The more the merrier in the Enterprise space

If Samsung ups its game and especially gets going on some decent management tools, it forces RIM to keep innovating and Apple to do more than pretend they give a toss about corporate.

As for the SAFE models - these ones won't have a world-write driver permission just so the camera works... right?

""Whatever happens to Jim B from here on out, it won't make any difference to Blackberry."

Fixed.

IE10 in corporate

Spellcheck in forms is nice. (Typed on IE10PPR/Win7SP1)

Don't know how you write a BB vs rest article without using "keyboard"

As a corp admin (140 BBs) if it wasn't for the rest of the "smart"phone world's refusal to recognise USER choice by refusing to look at movable or fixed physical keyboards and given RIM's decision to reinvent the BES wheel with BDS/ActiveSync forcing new expenditure on mobile device management either way, we might have gone to WinMo or iOS already. (Sorry Android, but you let a licencee create world-write permissions to get a camera working for gods sake). While we have kicked the tyres on Z10 the question here is: does Q10 bring it or do we look at some sort of iPhone + other-thing-with-a-keyboard device mix.

The productivity our firm gets from mobile devices is almost completely about email, with calendar and phone after that and the rest trivial. BBM is purely for personal (as demonstrated by it being on the "Personal" side of Balance because RIM didn't want to challenge Enterprise IM partnerships). Keyboards let the email maniacs bang out huge quantities of client contact - i.e. billable stuff. Of the tens of thousands of apps that are in apps stores only tens have any real benefit to a corporation rather than providing warm fuzzies to those who have mingled their personal data into their work environment (thus Blackberry Balance).

Should be made clear this is a consumer review

Because Balance is not mentioned. I was at Experience Forum yesterday and it was the BB10's biggest sell point for this enterprise admin. The ability to provision apps via BES10/AppWorld

Probably won't make any serious moves until April and Q10's appearance though. We just hired some iPhoners and gave them BB9900s as we never got around to certifying 9860s (they could keep their iPhones and dispose of them as they wished) - reaction of one was "well I do miss my iPhone but have to admit emails are easier on BB9900" - well, we pay you folks to type emails, so... I see the touchscreen evangelists all the time berating those who prefer keyboards and don't understand it - why not just let people use what's most productive for the use case the phone was purchased for?

wonder how much cash the universities are getting from Foxconn

I'm guessing quite a bit.

Maybe devs would work more enthusastically on ONE platform

Like IE10. The browser Win 7 is supposed to get but mysteriously MS is not talking about for anything other than Win 8.

More native code

What say you, HTML5 people? Is Facebook just doing it wrong? I know the "HTML5" page Blackberry Playbooks access for Twitter is rubbish for one.

board re-elected

One of those "activist" shareholder blokes complained that they didn't bring new/better people onto the board. Here's a tip - NOMINATE SOME.

If I was there I would have addressed the Board as such - "hey fellas, when you guys initially announced BB10 you managed to make people think no keyboard devices would be launched. The backlash was swift and large. Even now you are still on track to launch touchscreen-only first, a device which irrespective of its merits will be written off by the likes of "Boy GeniuApple Report" as the third/fourth/fifth best touchscreen OS on the market (BGR will probably include Firefox Mobile along with iOS/Android/WinMo just because RIM doesn't make them feel special). Your failure to indicate a cost effective migration path from BES to Fusion isn't helping either, notwithstanding non binding sort of/maybe indications that there might be a way to transfer current "perpetual" BES CALs to BDS."

I have 130+ BBs in my charge. Zero touchscreen devices, because I get the models my users need. They type emails and manage their calendars. We uninstall Wikitude but install Blackberry Mobile Conferencing and Blackberry Travel. If they want to play Angry Birds, they make enough money to buy themselves an iPad (but since we're nice guys we leave Brickbreaker and Word Mole on there).

On a positive note, if Playbook is an indication, QNX will be a much nice OS for updates than the painful Java-BBOS. Update an BBOS app forces a reboot? In 2012?

"workshy students"

I take issue with some of the comments above. The student in question wasn't workshy - he simply resented being made to work for peanuts and for it to be deemed academic credit, especially since there was not even the thin veneer of being associated with a production management qualification. He wanted to get academic credit for doing UNIVERSITY COURSES and spend his vacation time WORKING on his family's farm. This is not the same as a UK student who just wants to spend the summer on Facebook and Cityville.

Have been playing with a Playbook over the weekend

Got my hands on a 16Gb. The switching between apps kicks the crap out of my iPod touch (which is a comparator for Playbook as much as iPad) and the stupid home button. The bezel swipe took a little getting used to. Having a BB myself does help because Bridge also functions as a remote and a wireless keyboard. I'm going to be trying PB+Bridge+Presenter Mode+HDMI as an alternative to the skittish Dell Win7 tablet we use for PPT in our boardrooms. We might also use them for our office services folks who roam the office but don't really need a full BB since we have wifi and they don't need out of office mail.

My email/calendar/BBM displayed via Bridge is great plus it's secure from access if nicked as only reflected via Bluetooth. The autosuggest where it overlays 5 words to pick from is nifty. The stereo speakers are terrific. The App Store is much better at quickly downloading/installing than the POS "Reboot Now" in the BB6/7 world. It has an Overdrive client for ebooks. Websites displayed well (and I could play a Google+ game - slowly - in Flash). All in all there's a lot to like.

But no Skype, no Flipboard, no Kindle app (not hugely surprising given similarity to Fire), no native Twitter client (HTML5 one not good enough for me - i.e. not as good as the one RIM wrote for BB6/7) and oh dear that poorly designed power button.

I'd find it hard to recommend it heartily to iPhoners but if you have a BB (or don't want something 10") I'd say go for it. But RIM have got to start writing apps themselves if the companies won't.

"the hardware keyboard has been replaced"

Could the Reg please find someone to write about Blackberry, however critically, that remembers that RIM have and are producing non-keyboard BBs NOW?

If you expected a production phone at the show

You're an idiot. Right or wrong, the fact that the phone was pre-production hardware was well-flagged. It's like the other idiots who somehow got the idea in their heads that this was the only BB 10 production unit and that means RIM were getting out of the keyboard business (if anyone at RIM ever thinks about it I will drive to Waterloo with the business end of a 2 x 4 along for the ride).

RIM are desperately behind the curve and I have massive misgivings about where things are going, but let's stop making up random reasons to hate-on.

Seriously??

Windows *RT* because it's short for *runtime*??

That's marketing genius right there.

As a admin I'd like to see the data

I often get complaints from users about dropped calls but have no direct access to info about when/where they happen and so on. If we had access to diagnostic data it would give us a stick to beat our carriers with - which is why we'll never get that swishy portal idea :)

If Microsoft did this people would lose their sh1t

Oh wait - they did do it. Several times. But this is Apple so...

.ibook is Microsoft's "Open" Office XML all over again.

For more on Cutler

Read "Showstopper" (ISBN 0-7515-1629-5). I just happen to have it on my desk :)

I probably had the same graph

a month after getting BBM. BBM also doesn't need an SMS fallback - it just works.

Second hand UK gear

For the USMC's sake I hope it works better than the Upholders.

RIM might have its problems but...

at least they didn't use " beleaguered, struggling, troubled" twice in consecutive paragraphs while over-trying to be a smartass.

As for the app - RIM have the option of discussing with Google taking that code into RIMs in house app development team - just like their Facebook and Twitter app. More likely though the decision is linked to the easier setup process to get gmail into the main Message app reducing demand for the separate app.

Shorter version

We'd like to ban you from the church if carrying, but we're broke from paying off kiddie fiddlers we moved from parish to parish so we can't do without the collection revenue.

Apple in Zimbabwe?

What are they doing countenancing that dreadful regime for?

(I leave the question of which of them is the more dreadful as an exercise for the reader)

Oh for chrissakes

"In the next several months, the company will introduce a new update mechanism for Flash that will upgrade the application for all browsers. Currently, Windows machines with more than one browser must be upgraded twice"

So it's not going to be part of Flash 11 release? Misplaced priorities fellas. Totally agree with Robert Carnegie above.

Chrome beta

"Chrome's beta version is unaffected, making it a suitable substitute until Microsoft can correct the error"

Until you try and go back on release ver and it tells you your profile has been upgraded beyond that version.

As for the false poz, it happens, but the clients were configured to quarantine (and thus able to restore after new defs downloaded) not delete... right?

Time for object lessons

Nothing less than sackings of everyone who knew where this imagery was sourced from, or who was responsible for ensuring their subordinates do quality work, will suffice.

Only commitment to quality will separate journalists from bloggers and sockpuppets.