The increasingly less mysterious HTC phone, known for now as the M7, may have a release date that's just weeks away.
That's according to HTC Source, which on Wednesday reported that an unnamed source had divulged when consumers would see the phone.
The Taiwanese company's next flagship Android handset will be released on March 8, following a press conference on Feb. 19, according to this source.
HTC will officially unveil the M7 at that press event, said the source, a claim that falls in line with information from TechRadar's own sources.
M7 rumors
While we know that the M7 will be officially unveiled on Feb. 19, all we've got to go off are rumors and leaks when it comes to the phone's specs.
It's been said that the Android handset will feature a 4.7-inch 1080p display, a 13-megapixel camera, and Android 4.2: Jelly Bean.
These details are subject to change, of course.
M7 in white and silver?
In addition to the release date, HTC Source's tipster also reported that the M7 will come in a white and silver finish in addition to the black version that's already been spotted.
HTC Source speculated that there could be some aluminum involved on the M7's chassis, but we likely won't know for sure until that Feb. 19 HTC event.
Just to be sure, TechRadar asked HTC to find out whether any of these details can be confirmed.
The company responded simply that it does not comment on rumors or speculation.
BlackBerry 10 will arrive eventually on all PlayBook tablets, the company announced at the BB10 launch event on Wedneday.
And yes, it's just BlackBerry now - don't forget that Research in Motion is no more.
Wednesday's BlackBerry 10 event served to officially introduce the new OS and BB's new devices to the world, with simultaneous events going down in New York, Toronto, London, Johannesburg, New Delhi and Jakarta.
The BlackBerry PlayBook news was only one small part of a much bigger show, but no doubt there are some PlayBook users out there who are grateful they haven't been forgotten.
BlackBerry 10 on PlayBook
BB10's eventual arrival on PlayBooks is nothing new; Research in Motion (when it was still Research in Motion) confirmed as much last March, almost a year ago.
But it was great to hear on Wednesday that plan hadn't changed.
PCMag's Sascha Segan helped break the news on Twitter, and responses from other Twitter users ranged from the predictable "people still have/use those?" to outright beggin ("Please PLEASE! Make the BB Browser Fast!").
BlackBerry provided no time frame for the PlayBook's BB10 upgrade, and spokespeople for the company informed TechRadar that they have nothing more to share at this time.
BlackBerry 10 launch event
Wednesday was a day of revelations for BlackBerry fans, and the PlayBook BB10 reminder was probably least among them.
The newly-renamed company also launched BlackBerry 10 officially worldwide, finally unveiled the first BB10 handset, the BlackBerry Z10 (even confirming its UK release date as Jan. 31), and discussed the QWERTY-equipped BlackBerry Q10.
No doubt 2013 will prove an exciting year for BlackBerry and BlackBerry fans alike.
A Motorola job listing that requires experience is no surprise, but the same cannot be said if that ad includes another "X" word, the X Phone, Google's rumored Motorola smartphone.
Sure enough, someone from the company posted a LinkedIn ad looking for "Senior Director of Project Management, X Phone" candidates for its Sunnyvale, CA offices.
Google must have realized its mistake, as the job ad has been pulled and replaced with a simple message: "Sr Director Product Managment (sic), X-Phone at Motorola Mobility. The job you're looking for is no longer active."
A similar job ad, minus the revealing X Phone title, is still available via Motorola's official careers website.
Motorola X Phone rumored specs, announcement
The details of the LinkedIn version of the ad were captured by Phandroid. Sadly, compared to the blunt X Phone job title, the description remained vague, offering no hard specs or release date.
Be that as it may, this was the first, albeit unintended, admission from Google that the X Phone does exist. Previously, the codename for the Google-Motorola smartphone was only a rumor.
Conjecture has the X Phone's specs debuting the Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie OS update, and sporting a virtually bezel-less edge-to-edge 5-inch display.
With the Google I/O conference coming up in May, the mysterious X Phone could make an appearance along with Motorola's first tablet under Google, the X Tablet.
In the meantime, TechRadar will keep its eyes open for more X Phone or even X Tablet listings, and maybe even a Google human resources job listing, just in case this unintended reveal happens again.
Some leaked information suggests that the new flavour of Android, dubbed Key Lime Pie, will be coming our way between April and June 2013, with a new Nexus phone in tow.
This doesn't come as all that much of a surprise since - guess what - Google I/O takes place in May 2013, and we'd expect to see Android 5.0 unveiled at the conference.
The documents made mention of two new Snapdragon devices landing in the third quarter of the year and another arriving in the second.
Stop the presses
What makes this leak interesting is that a number of sites published screen grabs of a leaked Qualcomm roadmap that laid out the Key Lime Pie and next Nexus release timing; but the sites were all required to take the images down at Qualcomm's request.
Now, that doesn't technically mean anything but roadmap leaks happen fairly frequently and aren't often subject to mass takedowns; so it seems possible that the leak was legit and Qualcomm's info was on the money.
And that? That's the sound of the barn door slamming shut as the horse disappears over the horizon.
Still, it wasn't really anything we couldn't have surmised ourselves - Android 5.0 at Google I/O? Check. New Google Nexus phone and other Snapdragon handsets on their way? Not exactly a shocker.
The stylus should have died when then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone at Macworld 2007, but thanks to the efforts of Samsung and others it's managed to cling to life.
And now Samsung has proved its dedication to stylus-based touch interfaces by making a $58.9 million (UK£37 million, AU$56.4 million) investment in Wacom, makers of styluses (styli?) and drawing and design tablets.
The investment, revealed on Thursday, earned Samsung a five percent stake in the Japanese stylus maker.
Samsung's stylus buy-in didn't come as a complete surprise, as Wacom's technology has already been used in the Galaxy Note, Galaxy Note 2 and other Samsung devices.
Samsung puts a ring on the stylus
What Samsung has demonstrated with its investment in the stylus technology company Wacom is a dedication to the stylus itself.
Where most smartphone owners are content to use their fingers or thumbs, some still prefer the more precise controls provided by a stylus.
That's where Samsung's S-Pen-equipped smartphones come in, not to mention newer devices like the Alcatel One Touch Scribe HD, just revealed at CES.
With this latest development in the saga of the stylus, it seems those options for precision-minded smartphone users aren't about to disappear.
What does it mean?
Still, it's not clear exactly what will come of the latest development in Samsung's quest to keep the stylus relevant, but you can probably bet on seeing S-Pens with more devices in the future.
Even the Samsung Galaxy S4 could come with an S-Pen stylus, according to one report.
TechRadar has reached out to Samsung to see if we can glean any more hints from the company, but so far we haven't heard back.
The stylus should have died when then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone at Macworld 2007, but thanks to the efforts of Samsung and others it's managed to cling to life.
And now Samsung has proved its dedication to stylus-based touch interfaces by making a $58.9 million (UK£37 million, AU$56.4 million) investment in Wacom, makers of styluses (styli?) and drawing and design tablets.
The investment, revealed on Thursday, earned Samsung a five percent stake in the Japanese stylus maker.
Samsung's stylus buy-in didn't come as a complete surprise, as Wacom's technology has already been used in the Galaxy Note, Galaxy Note 2 and other Samsung devices.
Samsung puts a ring on the stylus
What Samsung has demonstrated with its investment in the stylus technology company Wacom is a dedication to the stylus itself.
Where most smartphone owners are content to use their fingers or thumbs, some still prefer the more precise controls provided by a stylus.
That's where Samsung's S-Pen-equipped smartphones come in, not to mention newer devices like the Alcatel One Touch Scribe HD, just revealed at CES.
With this latest development in the saga of the stylus, it seems those options for precision-minded smartphone users aren't about to disappear.
What does it mean?
Still, it's not clear exactly what will come of the latest development in Samsung's quest to keep the stylus relevant, but you can probably bet on seeing S-Pens with more devices in the future.
Even the Samsung Galaxy S4 could come with an S-Pen stylus, according to one report.
TechRadar has reached out to Samsung to see if we can glean any more hints from the company, but so far we haven't heard back.
There was time when things were simple: phones were supposed to be small, and the smaller they were, the more we wanted them.
Then smartphones taught us to tolerate a heftier handful, tablets raised our expectations of screen size, and now a new genre of device - the awkwardly named phablet - has emerged to fill the space between, putting pocket stitches to task and starting a conversation about the ideal display size.
"It's not a huge market, but it's doing pretty damn good," said Scott Steinberg, a tech analyst who runs TechSavvy Global, a strategic market and research firm.
But what's behind the great screen expansion, and just how far are consumers willing to stretch for these handsets?
Big and beautiful
Many of the plusses larger screen phones bring are inherent in the design: more real estate to view media, watch movies, take notes and read.
Chinese telecom company Huawei stormed CES 2013 with a bevy of large screened phones, the biggest among them the Ascend Mate, an Android that's home to a whopping 6.1-inch screen.
While some commentators were baffled by the Mate's expansiveness, Huawei Device, the company's electronic communications branch, said it had solid evidence that there is a market for the monster machine.
"Based on our extensive consumer research, we have found that a 6.1-inch smartphone display is the sweet spot for the moment," Huawei Device told TechRadar via email, explaining that this is "the optimal size" to provide "the functionality of a tablet with the portability and convenience of a smartphone." (However, this doesn't mean Huawei is abandoning other screen sizes.)
Those screens keep pushing further out
The Ascend Mate hasn't gone on sale yet - that won't happen until next month and only in China to start with - but its reception will set the pace and decide whether more manufacturers make a push towards voluminous screens.
Although the Mate is a bulky outlier, Steinberg sees that there's a perceptible trend for screen sizes to inch upward. "We're definitely seeing manufacturers push [towards larger screens]," he said. "The 5-to-6-inch range is where manufacturers want to play. It's only natural for a market that is maturing to develop into this space."
Birth of the Galaxy
Often referred to as "phablets", there's no formal definition of these phone-tablet hybrids, though it tends to mean "anything big enough to make you stare when someone pulls it out their pocket".
Joshua Flood, Senior Analyst for Devices, Applications and Content at tech research firm ABI Research, offered a definition in a January 22 post on the firm's website: phablets, he wrote, are phones with screens measuring between 4.6 inches and 6.5 inches diagonally across.
The first Galaxy Note is considered by many to have reignited interest in a phone with a palm-sized screen, measuring 5.3 inches. The Galaxy Note II followed, with a display that advanced on its predecessor's by 0.2 inches.
"The Note was really one of the first phablets to grab a toehold in the space," Steinberg said.
Others have since come along - the HTC Droid DNA's screen stretches to 5 inches, the Optimus G by LG comes in at 4.7 inches diagonally, and HTC's upcoming M7 looks to have the same screen size.
Sony's CES-revealed Xperia Z owns a 5-inch Full HD Reality Display, while the HTC Butterfly - China's version of the DNA - is massive enough to warrant its own NFC-connected helper handset, the HTC Mini.
The HTC Butterfly is so big it gets this helper handset
Meanwhile, the Galaxy S4, when it launches, should come with a 4.99-inch screen, a step up from its predecessor.
To put that in perspective, the first Galaxy S screen measured 4 inches, a size now commanded almost defiantly by Apple's iPhone 5.
According to ABI projections published by Flood, close to 83 million phablets were shipped in 2012, up by 4,504 per cent from 2011.
The 4.8-inch screened Galaxy S3, which (by Samsung's estimates) sold over 40 million between May 2012 and January 14, 2013, is credited with making up a large portion of that 83 million figure.
Phablet sales haven't gone meteoric, Steinberg noted, but consumers are buying enough to keep the market afloat if not growing.
Because we can, should we?
"It's sort of like science friction - just because we can do things, doesn't actually mean it adds benefit," Steinberg mused about screen size. "We're experimenting right now. There's not really a rhyme or reason as to why a phone has to be a certain size, why it goes from 4 inches to 5.5 to 6.1.
"It's largely a manufacturer consideration, but you are seeing a category do well for itself and emerge."
Growing awareness of larger phones is helping move sales upward, he explained, while at the same time manufacturers are taking an experimental approach, throwing phones of varying sizes on the market to see what sticks.
Combine that with a perfect storm of chipmakers piling on CPUs with greater graphics performance for phones - chips that were once only imaginable in tablets - and the move to bigger screens starts to make sense.
Carving out a niche is a major driving factor in creating new screen dimensions, as well, though Steinberg doesn't see size as the primary growth driver for phones.
"You're going to see phones in the current range do well," he said. "But what you are going to see grow are screen sizes as an aggregate start to creep up."
There is, however, that whole awkward factor with larger phones.
"Five inches is still a little awkward," Steinberg said. "If you have a Note, you still get stares from people when you pull it out, but phones like the S3 have started to train people to get used to the phones."
The Google Nexus 7 shrank the tablet and blurred definitions further
Smaller tablets are also helping with the acceptance if not adoption of larger phones.
"Tablets are shrinking - we have the iPad mini, Nexus 7 - so those are coming down in size," Steinberg said.
"The idea of being an outlier with large screen phones is voided by the fact that you have the Note, the Nexus 7 and the mini. It's not such a crazy idea after all."
Too big to swallow
But 5 inches (or even just above 4 inches) can be a hard display size to swallow for many people.
"I haven't met a single consumer who said, 'Man, I wish my phone was bulkier,'" Steinberg said.
Whatever the upsides of a larger screen can be wiped out by sacrificed portability, particularly for consumers who tend to favor practicality (can it fit comfortably in my back jeans pocket?) over most other physical factors.
Price can be another negative consideration - with more phone, the cost of materials has to go somewhere.
Developers are beginning to consider optimising apps for phablets
From an app and user experience perspective, phablets present an relatively uncharted world of issues.
"Some people may design differently for a phablet than they would a smaller phone," said Josh Ellinger, a software engineer who specializes in user experience.
"Your buttons are going to be bigger, there's more area so you start playing with more content on a single page, and developing a different interface perhaps."
Responsive web design - which, simply put, can target multiple devices thanks to a single HTML code base - has helped developers and engineers who want to design for phablets do so without creating an entirely new set of code.
The process is by no means universal, Ellinger noted, but it does provide the ability to design for an increasingly fragmented mobile market.
However, development for phablet is still tentative.
"A lot of people are still catching up with mobile in general, so I haven't seen much development for a phablet yet, aside from the fact that you could see responsive design add a break point for it," he said.
"I just don't see the wider web community targeting phablets yet. It's still too early."
What is the ideal screen size?
Whatever the drawbacks , consumers are buying phablets, though Steinberg sees the form grabbing more "enthusiast" users than casual ones, Asian markets aside.
But phablets present at least one definite benefit for a consumer looking to cut the clutter out their life - a phone and tablet in one that eliminates the need for both.
For its part, Huawei said that as global economic pressures mount, it's found consumers are receptive to the benefits of one device combining the functions of several.
Though display size is largely a question of user preference, Steinberg sees the industry trying to hit on the "magic silver bullet" device that gives those users just what they want - all the function of a phone with the size benefits of a tablet.
So, how big would that silver bullet be? Not above half a foot, as far as Steinberg's concerned.
"Above 6 inches gets awkward - you get into a no mans land," he said.
The right screen size for the larger phone set, in Steinberg's estimation, lies between 5.5 inches and 5.8 inches.
It may take manufacturers several years to hammer out the optimal big display, but until then the space should continue to grow.
ABI estimated that more than 150 million phablets will ship this year, making up 18 per cent of all smartphones sold. The majority of those phones, Flood wrote in his post, will house screens between 4.6 inches and 5 inches, with four out of every five phablets shipped landing in this area.
What's more, Flood wrote that "we will probably see all major mobile OEMs introducing a phablet model" in 2013.
After this initial expansion, Flood predicts that growth will slow gradually from 2014 onward, and expects phablets to comprise around 25 per cent of smartphone shipments in 2018.
Steady, not breakneck, adoption could simply be the nature of these beastly machines.
"Phablets turn heads," Steinberg said, "but whether they wins hearts and minds, that's the question."
There was time when things were simple: phones were supposed to be small, and the smaller they were, the more we wanted them.
Then smartphones taught us to tolerate a heftier handful, tablets raised our expectations of screen size, and now a new genre of device - the awkwardly named phablet - has emerged to fill the space between, putting pocket stitches to task and starting a conversation about the ideal display size.
"It's not a huge market, but it's doing pretty damn good," said Scott Steinberg, a tech analyst who runs TechSavvy Global, a strategic market and research firm.
But what's behind the great screen expansion, and just how far are consumers willing to stretch for these handsets?
Big and beautiful
Many of the plusses larger screen phones bring are inherent in the design: more real estate to view media, watch movies, take notes and read.
Chinese telecom company Huawei stormed CES 2013 with a bevy of large screened phones, the biggest among them the Ascend Mate, an Android that's home to a whopping 6.1-inch screen.
While some commentators were baffled by the Mate's expansiveness, Huawei Device, the company's electronic communications branch, said it had solid evidence that there is a market for the monster machine.
"Based on our extensive consumer research, we have found that a 6.1-inch smartphone display is the sweet spot for the moment," Huawei Device told TechRadar via email, explaining that this is "the optimal size" to provide "the functionality of a tablet with the portability and convenience of a smartphone." (However, this doesn't mean Huawei is abandoning other screen sizes.)
Those screens keep pushing further out
The Ascend Mate hasn't gone on sale yet - that won't happen until next month and only in China to start with - but its reception will set the pace and decide whether more manufacturers make a push towards voluminous screens.
Although the Mate is a bulky outlier, Steinberg sees that there's a perceptible trend for screen sizes to inch upward. "We're definitely seeing manufacturers push [towards larger screens]," he said. "The 5-to-6-inch range is where manufacturers want to play. It's only natural for a market that is maturing to develop into this space."
Birth of the Galaxy
Often referred to as "phablets", there's no formal definition of these phone-tablet hybrids, though it tends to mean "anything big enough to make you stare when someone pulls it out their pocket".
Joshua Flood, Senior Analyst for Devices, Applications and Content at tech research firm ABI Research, offered a definition in a January 22 post on the firm's website: phablets, he wrote, are phones with screens measuring between 4.6 inches and 6.5 inches diagonally across.
The first Galaxy Note is considered by many to have reignited interest in a phone with a palm-sized screen, measuring 5.3 inches. The Galaxy Note II followed, with a display that advanced on its predecessor's by 0.2 inches.
"The Note was really one of the first phablets to grab a toehold in the space," Steinberg said.
Others have since come along - the HTC Droid DNA's screen stretches to 5 inches, the Optimus G by LG comes in at 4.7 inches diagonally, and HTC's upcoming M7 looks to have the same screen size.
Sony's CES-revealed Xperia Z owns a 5-inch Full HD Reality Display, while the HTC Butterfly - China's version of the DNA - is massive enough to warrant its own NFC-connected helper handset, the HTC Mini.
The HTC Butterfly is so big it gets this helper handset
Meanwhile, the Galaxy S4, when it launches, should come with a 4.99-inch screen, a step up from its predecessor.
To put that in perspective, the first Galaxy S screen measured 4 inches, a size now commanded almost defiantly by Apple's iPhone 5.
According to ABI projections published by Flood, close to 83 million phablets were shipped in 2012, up by 4,504 per cent from 2011.
The 4.8-inch screened Galaxy S3, which (by Samsung's estimates) sold over 40 million between May 2012 and January 14, 2013, is credited with making up a large portion of that 83 million figure.
Phablet sales haven't gone meteoric, Steinberg noted, but consumers are buying enough to keep the market afloat if not growing.
Because we can, should we?
"It's sort of like science friction - just because we can do things, doesn't actually mean it adds benefit," Steinberg mused about screen size. "We're experimenting right now. There's not really a rhyme or reason as to why a phone has to be a certain size, why it goes from 4 inches to 5.5 to 6.1.
"It's largely a manufacturer consideration, but you are seeing a category do well for itself and emerge."
Growing awareness of larger phones is helping move sales upward, he explained, while at the same time manufacturers are taking an experimental approach, throwing phones of varying sizes on the market to see what sticks.
Combine that with a perfect storm of chipmakers piling on CPUs with greater graphics performance for phones - chips that were once only imaginable in tablets - and the move to bigger screens starts to make sense.
Carving out a niche is a major driving factor in creating new screen dimensions, as well, though Steinberg doesn't see size as the primary growth driver for phones.
"You're going to see phones in the current range do well," he said. "But what you are going to see grow are screen sizes as an aggregate start to creep up."
There is, however, that whole awkward factor with larger phones.
"Five inches is still a little awkward," Steinberg said. "If you have a Note, you still get stares from people when you pull it out, but phones like the S3 have started to train people to get used to the phones."
The Google Nexus 7 shrank the tablet and blurred definitions further
Smaller tablets are also helping with the acceptance if not adoption of larger phones.
"Tablets are shrinking - we have the iPad mini, Nexus 7 - so those are coming down in size," Steinberg said.
"The idea of being an outlier with large screen phones is voided by the fact that you have the Note, the Nexus 7 and the mini. It's not such a crazy idea after all."
Too big to swallow
But 5 inches (or even just above 4 inches) can be a hard display size to swallow for many people.
"I haven't met a single consumer who said, 'Man, I wish my phone was bulkier,'" Steinberg said.
Whatever the upsides of a larger screen can be wiped out by sacrificed portability, particularly for North American consumers who tend to favor practicality (can it fit comfortably in my back jeans pocket?) over most other physical factors.
Price can be another negative consideration - with more phone, the cost of materials has to go somewhere.
Developers are beginning to consider optimising apps for phablets
From an app and user experience perspective, phablets present an relatively uncharted world of issues.
"Some people may design differently for a phablet than they would a smaller phone," said Josh Ellinger, a software engineer who specializes in user experience.
"Your buttons are going to be bigger, there's more area so you start playing with more content on a single page, and developing a different interface perhaps."
Responsive web design - which, simply put, can target multiple devices thanks to a single HTML code base - has helped developers and engineers who want to design for phablets do so without creating an entirely new set of code.
The process is by no means universal, Ellinger noted, but it does provide the ability to design for an increasingly fragmented mobile market.
However, development for phablet is still tentative.
"A lot of people are still catching up with mobile in general, so I haven't seen much development for a phablet yet, aside from the fact that you could see responsive design add a break point for it," he said.
"I just don't see the wider web community targeting phablets yet. It's still too early."
What is the ideal screen size?
Whatever the drawbacks , consumers are buying phablets, though Steinberg sees the form grabbing more "enthusiast" users than casual ones, Asian markets aside.
But phablets present at least one definite benefit for a consumer looking to cut the clutter out their life - a phone and tablet in one that eliminates the need for both.
For its part, Huawei said that as global economic pressures mount, it's found consumers are receptive to the benefits of one device combining the functions of several.
Though display size is largely a question of user preference, Steinberg sees the industry trying to hit on the "magic silver bullet" device that gives those users just what they want - all the function of a phone with the size benefits of a tablet.
So, how big would that silver bullet be? Not above half a foot, as far as Steinberg's concerned.
"Above 6 inches gets awkward - you get into a no mans land," he said.
The right screen size for the larger phone set, in Steinberg's estimation, lies between 5.5 inches and 5.8 inches.
It may take manufacturers several years to hammer out the optimal big display, but until then the space should continue to grow.
ABI estimated that more than 150 million phablets will ship this year, making up 18 per cent of all smartphones sold. The majority of those phones, Flood wrote in his post, will house screens between 4.6 inches and 5 inches, with four out of every five phablets shipped landing in this area.
What's more, Flood wrote that "we will probably see all major mobile OEMs introducing a phablet model" in 2013.
After this initial expansion, Flood predicts that growth will slow gradually from 2014 onward, and expects phablets to comprise around 25 per cent of smartphone shipments in 2018.
Steady, not breakneck, adoption could simply be the nature of these beastly machines.
"Phablets turn heads," Steinberg said, "but whether they wins hearts and minds, that's the question."
The Nokia Lumia 620 has hit stores today offering up Windows Phone 8 at a price which won't break the bank.
O2 is offering the handset for just £150 on PAYG, and if you plump for a contract you'll be able to snap up the Lumia 620 for free from £18.50 per month.
In terms of specs the Nokia Lumia 620 is quite similar to the HTC 8S, packing a 3.8-inch 480x800 display, 1GHz dual-core processor, 512MB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, 5MP rear camera, VGA front facing snapper, NFC and microSD slot.
One for the kids?
As well as the reasonable price tag, which may attract some parents to the Lumia 620 for their children, in true Windows Phone fashion the handset is also available in a number of brightly coloured hues.
The colourful covers can be swapped around, in the same way you could change the facias on the Nokia 3310, with a choice of seven shades to choose from.
We were impressed with this entry-level Windows Phone 8 device in our hands on Nokia Lumia 620 review, but we'll reserve proper judgement until our full review which should go live next week.
Some amazing chemistry that protects phones from water, makes impact-proof cases and enables you to fix your gadgets is emerging from the UK, but how does it work?
Motorola's splash-proof Motorola Droid Razr HD and Motorola Droid Razr Maxx HD shrug off rain or getting dropped in a puddle thanks to a nanoscale coating that's applied to the phone during manufacturing.
It's similar to the way Microsoft puts the VaporMg coating onto the Surface; racks of phones are put in a vacuum chamber and the air is pumped out and replaced with a plasma of fluorinated acrylates (think very high temperature chemical steam) that coats every part of the phone with between 10 and 40 nanometers of protection.
UK company P2i started out treating military clothing. You can't just waterproof cloth, because sewing needles make tiny holes and the zips and seams weren't protected, and that's a problem if the liquid you're keeping out is something toxic. That means the company had to find a way of coating entire products.
P2i went from weather-proofing uniforms, to hearing aids, to tablets, to phones. First it treated phones with Motorola and now with two Chinese and one European phone manufacturer that P2i chief technical officer Stephen Coulson can't yet name publicly.
Bath-proof phones
Splash-proof phone coatings and cases can't cope with a real downpour; the biggest problem is water getting in through the audio jack, although splash-proof coatings give your phone some protection.
Currently in the labs is what Coulson calls a 'dunkable' coating that would keep your phone working even if you drop it into the bath. To demonstrate, he had a coated Samsung Galaxy S3 running in a fish tank full of water; when we saw it, it had been soaking for 1 hour 40 minutes and was still running happily.
He also showed us the inside of a phone that had been treated and dropped in water, with none of the corrosion in an untreated phone after soaking.
We also saw that in action on two circuit boards. When we dripped water on an untreated board, it spread out over the surface and after a few seconds we could clearly see corrosion on the components.
On the treated board, however, the water formed a bead and rolled off instead of spreading out - and there was no corrosion where it had been.
Nokia has been working with Cambridge University on similar hydrophobic nanoscale coatings, but P2i is protecting phones already.
Hit your phone harder
Another great British invention making an impact is a peculiar material that's officially called D3O Impact Material (but orange goo is just as good a name), used to protect phones in conjunction with Tech21.
If you've ever mixed corn flour with a little water and then hit it with the back of the spoon and seen it turn solid and shatter, you've seen non-Newtonian chemistry in action. That's behaviour that's so odd, it doesn't follow the normal rules.
Materials that turn hard and shatter on impact are called thixotropic. The molecules in D3O Impact Material are also non-Newtonian; most of the time they flow around like normal molecules, but under impact they lock together and absorb the impact, spreading the shock between all the molecules and protecting your phone.
This also works for a soldier hit by a bullet (several armies use D3O in military equipment). Or as CEO Jason Roberts proved to us at CES, your hand. He grabbed a handful of D3O from the tank, wrapped it around his hand in a squidgy ring, and then hit it with a hammer. The goo went solid and he didn't end up bruised.
D3O is used to make phone cases under Tech21's Impactology brand. The latest cases fit the iPhone 5 and iPad mini.
Bullet-proof phones
You can add even more protection with the new Impact Shield screen protectors, made from another polymer which is normally used in military-grade bullet-proof glass and the cockpits of fighter jets. Roberts says it will protect your phone from up to a 10ft (3 metre) drop.
Impact Shield looks and feels like glass rather than an unattractive layer of plastic on your phone, and you don't have to worry about getting it on without bubbles or letting it cure for 12 hours. It settles onto the screen pretty easily and again absorbs impact.
It's also self healing; it's hard to scratch, but if you do get a scratch then the polymer will gradually spread back out to fill in the scratch. When it's available in spring 2013, we plan to attack it with hammers and knives to see just how much protection you get.
Another nifty example of UK material science is available to buy already. Sugru is a cross between modelling clay and duct tape; it's silicon rubber you can mould in your hand that sticks to almost anything and cures in 24 hours to give you a flexible, heat-proof, waterproof seal.
Developed and manufactured in Hackney, east London, it's more DIY than nanoscale coating and non-Newtonian molecules. You can use it to replace the missing foot on your laptop or to safely repair a power cable, to put a heat-proof grip on a mug, to get a comfortable custom grip on tools, mend your favourite boots - or actually make Apple earbuds comfortable. Now that is clever.
Facebook's fourth quarter financial statement revealed some intriguing new stats for the social network.
For the first time in the company's history, the number of mobile daily active users surpassed the number of users checking Facebook on the web.
With the smartphone and tablet markets seeing their numbers increase dramatically during 2012, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to learn more people are using mobile devices to stay connected to Facebook.
Considering in September only 126 million people used Facebook on mobile devices, and on average, 618 million people used the website daily in December, you can see why the network is so happy with the mobile growth.
"In 2012, we connected over a billion people and became a mobile company," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, in a statement.
"We enter 2013 with good momentum and will continue to invest to achieve our mission and become a stronger, more valuable company."
Mo' mobile, mo' money
For its part, there were still 1.06 billion monthly active users on the web, which was a 25 percent increase year-over-year.
Though the monthly users on mobile were barely able to reach half of the web's total, the 680 million mobile users were still a 57 percent increase when compared to last December.
That dramatic increase in mobile visits paid some impressive dividends for the advertising revenue, as Facebook's app was responsible for 23 percent of the total, up from 14 percent in Q3.
Overall, the ad revenue for Facebook hit $1.33 billion (UK£844 million, AU$1.28 billion) during Q4, which was a 41 percent increase over 2011, and accounted for 84 percent of the total revenue.
In October, Zuckerberg promised Facebook would "monetise better per amount of time spent on mobile than desktop."
It looks like that decision is already working to great benefit, and should continue to do so into 2013.
A trio of Samsung tablet User Agent Profiles (UAProf) point to the Galaxy Tab 3 making its debut in three different models.
The files were uncovered by colorfully-named Japanese tech blog Blue Ringer Men, with UAProfs for tablet model numbers GT-P3200, GT-P5200, and GT-P8200.
The GT-P3200 is listed with a 1024 x 600 resolution display, which is consistent with what looks to be the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0. Meanwhile, the GT-P5200 is believed to be the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1, with a listed display resolution of 1280 x 800.
The GT-P8200 is the most interesting of the bunch though with a listed 2560 x 1600 resolution display, putting it on par with the Nexus 10 as a new tier to Samsung's tablet hierarchy.
The high-end tablet was first suggested under the codename Roma, with more recent rumors referring to it as the Galaxy Tab 3 Plus.
Rumor has it
Other rumors have suggested that the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 has been dropped, and Samsung will instead favor an 8-inch Galaxy Tab 3 model.
Completely skipping the release of a new 7-inch tablet seems an odd choice though, especially with the 8-inch Galaxy Note 8.0 already filling that size category.
Of course, Samsung is keeping its lips sealed on what these potential Galaxy Tab 3 variants could be, forcing us to wait until MWC 2013 rolls as the most likely time for announcements.
TechRadar will be descending on Barcelona to bring you all the news from MWC, and hopefully will clear up what exactly is going on with Samsung's next line of tablets once and for all.
Google Sync just received a stay of execution, at least for Windows Phone.
Today was supposed the be the deadline for Google to stop allowing new users to put their devices on the Sync service. For most users that will be true, but according to an announcement from Microsoft, Windows Phone users will still be able to sign up for the service for at least a few more months.
Though Google Sync won't be around forever, the search engine will now start the phase out July 31, 2013. And this time, Google means it.
Sync happy
The service allowed users to sync their Windows devices to Google Mail, Calendar and Contacts through the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol.
Last December, Google announced it was going to stop Sync as a part of a winter cleaning, when it eliminated some of its less popular services. Back then, the company said it wouldn't allow any new devices to sign up for the service after the Jan. 30 deadline, though it would continue to support it for those who have already signed up.
According to Google, the service will be discontinued partly because ActiveSync has become obsolete as the search giant developed more open protocols:
"With the launch of CardDAV, it's now possible to build a seamless sync experience using open protocols (IMAP, CalDAV and CardDAV) for Gmail, Google Calendar and Contacts," a Google spokesperson said in statement sent to TechRadar.
"We'll start rolling out this change as planned across all platforms but will continue to support Google Sync for Windows Phone until July 31, 2013."
But after July, Windows Phone users will still be able to sync their devices to those Google services. That's because Microsoft is building new support into Google's software to operate with the more open CardDAV and CALDAV protocols.
After that, ActiveSync and Google Sync will skip off into the sunset.
Lenovo is IdeaPadding its pockets thanks to a sharp increase in the company's tablet shipments during the fourth quarter of 2012.
Shipments of the IdeaPad and ThinkPad line represented an "almost 80 percent year-to-year growth," according to Lenovo CEO and Chairman Yang Yuanqing during a conference call today.
The more than 800,000 tablets shipped by Lenovo contributed to the US$9.4 billion (around £5.95 billion, AU$9.03 billion) in total fiscal third quarter sales for the Chinese manufacturer.
"We will continue to have hyper growth in smartphones and tablets," Yuanqing said of Lenovo's best quarter ever.
IdeaPad pays off
The accelerated growth of Lenovo's IdeaPad tablet line is significant because the company's first IdeaPad tablet, the Lenovo IdeaPad K1, came out just a year and a half ago.
Since then, it has launched additional Android and Windows-powered tablets meant for consumers rather than business professionals like its Thinkpad line.
The Lenovo IdeaTab S2110A and the IdeaTab A2109 released in 2012 and have been joined by new arrivals the IdeaTab K3011 and Ideatab A2107 this month.
Lenovo Blackberry bid in motion?
Lenovo is now China's second-largest smartphone and tablet provider and the world's third largest maker of "smart connected devices."
Its 13 consecutive quarters as one of the fastest-growing PC companies has led to rumors that Lenovo might buy struggling smartphone maker Research in Motion, recently rebranded as Blackberry.
Some have speculated that it's too late for a Blackberry rebound, but Lenovo could end up being what saves BlackBerry more so than Blackberry 10.
Plus, the company was able to take over IBM's personal computer business in 2005 and turn a healthy profit, as evidenced by today's earnings report.
RIM is dead, long live BlackBerry – but it faces an almost impossible task to win over smartphone users.
It's fashionable for technology journalists to criticise BlackBerry no matter what it does; actually, non market-leading company that has the audacity to tell the world it actually can make a success of its new product. Nokia was, and to a degree, still is the master at this trick (LOOK! You can use it with gloves! It's the future!) and there was something almost apologetic about CEO Thorsten Heins taking to the stage to announce something that's already been shown off many times around the world.
BlackBerry Z10 review
The only vague surprise actually came from the handsets, but even those had been leaked for months – so we were subjected to slightly awkward asides from Heins while Vivek Bardwaj smoothly showed off a number of features most of the audience had already seen.
But it's important not to be an armchair critic with things like this – let's look at BB10 without the years of increasing failure to innovate RIM has forced us to endure. It is a new company after all.
If you lined up all the main mobile operating systems, you'd argue there are four areas of innovation that the others don't have: BlackBerry Hub, Peek, stronger multitasking and Balance.
The Hub is the unified inbox of old but with a more prevalent nature: the ability to see all your notifications with a 'simple' up and right swipe (which actually can be a little hard to activate each time with accuracy). It's a nifty feature though, although one that Android Jelly Bean has eclipsed with even greater info.
But BlackBerry Balance is the area that the company can build the most differentiation, there's no doubt about that. Bring your own device (BYOD) is becoming enormously popular with staff that were once forced to carry a BlackBerry to get the security their company demanded, and was partly the reason that the company began to fall in the first place as the iPhone or Android devices became so strongly requested.
So the Balance is the ultimate way to achieve this: all the info and apps you want, and all the safety and security in a separate partition to stop your IT department losing sleep - although many will have to upgrade systems to use it. It's an excellent addition, although Windows Phone offers the full Office suite on the go, which is something that a lot of workers are relishing at the moment.
But… well, that's it, and once you see past that smaller demographic of BYOD-ers you get to the crux of the problem BlackBerry is facing: convincing the person on the street who just wants the best smartphone that a BB is the one for them.
The keys on the Q10 will help. Users still love keys. But the user who might want an iPhone, or might want a Samsung Galaxy because they've heard that's a 'good' phone to have – what would pull them toward BlackBerry? Fancy gestures? Average-looking hardware and specs?
And let's not forget a massively understocked app store compared to the rivals – these are the things that matter to consumers. And the price isn't cheap either, which makes buying a BlackBerry phone another tricky sell.
Speaking to Andrew Bocking, Senior VP software product management for RIM, he gave a very vague sense of the user the company was looking at: "We're building for the very connected, the very socially aware, those that are very communication driven; they're focused on getting things done, they're doers, acters, closers."
You can read between the marketing lines here: BlackBerry is looking for the user that wants an organised life, information on the go, but a decent smartphone experience too, and there's no doubt that with BB10 BlackBerry has delivered on that aim. It's clear to see that the new range is among the best integrated on the market.
But the rivals have pretty much offered that already; the iPhone or most top Android phones are more than capable of keeping your life in check and have the added advantage of apps and a mature ecosystem to boot.
Add to that the lack of a budget BB10 handset at launch, and BlackBerry has alienated another massive part of the market (although Bocking tells us to 'sit tight, you'll see it' on that area) – BBM flourished in the PAYG markets, but some research points a decline in use for the once-dominant app so by the time budget BB10 appears, the likes of iMessage might have sucked users away.
In short, BB10 is a decent enough product that doesn't add enough to impress the smartphone buyer on the street. The new phones don't ooze a premium feel or instil gadget lust, and while the gestures are cool they will perhaps put off many as well who want a simple experience.
And the price is simply too high to start, something BlackBerry has traditionally already struggled with. RIM talks a lot about the loyal BlackBerry fanbase, but it lost a lot of that loyalty with the massive outages of recent years, and just changing the name isn't going to make that all better overnight.
Users need trust in a system – it's surprising that BlackBerry didn't make more of the fact the new OS would help massively reduce the chances of outages.
What if Apple made BlackBerry?
Before some screech that we're just bashing BlackBerry, consider the platform in a vacuum. If BlackBerry 10 was unveiled by Apple as the new iOS, we would have scratched our heads that such a design-led company had created a more workman-like OS.
If it was done by Samsung as an overlay to Android, we'd urge it to bring back the more simple TouchWiz, as we don't need the extra gestures or work and play modes. And if Nokia did it – well, it would probably get as much development as MeeGo, the most underloved OS of all.
We're not saying BlackBerry has no chance – it just has to find a way to make a dent in a market that's dominated by Apple and Android, to the tune of 92 percent – but as Bocking said: "We're not entering the [smartphone] market, we're already in it, so we don't have to crack the congested space."
BB10 is good. It's slick and performs well. It just doesn't seem to offer a game-changing experience or a reason for consumers to ditch their incumbent device, nor does it do so at a decent price point. The embarrassment of Stephen Bates' appearance on British TV and radio served to highlight that the company was desperate to talk about how it was changing but missed the crucial element of admitting it had made mistakes in the first place.
If we're lamenting the death of BB in a year's time, it will be a huge shame as a market with innovation is one to cherish – but if it does happen, it will be because the much-needed redesign came just too late.
Facebook's fourth quarter financial statement revealed some intriguing new statistics for the social network.
For the first time in the company's history, the number of mobile daily active users surpassed the number of users checking Facebook on the web.
With the smartphone and tablet markets seeing their numbers increase dramatically during 2012, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to learn more people are using mobile devices to stay connected to Facebook.
Considering in September only 126 million people used Facebook on mobile devices, and on average, 618 million people used the website daily in December, you can see why the network is so happy with the mobile growth.
"In 2012, we connected over a billion people and became a mobile company," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO in the statement.
"We enter 2013 with good momentum and will continue to invest to achieve our mission and become a stronger, more valuable company."
Mo' mobile, mo' money
For its part, there were still 1.06 billion monthly active users on the web, which was a 25 percent increase year-over-year.
Though the monthly users on mobile were barely able to reach half of the web's total, the 680 million mobile users were still a 57 percent increase when compared to last December.
That dramatic increase in mobile visits paid some impressive dividends for the advertising revenue, as Facebook's app was responsible for 23 percent of the total, which was up from 14 percent in Q3.
Overall, the ad revenue for Facebook hit $1.33 billion (UK£844 million, AUD$1.28 billion) during Q4, which was a 41 percent increase over 2011, and accounted for 84 percent of the total revenue.
In October, Zuckerberg promised Facebook would "monetise better per amount of time spent on mobile than desktop."
It looks like that decision is already working to great benefit, and should continue to do so into 2013.
The BlackBerry Q10 is the second handset to come running the new BlackBerry 10 operating system, but it's the first to offer a physical QWERTY keyboard alongside.
Although it was announced alongside the flagship, fully touchscreen BlackBerry Z10 the Q10 won't go on sale at the same time.
BlackBerry told TechRadar that the BlackBerry Q10 will arrive six to eight weeks after the Z10 hits stores as the Canadian firm wants to concentrate its efforts initially on the handset which will have the widest appeal.
Indeed the Q10 won't have the same appeal as the Z10, but there are still people out there who swear by a physical keyboard on their smartphone.
It's certainly a much smaller market to aim at, but one which the BlackBerry Q10 has an excellent chance of succeeding in as the BlackBerry brand is synonymous for providing top quality QWERTY keyboards on its phones.
Currently there's no firm BlackBerry Q10 release date or price, and even the specs are being kept under wraps for now as the handset isn't completely finalised.
What's immediately noticeable upon picking up the Q10 is the size of the display – it's defiantly the biggest screen BlackBerry has put on a keyboard handset.
BlackBerry refused to give us the exact screen size and resolution, but sitting it side by side a BlackBerry Bold 9900 with a 2.8–inch display and you can plainly see the Q10 is bigger, and it's expected to clock in at around 3.1-inches.
The display is much squarer on the BlackBerry Q10 than on previous BlackBery handsets which sported landscape screens above the keys.
BlackBerry 10 looks crisp and clear on the screen of the Q10 and we reckon it has a similar pixel density to the 355ppi on the Z10.
A noticeable absence on the front of the BlackBerry Q10 is the menu keys and trackpad just below the screen, as BB10 is fully controlled via the touchscreen with the keyboard only coming into play when you need to tap out a message.
This puts an end to the tedious scrolling which plagued the BB OS7 handsets, with the tiny trackpad making moving down long lists a real chore.
Despite its larger dimensions the BlackBerry Q10 is well weighted, balancing nicely in the palm and not feeling top heavy when your hands are gripping the base of the handset as you use the keyboard – this reduces the fear of dropping the handset and that's all good in our book.
Round the back the Q10 is made of a sturdy and attractive material which BlackBerry is calling a "glass weave" and the edges are rounded making the handset fit snugly in the hand.
There's a camera and single LED flash round on the back, while on the front of the BlackBerry Q10 there's a front facing snapper - perfect for video calls especially since the launch of BBM Video.
While the official specs of the cameras have not been revealed we wouldn't be surprised if it was packing the same 8MP and 2MP combo found on the Z10.
On the right side of the Q10 the triple button setup is present with volume switches separated by a central key which can be used to play and pause tracks and launch the voice control app when held down.
Up top you get a centralised power/lock key very similar in position and style to the Bold 9900, which is neighboured by a 3.5mm headphone jack.
BlackBerry is really pushing connectivity on its new BlackBerry 10 handsets and the Q10 is equipped with microUSB and miniHDMI ports on the left side, while under the hood there's Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and NFC – plus we hope a microSD slot has made the cut as well.
The BlackBerry 10 OS runs smoothly on the Q10 and we were able to breeze through applications without any issues.
"Peaking" at notifications was pretty simple thanks to the responsive touchscreen, but the slide-up motion from the bottom of the display didn't always register as there's not a lot of space for your finger to play between screen and keyboard.
The BlackBerry Q10 we got hands on with was running a development build of BB 10 and from time to time you could tell as certain applications didn't display properly on the square display, as the OS has been developed primarily for the longer screen of the Z10.
You can expect those display issues to be sorted before the BlackBerry Q10 goes on sale - we just hope app developers also adapt their offerings to utilise the squarer display.
We were able to test out the web browser on the BlackBerry Q10 which appeared to be in full working order and as impressively fast as the Z10 when loading both desktop and mobile sites.
The camera app was also a snappy affair with rapid shutter speed and the clever Time Shift feature making it an intriguing proposition.
However the main reason, if not the only reason someone would purchase the BlackBerry Q10 is for its physical QWERTY keyboard, a feature which is very much love or hate for a lot of users.
Each row of keys are separated by a silver fret which spaces out the buttons making it easier to type and letters themselves are all angled to different degrees to improve travel and speed.
The keyboard itself has grown in size which in our opinion is a good thing as we always found the tiny keys on the old BlackBerry handsets a bit too fiddly.
With the physical keyboard though you lose out on the typing smarts you get on the Z10, with next word prediction not available here meaning you're left to your own character by character input method.
Early Verdict
The BlackBerry Q10 will appeal to a few but likely be overlooked by many as the touchscreen era is now in full swing.
For those who simply can't live without a full keyboard on their smartphone the Q10 is an enticing proposition with a decent size keyboard and larger touchscreen coupled with the new BlackBerry 10 OS making it a far more powerful and diverse handset.
BlackBerry is targeting a very exact market with the Q10 and we're sure that market will be more than happy to receive this latest offering, but we don't expect the BlackBerry Q10 to be making huge waves in the mainstream arena.
For the last couple of years, it's been a case of 'when' not 'if' Microsoft brings dedicated Office apps to the iPad, but bossman Steve Ballmer might have other ideas.
Despite numerous leaked screenshots and rumoured release dates, everyone is still waiting for the world's most famous productivity suite to hit Apple's tablet, and it looks like they'll be waiting a good while longer.
In an interview with Businessweek, the larger-than-life Microsoft CEO appeared almost affronted by a reporter asking how the Office for iPad project was coming along.
He said: "I have nothing to say on that topic. We're very glad with the product, very happy with the product that we're putting in market."
Does it make sense?
Furthermore, Ballmer hinted that a release for the iPad wouldn't make sense at this time, despite the company optimising Office 2013 for Windows RT touchscreen tablets like the Microsoft Surface.
"It makes sense on the devices like the Mac and the PC. We have a product that we think makes a lot of sense," Ballmer said.
Ballmer also pointed out that users can do limited editing of Office documents through the iPad's web browser and refused to rule out the launch of dedicated apps in the future.
He added: "We do have a way for people always to get to Office through the browser, which is very important. And we'll see what we see in the future."
Prickly Steve
Ballmer's comments do seem a little prickly, but he's probably right to be coy about the possibility of Office coming to Apple's iPad, given the lukewarm commercial reception given to his own Surface RT tablet.
However, It does seem like Big Steve might have jumped out of the wrong side of the bed on the day Businessweek pointed the tape recorder in his general direction.
In the same interview he slapped down Dropbox, referring to the cloud storage company, with 100m users, as a "little start-up."
Newly-minted BlackBerry has confirmed that its first BlackBerry 10 handset will go on sale in the UK tomorrow.
The BlackBerry Z10 was announced at glitzy events around the world today and will hit the shops tomorrow.
The handset comes with a 4.2-inch screen, 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage.
Saviour
It also features the new BlackBerry 10 OS as well as a snazzy camera feature that allows you to rewind through frames to get a good picture.
The handset is also set to go on sale in the US, but sadly not until March 2013 at which point it will set you back $199.99 at Verizon.
The SIM-free BlackBerry Z10 UK pricing is yet to be confirmed but it will set you back £36 a month on all major networks from Carphone Warehouse.
Phones 4 U, meanwhile, has a temporary exclusive on the white edition of the Z10, which it will be selling from tomorrow as well.
4G fans will be relieved to hear that EE will be selling the Z10 on 4G EE plans from £41/month for 24 months, with an upfront cost of £49.99.
The handset will also be available across a range of 3G plans from EE including £49.99 on a £36 per month, 24 month plan.
Vodafone, meanwhile, will offer the BlackBerry Z10 for £29 on a £42 a month deal, while 3 promises that the Z10 is 'coming soon' but doesn't offer anything in the way of a price.
Stay tuned for more detail as we get it - in the meantime, here's our full BlackBerry Z10 review.
In a move that's designed to safeguard RIM for the next decade, BB10 has been unveiled.
Although the Canadian firm is still relatively cash-rich, the 'brand new platform' is seen by many as the last roll of the dice for RIM, so a re-tooled OS is seen as ultra-necessary.
The main feature of the operating system is BlackBerry Balance, allowing users to have partitions between work and personal sections of the phone. The new OS is also designed to scale to other machines as well, which means it can be used in the car, home or healthcare applications, as well as tablets.
Hub of the matter
BlackBerry Hub is at the heart of the phone; with a swipe to the right from anywhere within the phone a list of all your messages, interests and notifications.
It's similar to the universal inbox of the BlackBerry of old, meaning anything that pops up in your life, be it BBM, missed calls or a simple tweet, it's only ever a gesture away.
Bringing Balance
As mentioned, BlackBerry 10 offers your IT department the chance to control at least a part of your smartphone. This means the app store can exist in two place on your phone at once, and allows your work to wipe and control the key parts of the phone.
It's a simple downward swipe to get between the two modes, meaning users always can achieve the virtual equivalent for sneaking away for a crafty cigarette when sitting at the desk. In this case it means you can just play Angry Birds on your work phone, but still, it's exciting for some.
BlackBerry Remember has also been added to the mix, with the ability to mimic Evernote (which it actually syncs with) giving you the chance to organise your life such as notes, photos, missed calls, plus Outlook Notes and Tasks also integrated in once easy to use place.
Snap up
The new camera app allows users to tap anywhere to take a photo, with mobile autofocus as well. Timeshift mode allows you to capture the moment by moving back and forward through time to get the photo you want.
Cleverly it can find your face and allow you to find the best smile or pose for the person you're looking at or stalking, and fit the head on the body you thinks sharpest.
You can then edit the photos on the phone with the inbuilt app, allowing cropping, effects and more with a few swipes. It's not groundbreaking, but it's still a massive step forward for BlackBerry.
The BlackBerry Z10 will be the first BB10 handset, and will be available in the US from March, while in the UK the BlackBerry Z10 will be available from 31 January from the likes of Vodafone and The Carphone Warehouse.
While the world holds its breath for the launch of BlackBerry 10, it seems the execs are struggling to talk about it.
With any brand trying to relaunch itself, we're used to the tranche of interviews with key executive members showing the world that things are now all better and missing out on the new product would mean missing out on the greatest thing ever.
However, sometimes the message can overwhelm the ability to hold a normal human conversation, and that's precisely what happened to Stephen Bates, RIM's European MD, when speaking about the launch on BBC Breakfast.
Bates was clearly ready for this little media tour, having learned the press release by heart, and was full of the buzzwords surrounding "transition" and "mobile computing" and most importantly "excited", a word he used in various guises no fewer than seven times in a three and a half minute interview.
However, at no point did he answer the question about RIM's dramatic plunge in smartphone market share. The question was subsequently asked again, more succinctly: "What went wrong?"
In response, Bates stayed firm in his decision to be a press release on a stool, pointing out that RIM "took the decision" to make its own mobile OS, which will provide all manner of wonderful things for its loyal bunch of users – without coming close to acknowledging the response required.
Embarassingly the question was asked for a third time "– Yes, but what went wrong?" – at which point it became clear that RIM had briefed all staff not to talk about anything other than the "excitement" of the launch today.
The same routine was heard on BBC 5 Live Breakfast – the presenter repeatedly asked what RIM had learned from the rise of the iPhone, and while Bates wasn't so effusive in his use of the word "exciting", he still was unwilling to answer the question, which was asked multiple times and more aggressively in each instance.
After this line of interrogation was given up, when asked about the features users should be excited about for BB10 Bates surprisingly couldn't give an answer beyond a press spiel about BlackBerry Balance that, to those that have never used it, made little to no sense.
Forceful
Both interviewers were forceful in their questioning, but only because the response to a reasonable question – be it the impact of the iPhone, or why RIM sank from such great heights – was met with the verbal equivalent of a man waving a shining sign with the words 'BLACKBERRY 10 IS EXCITING' on.
Both sensed blood over a point many people are wondering, and in refusing to even acknowledge the question RIM has shown fear for rival products instead of pride in its ability to compete.
It would be easy to just attack the interviewee, labelling Bates as the wrong choice to be wheeled out to the Cornflake-munching masses, but in truth it paints a worrying picture about RIM's BlackBerry 10 strategy. He was clearly told not to mention competitors or any negativity, and in the face of such direct questioning retreated behind his key phrases.
But that doesn't change the fact that those who aren't really bothered about smartphones but have heard about 'some new BlackBerry' won't have been filled with confidence. Even Nokia, the company that will spend hours talking about how every little thing it does is the greatest thing ever, acknowledged it has made some mistakes – that "burning platform" memo didn't leak itself.
Make it good, make it true
The launch of BlackBerry 10 was supposed to be simply a new OS with alternative phones and the chance for RIM to almost apologise for making a mistake before offering a great solution.
But thanks to these interviews all the talk will be how the company is just another egotistical monster forcing marketing guff down users' throats rather than giving a strong reason to part with a large amount of cash each month.
The horse has already bolted in the UK for RIM in terms of the impression the general public has been given of BlackBerry 10, so here's hoping that when CEO Thorsten Heins takes to the stage to formally reveal an OS we've already seen a few times, he actually talks like a human; one that expresses gratitude for those that have stuck with BlackBerry during the last few years when the competition has given consumers better choices.
Or at the very least, keep away from the word excited.
