered, and UBS who are considering replacing the suddenly passé Blackberry with the iPhone or Android devices. Step up your game RIM, the PlayBook better be a game changer.
Ever wish you could get a Verizon-labeled phone running on AT&T, and do it with full bars and a 3G no less? Get yourself one of the Dodge’s new and free virtual product manuals, available now for iPhone and soon coming to BlackBerry and Android. They’re a continuation of the sort of thing Chrysler announced back at CES, just letting you view information about your vehicle and maybe some aftermarket parts too. They’re available now for the Durango and Charger, with coverage for the Avenger, Journey, and Grand Caravan coming before the end of the month. Full details about the apps in the PR below, but sadly no information on exactly where we should stick the SIM card in our Droid.
If you’re champing at the bit to separate your work life and personal life into two distinct, impenetrable entities, RIM’s got your back: it turns out that the Balance product announced a few days ago will be available in just a couple months’ time. In a recent chat with Retuers, the company’s senior VP of business and platform marketing revealed that Balance is already in testing with carriers ahead of a wide-scale launch — and furthermore, it’ll be available on the upcoming PlayBook as well. As a refresher, Balance seeks to let you do all your personal stuff on your BlackBerry while still giving the IT suits in your office unfettered access to the secure stuff — corporate email and the like — which means you can carry a single device (as long as you’re okay with that one device being a BlackBerry) where you might have previously carried two. Of course, if you’ve got a phone and a PlayBook, we suppose you’ll have two devices anyhow — but regardless, at least you’ll be able to Facebook your face off without corporate security getting in the way.
On Friday, Verizon BlackBerry users began to report a system-wide outage. This issue effects more than just the BlackBerry Internet Service- all data capabilities have been disabled. Only phone calls are possible. Three days later, 9to5Mac reports that the Verizon BlackBerry outage is still ongoing.
Occasional maintenance is just something you have to deal with. But downtime for an update usually won’t take more than a few hours. Certainly not days on end. Verizon’s reputation for reliability may take a hit if the outage continues deeper into the week. A smartphone without data is a frustrating thing- and that is the last emotion a service provider wants to provoke in their customers.
Odds are, this is just a hiccup prior to the launch of the Verizon iPhone. The sheer length of the outage is cause for concern though. Remember the Sidekick data disaster of 2009?
If you’re a Verizon BlackBerry user and have (or have not!) experienced data loss over the last three days, drop us a line in the comments. It remains unclear if the outage is still comprehensive, or rolling across different areas.
While we wait for the PlayBook to released in its WiFi- and WiMAX-equipped forms over the next few months, RIM’s taking every opportunity it can to talk about the platform — and the latest comes from an interview between FierceDeveloper and the company’s veep of developer relations, Tyler Lessard, who played a prominent role at BlackBerry DevCon ’10 a while back where the PlayBook was first announced. When asked about RIM’s decision to partner up with Sprint and deliver a WiMAX version first before looking at bigger carriers with more broadly-used technologies, Lessard says that they “were really excited about was Sprint’s interest and excitement in coming to the table and working with us on a product like that” — which we take as code for either “they paid us the most” or “no one else bit.” Either way, interesting verbiage to say the least — though he does say that there are other versions in the pipe.
On App World, Lessard notes that BlackBerry’s third-party app platform has taken in some 5,000 apps in the last couple months alone — not a big number, necessarily, until you consider that they’re only up to 17,000 total, so they’re definitely seeing some nice growth percentages there. Turning the attention to the perennial question of when QNX will come to smartphones, he basically echoes a sentiment first shared by bossman Lazaridis back at D: Dive Into Mobile: dual-core processors are key, so the new platform won’t filter down until the hardware gets beefier. He says that “we really want to make sure we don’t back-step from that and offer a degraded experience because hardware is not ready or the performance isn’t there,” which is arguably odd wording considering that BlackBerry 6 is already well behind the curve — how much worse could QNX on a single-core 1GHz-plus processor really be?
