BlackBerry Z10 sold better than any other BlackBerry in the UK

The BlackBerry Z10  launched in the UK at the end of January, a day after its official announcement. And it sold better than any other BlackBerry in the UK, ever.

Here’s what CEO Thorsten Heins had to say about the UK launch: "In the UK, we have seen close to three times our best performance ever for the first week of sales for a BlackBerry smartphone."

The Z10 launch in Canada, BlackBerry’s home turf, came several days later – February 5 – and it was another record. "In Canada, [Tuesday] was the best day ever for the first day of a launch of a new BlackBerry smartphone. In fact, it was more than 50 percent better than any other launch day in our history in Canada," says Heins.

That’s great but the CEO didn’t announce any concrete numbers, so while the BlackBerry Z10 launch was record-breaking by BlackBerry standards, we don’t know how it compares to launches of competing devices.

The company will be releasing information on its quarterly performance at the end of March, which should give us some more concrete numbers. The second BlackBerry 10 phone, the Q10 is expected in April. It has a hardware QWERTY, so it’d be interesting to see how it does against the touchscreen-only Z10.

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BlackBerry OS 10 developers can get a special red edition of BlackBerry Z10

BlackBerry knows how important a rich app store is and it has been hard at work courting developers to bring their apps to BlackBerry World. The latest treat it offers is a special, limited edition of the BlackBerry Z10 – with a cool red paint job.

The BlackBerry Z10 units for regular users are either Black or White, but if you submit a BlackBerry 10 OS app by the end of this month you can get one of the 12,000 limited edition ones.

BlackBerry is mum on plans to sell red Z10s to users in the future – for now the color is reserved for a special “thank you” to developers. It is pretty certain that at least a few hundreds of those will end up on eBay, though, so you will have your chance at snatching one. Pricing will be a whole different matter, of course.

Anyway, if you are a BB10 OS dev, check out this post at BlackBerry's DevBlog for more info on how you can snag one.

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BlackBerry Z10 sales in UK off to a strong start

The recently launched BlackBerry Z10, which is powered by the latest BB 10 OS, is surely one of the most awaited smartphones for BlackBerry fans. The good news for the troubled maker is the sales of its new flagship have got off to a strong start in UK according to the Jefferies & Company.

According to Peter Misek, a number of retailers across UK are already running out of stocks. The analyst also reports that the white version of the Z10 has been enjoying particularly high demand.

The sales BlackBerry Z10 are expected to reach at least several hundred thousand units and if the Z10 experiences similar success in the US, which is a market five times larger than UK, BlackBerry could well be back in the competition.

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videos showing the best BlackBerry 10 features

The new BlackBerry 10 OS departs from the old user interface and debuts a powerful new gesture-based interface. A central component of that is the BlackBerry Hub – it brings together texts, emails, BBMs and social updates. It’s always a swipe away, check out the video below to see it in action.

The BlackBerry Z10 doesn’t have a hardware keyboard – the signature feature for BlackBerries of old. Well, BB10 has a clever new on-screen keyboard that makes it easy to type – actually, it guesses your next word, so you won’t be doing a lot of actual typing.

The new BlackBerry OS is for both work and play, thanks to Balance. The phone keeps work and personal data separate, but the interface makes it easy to keep an eye on both. Company data is protected and can be managed remotely, without encroaching on your personal data (great if you’re using your own BlackBerry, not a company provided phone).

One really cool feature – for both enterprise and entertainment – is the BBM Video chat with screen sharing. Video chat lets you talk to the other person face to face, but the sharing also lets you can assist someone who needs help with an app, talk them through a presentation or just show them your holiday photos.

Those are just four of the videos highlighting new features of BlackBerry 10.

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BlackBerry Z10 first review

The BlackBerry Z10 has been announced, but the first crop of hands-on reviews is already online.

There seems to be a consensus among our fellow tech reviewers. The new BlackBerry 10 OS is nice and fluid, and it's fast and capable, too. The BlackBerry Z is a great all-round smartphone with a high-quality screen and a great keyboard.

But the truth of the matter is, these things are no longer enough to get a whole new mobile platform up to speed - as Microsoft and Nokia would gladly confirm.

And despite their good qualities, the BlackBerry 10 and its first messenger, the Z10, may turn out to be just another flash in the pan, failing to really make a difference in an overcrowded market.

Still not convinced? Head down to the reviews:

CrackBerry | Engadget | The Verge | TechCrunch | BGR | Cnet

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BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 first BB10 smartphones

Well, BlackBerry now has opened a new chapter in the history of its platform with the release of its first to BB10 OS devices, the BlackBerry Z10 and Q10.The new OS is centered around touch gestures, even the Q10, which has a hardware QWERTY.

The BlackBerry Z10, however, joins the ranks of the touch-only army with a 4.2” WXGA screen (1,280 x 768, 356ppi pixel density). A dual-core Krait CPU at 1.5GHz has been enlisted to run the new OS and there’s 2 gigs of RAM to make sure there’s room for multitasking, which plays a huge part of the new experience.

   
BlackBerry Z10 • the on-screen keyboard

The company also made sure the Z10 is capable in terms of multimedia with an 8MP main camera that has TimeShift (Scalado-powered tech) and shoots 1080p video and an HDMI port. The phone packs 16GB of storage and you can throw in a microSD card (up to 32GB) to expand it.

On the connectivity side, there's LTE (market dependent), Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC.

The Z10 boasts an advanced touchscreen keyboard, which should completely make up for the lack of hardware keyboard.

And if you still need a physical keyboard, the BlackBerry Q10 is the one you should be looking for. The smartphone keeps the trademark hardware QWERTY keyboard. It has a touchscreen too - it's a bit unorthodox, a 3.1" square AMOLED screen with 720 x 720 resolution and 330ppi pixel density.

 
BlackBerry Q10

The BlackBerry Q10 has a stainless steel frame and an "edge-to-edge" glass on the front. The chipset of the Q10 is the same as the one on the Z10.

The BlackBerry Z10 will launch in UK first (tomorrow!) from all the major carriers and retailers, with a choice between getting it on contract or pre-paid. It goes to Canada on February 5 for $150 (with three-year contract). US consumers will have to wait until March though. Then they'd be able to snag it for $200 from AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint(with a two-year contract).

The BlackBerry Q10 is expected to hit carriers globally in April.

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the new BlackBerry 10 mobile OS Preview

The latest iteration of the BlackBerry OS has been in the works for over two years before it went official earlier today. With dropping market share and countless unexciting QWERTY devices in recent years, the pressure was on for BlackBerry to provide a capable smartphone experience that will get them back in the game.

Now, direct from the BlackBerry 10 launch event, we've summarized all of the key features of the new OS, so you can see just what the formerly known as RIM company managed to cook up.

The biggest highlight is BlackBerry Flow, which the company hailed as featuring true multitasking, where your opened apps can run simultaneously and you get seamless transition between them. BlackBerry Peek allows you to drag the Hub in from the sides of the screen, so you can see what runs in the background, while the currently open app continues to run.

Contacts feature full BBM integration (for other BB10 users), and all sorts of social networking features.

The BlackBerry Hub represents the core of BB10, and has been redesigned to feature deep social integration, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It acts as a central location from where you can quickly switch between your active applications, contacts, and others.

The keyboard is BlackBerry's attempt at extreme optimization of the smartphone messaging experience, and it features some very nifty tricks such as the ability to "flick" words that show up on the keypad for quicker typing. You can also swipe left anywhere to delete the most recent word entered, while missed spaces are entered automatically. There's also seamless Multi-language support.

By swiping upwards on a homescreen, BlackBerry Balance allows users to quickly move between different user environments, such as one for work and one for leisure.

There are apps designed specifically for each environment, such as an app store specifically for business applications, and one for home. Opened business applications are denoted by a small briefcase icon in BlackBerry Hub.

BlackBerry Messenger has been upgraded to offer video calls and BBM Screenshare. The latter allows you to share either the phone's screen or what's shot by the primary camera, during the video call.

The BlackBerry camera features Timeshift, which allows you to take several photos and combine the best elements from each of them, similar to Nokia's Smart Shoot lens with Scalado technology.

There's also an integrated picture editor that lets you apply photo effects, and a Story Maker which lets you make a collage by combining multiple photos, video clips and music tracks. You just insert the multimedia content and the app will automatically compose a video clip complete with soundtrack.

Unfortunately, BlackBerry did not get into specifics regarding the browsing experience provided by BlackBerry 10 (although Alicia Keys was pretty psyched about it). What we do know is the BlackBerry 10 browser scored some truly impressive marks at the html5test.com, while still in beta.

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