We’ve got some exciting news for BlackBerry 10 customers out there – today your favorite smartphone is getting even better with the release of BlackBerry 10.2 OS, which will available for download starting this week.
I’d love to see a BB10 device out in the wild.
loved it, but something failed (got extremely hot to the point it could cook an egg) and it’s not turning on again, not even replacing the battery. Too bad, the OS is fantastic.
Had to go back to Windows Phone 8 and life turned for the worst
Edited 2013-10-23 21:08 UTC
Blackberry’s late to the party again. Apple’s been burning holes in pockets with faulty iPhones since 2010
I had this problem a while back, too. As I recall, the temperature went down after the first update.
Still gets crazy hot when you enable it as a wifi hotspot.
Avid BB10 fan here. It’s my first smartphone, actually. I do smartphone security stuff for a living, however, so I have a good sense of all the major vendors.
Off topic: what happened to the site’s redesign?
BlackBerry OS 10.2 is expected to start rolling out in the following regions pending carrier availability:
Africa: Starting this week
Asia Pacific: Starting this week
Canada: Starting this week
Europe: Starting this week
Latin America: Starting in November
Middle East: Starting this week
US: Starting this winter
It probably doesn’t sell as well over here as it does further east. Back when I was on Sprint this past spring, I kept asking them when they would carry the Z10 and all I got was “soon”. Eventually I was told by a Sprint store rep that they would probably never carry them and the online team shouldn’t have lied to customers like me. A while after I switched to a GSM MVNO, I found out Sprint finally picked up the Q10 but not the Z10.
If it’s the same way at the other major US carriers, I can see why it’s not a popular phone choice over here.
Been using a Z10 since Feb. Great device, huge step up from previous Blackberry devices I’ve used. It’s installing the update now
I’ve seen other Z10 devices, as well as the Q10 and Q5, out and about in my area and at university. Thought not as many as the older devices.
I already saw a few folks carrying the Z10 around Düsseldorf.
The only problem with BB10 is it’s just too late to the party. Having played with a Z10 in a phone shop a few montsh ago, i’ll admit, it’s a really nice, pretty, fluid OS on a very nice, well-built device. The only problem is, it’s just too late to the party. the majority nowadays either has an iPhone or an Android device, and those that don’t are either satisfied with what they’ve got, a die-hard BB/WP fan, or just happy with the phone they’ve got. The chance of Blackberry managing to get a hold of any decent market share has been and gone, and BB10 doesn’t offer anything unique over any other mobile OS.
It’s a shame, because it’s actually really really nice. But then again, so is Haiku, and you don’t see many people using that either.
Edited 2013-10-24 10:15 UTC
I installed it on my Z10 last night here in the UK (carrier: 3) – the whole thing took about an hour for the combined download and install (I get ~7Mbps).
So far I’ve not experienced the overheating issue and the update is very nice indeed. Feature which should have been in earlier releases such as multi-alarms are finally here (so no more need to rely on Calendar app to set multiple alarms as a clunky alternative), and the new enhancements such as lock screen notifications, actionable toast popups and priority Hub are great.
I may be imagining it but it also seems faster – and 10.1 was no slouch.
If only BB10 devices were cheaper, I’d get them for my family, but it looks like my youngest will be getting a Nokia 520 for Christmas instead – unless the BB10 prices drop dramatically before then. The only downer is that BBM is not available on WP as yet.
As an aside, it now looks like John Sculley (ex Apple) wants to bid for BB. There’s life in the thorny fruit yet it seems. Source: http://crackberry.com/apparently-ex-apple-ceo-john-sculley-might-ma…
Edit: fixed typos
Edited 2013-10-24 10:32 UTC
I’ll start this by saying I _really_ wanted to love the Q10. Nice (if small) screen and a terrific qwerty keyboard in a world of faceless fondleslabs.
I lived with the Q10 for about three months, before swapping it out for a Galaxy Note 2. The major problem is app compatibility – despite some level of Android support, very few Android developers have bothered to do the work needed to get their apps into Blackberry World, which leaves the poor user side-loading, semi-stable bar files via the PC.
But strangely, it was the email experience which finally killed it for me. I was a huge fan of Blackberry in the 2005-9 timeframe, you really couldn’t tear them out of my hands. Muscle memory meant I could type letter-perfect emails under a table with those keyboards. In BB10, you can’t fully manage email with the keyboard, so you’re left swapping between touch/slide and typing – which is very uncomfortable.
I tried a number of the different 10.1 and 10.2 builds, but there were always odd slowdowns, and a general lack of the snap I’m used to with modern Android machines.
I love the Note 2, but I would pay good money to have it with a slide-out portrait keyboard, in a kind of Blackberry Storm-ish format.
You mean BlackBerry Torch I take it. Truly a great form factor IMHO, the best example of which is probably the Palm (HP) Pre series of phones.
At the moment I am quite happy with my Motorola Pro+. I actually just bought it used/like new even though it’s a ~2-year old model, simply because I love the form factor. It’s the very last and best halfway modern Android portrait QWERTY phone that was ever made. It’s not flashy and there’s no 4G, but it’s probably the closest you can get to a BlackBerry while having access to the full (Gingerbread) Android ecosystem, and these days you can pick them up used for < 90 Euros or new for < 200.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Motorola-Plus-Android-Free-Smartphone-black…
Yes, sorry – Torch, not Storm.
HP killing the Pre line was massively, sadly premature. Mobile CPU/GPUs and browser/JS engine performance was just getting to the point where their HTML/JS/CSS stack was going to really pay off in terms of usability and ease of developer adoption.
In related news, both BlackBerry phone users reported that the update went very smoothly and the OS feels very fast and responsive.
Edited 2013-10-26 19:48 UTC