BlackBerry Q20

The BlackBerry Q20 features a 3.5-inch touchscreen display and a physical keyboard. BlackBerry calls it a “Classic” and it brings back the Menu, Back, Send and End buttons. It even has the good old trackpad BlackBerry is famous for.

John Chen, BlackBerry’s Executive Chairman and CEO said in a statement

In my first 90 days on the job, I consistently heard from our ardent BlackBerry customers that the hard buttons and trackpad are an essential part of the BlackBerry QWERTY experience, that made their BlackBerry smartphone their go-to productivity tool.

BlackBerry Z3

The BlackBerry Z3 features a 5-inch 540 x 960 pixels qHD display. It is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor and 1.5GB of RAM. Internal storage stands at 8GB. BlackBerry hasn’t given information on external storage.

For a rear-facing camera, the Z3 sports a 5 megapixel camera while its front-facing camera is 1.1 megapixels. Connection options include USB 2.0, WiFi, Bluetooth and HSDPA.

The BlackBery Z3 will launch in Indonesia in April and will cost below $200.

BlackBerry’s blog only highlights its Indonesia launch of the Z3 we can’t say yet if the Q20 and the Z3 will be launching in Nigeria but we’re expecting it. BlackBerry devices have been launched here consistently in the last 3 years.

BlackBerry revealed the Porsche P’9982 – the first BlackBerry Porsche running BlackBerry 10. The Porsche Design P’9982 is an all touch smartphone and is the second model in the BlackBerry and Porsche Design series.

The luxury of the P’9982 can be seen in its satin finished frame forged from stainless steel and a hand-wrapped  Italian leather back door. The limited edition model of the P’9982 features a back door,  hand-wrapped in genuine Crocodile leather. It’s so exclusive, there are only 600 of this in the entire world. The P’9982 phones have a series of unique BBM PINs that distinguish them from all other BlackBerry devices.

The BlackBerry Porsche P’9882 ships with the latest BlackBerry 10 update – BlackBerry 10.2 which features a Priority Hub for important contacts and messages, BBM now which allows users reply BBM messages within any app and special Porsche Design only apps.

The phone hits stores on November 21 with an exlusive launch at Harrods, London. The limited Crocodile edition will be available beginning early December, and will be exclusive to the Porsche Design shop-in-shop at Harrods. Pricing starts at $2,400.

Here’s a video of the BlackBerry Porsche P’9882

BlackBerry has sent an official email to Beta testers and people who signed up to be notified when multi-platform BBM becomes available. The email was titled “BBM for Android and iPhone is here!” and explains that the rollout has resumed and there is a line-up to start using the app. This comes after months of delay and a false start last month.

To download BBM for Android and iOS, visit BBM.com from your phone and follow the instructions. The website also allows you invite your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and friends in your email contacts to use BBM.

For iOS users, it might take a while for BBM to show up in App Store so don’t fret, you’ll eventually get it.

If you’re reading this in Africa, BBM will first be available to Samsung devices between October 22nd and October 24th. By the 25th, BBM will be available for all Android and iPhone users.

We’ll be posting a review of the app as soon as we lay our hands on it. If you’ve already got it, tell us what you think in the comments.

Womp womp! After getting us all excited for the release of BBM for iPhone and Android this weekend, BlackBerry decided to push the release of its native apps for both platforms to a yet-to-be-announced date.

The Android app leaked on Friday and already got over 1.1 million users in the first 8 hours. Thus, because of this leak there are some apparent “issues” they are attempting to fix, so BlackBerry is pausing the global roll-out of BBM for Android and disabling the leak going around.

For now, they have released BBM for iOS in Malaysia, India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). They intend to continue the roll-out country-by-country.

I’m going to assume they want to fix all the bugs they can before they roll BBM out to the masses. Have you or have you not gotten your hands on the app already? What do you think of this? Necessary or unnecessary?

BlackBerry officially announced their new flagship phone running BlackBerry 10.2 – BlackBerry Z30. The BlackBerry Z30’s main features are its 5-inch Super AMOLED display, 1.7GHz processor with quad-core graphics and 2880mAh battery. The Z30 also sports the same weaved back as the BlackBerry Q10.

Early leaks of the device called it an A10 but now we know better. BlackBerry hasn’t seen a great year selling it’s BlackBerry 10 devices worldwide – mainly due to a limited number of Apps in BlackBerry World and its pricing strategy.

The phone comes with two new features. The first is simply called BlackBerry Natural Sound which apparently makes “conversations sound like you’re in the same room” when used with BBM Voice and BBM Video, the second is a new antenna technology that tunes reception so you don’t get calls hanging up mid-conversation in low signal areas. The antenna technology dubbed BlackBerry® Paratek Antenna can also give you faster data transfers.

BlackBerry 10 OS version 10.2 is expected to be available for the BlackBerry Z10, BlackBerry Q10 and BlackBerry Q5 in mid-October. The update is subject to carrier testing and approvals.

The Z30 will be available next week in the UK and Middle East and begin rolling out to other countries from then on. We’ll let you know when it becomes available in Nigeria. Check out the promo video below:

BlackBerry, in its latest blog post, announced that its mobile messaging app, BBM, which has been highly anticipated by iOS and Android users, will now be available to the world from Saturday, 21st of September for Android users and Sunday, 22nd of September. for iOS users

The App which was exclusive only to BlackBerry devices will now be available for free to Android devices running Ice Cream Sandwich(Android 4.0) and Jelly Bean(Android 4.2) or iOS devices running iOS 6 and iOS 7.

The very popular messaging app which is even about to become more popular, will support most of the features on its native (Blackberry) version which include; BBM Chat, Media sharing, Groups and Broadcasts, Status updates and Display Pictures. Each App will also come with a unique PIN that maintains your privacy, so you don’t have to give out your phone number or email address to a new or casual contact.

MTN Nigeria

Airtel Nigeria

BlackBerryOS.com has released an unofficial video of BlackBerry Messenger for Android. The app looks exactly like its BlackBerry 10 sibling and works in the same way. The menu interface and layout are however, different from that of regular Android apps.

BlackBerry announced that BBM for Android and iOS would be released by the end of the summer and it is currently in a beta testing phase. That date is very close.

Here’s the video demo-ing BBM for Android. Tell us what you think in the comments!

Source: The Verge via Android Central

Hold It! BlackBerry announced a new BlackBerry running BlackBerry 7. The BlackBerry 9720 has a  2.8″ touchscreen and a QWERTY keyboard and is intended to provide what the company calls a “communications centric experience” with social sharing at the core of most of what the phone can do. For example, you can post to BBM, Twitter and Facebook with one status update and similarly post a picture to all three networks directly from the camera. The phone comes in different colors and is the newest addition to the company’s line of lower end smartphones.

“It’s perfect for customers upgrading from a feature phone or entry-level Android or Windows Phone device, as well as existing BlackBerry smartphone customers, that want a richer experience and jump up in style and performance,”

- Carlo Chiarello, Executive Vice President for Products at BlackBerry

This comes shortly after the company announced it’s exploring “strategic alternatives,” including the possible sale of the company.

The phone has an internal storage of 512MB an 806MHz processor and a 5 megapixel camera  with flash capable of taking pictures at a resolution of 480 x 360 pixels. External storage up to 32GB can be added via a microSD card.

Connection options are WiFi, 3G, EDGE, Bluetooth 2.1 and GPS. Talk time stands at 7 hours.

According to BlackBerry, the phone will be available in Asia, EMEA and Latin America in the coming weeks. No word yet on when it launches in Nigeria, but we’ll make sure to keep you posted.

UPDATE: The BlackBerry 9720 is now available in Nigeria

BlackBerry’s next flagship phone, the BlackBerry Z30 ,previously called the A10 has leaked in this new hands-on video. The Z30 is rumored to sport a 5-inch AMOLED display running at 720p resolution, powered by a dual-core processor. Rumors also feature an 8-megapixel camera, and 16GB of storage. This leak is coming from Channel S.

If you watch the video, you’ll see an An AT&T logo at the back of the smartphone. Channel S says the phone will hit the markets in the fall.

Source: The Verge via Engadget