BlackBerry’s Last Gasp: The Weird, Wonderful Passport

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BlackBerry Blend
The touchscreen smartphone has become one of the most successful product categories of all time. But its popularity has blasted holes in a lot of other industries. So many other product categories are sinking or sunk: pocket cameras, GPS units, music players, voice recorders, radios.
And, oh yeah — the BlackBerry.
Poor, poor BlackBerry. At its peak, about 60 million people a year bought BlackBerry devices (or had them bought for them).
But when the iPhone came out, BlackBerry’s leaders didn’t just miss the boat. They were at the completely wrong port. They were late to add a camera, late to create an app store. Quality slipped. Marketing was nonexistent. The stock tanked (from $150 to about $10 a share). Market share tanked (from 20 percent to under 1 percent). And with the phones sinking, the BlackBerry tablet capsized, too.
Thousands were laid off. The CEO was replaced. The replacement CEO was replaced.
Today, BlackBerry says that it has stabilized, smaller but wiser. It’s going to focus on business customers, exploiting BlackBerry’s famed efficiency and security. As proof, today it offers the first new BlackBerry phone since the new CEO took the helm: the BlackBerry Passport. (It’s $600 without a contract or $250 with a two-year AT&T contract.)
This is one weird-looking phone.
It is, in fact, the size of a U.S. passport. I mean, plenty of people will suppress giggles when they first see it — or fail to suppress them.
BlackBerry’s Last Gasp: The Weird, Wonderful Passport
The Passport is big and thick and heavy, with a square screen.
BlackBerry Passport
Once you get over the awkward size and shape and heft, you start to learn about this thing’s virtues, though, and you feel a little guilty for laughing.
First, there’s the classic, beloved, fantastic BlackBerry thumb keyboard. Real keys that actually move. Bigger and more spaced out than on the much narrower BlackBerry phones of old. It’s wonderful.
BlackBerry Passport keyboard
Second, what makes this phone thick is the battery. It occurred to somebody over at BlackBerry that what people don’t like about current smartphones is running out of battery every dang day. So this one goes two, even three days on a charge. That’s fantastic.
Thickness of BlackBerry Passport
Third, the keyboard itself is a trackpad. Nobody’s done that before. In other words, you can drag your finger lightly across the physical keys to make things move on the screen.
For example, it’s how you move the cursor through text — by swiping across the keys.
It’s also how you flick words from the BlackBerry’s word-suggestion feature (recently stolen by Apple’s iOS 8) into the text — by swiping, on the keys, upward beneath the word you want.
Swiping on the BlackBerry Passport keyboard
You can swipe leftward across the keys to delete a word at a time. Or swipe down on the keys to summon the number/punctuation layout.
Finally, you can turn the whole phone 90 degrees (the screen is square, remember?) and use the keys as a very precise scrollbar for webpages.

All of this, plus the big square screen (1440 pixels square), is supposed to address a common quirk of businesspeople: They often wait to do things until they’re back at a computer. A typical phone is just too claustrophobic for anything more than quick replies.
That logic is a little warped, of course, because lots of phones have huge screens these days. The iPhone 6 Plus and Samsung Galaxy S5 are taller, narrower phones, but their screens have the same number of pixels.
Phone comparison: iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, BlackBerry Passport, Galaxy S5
But BlackBerry maintains that reconfiguring them into a square offers a broader canvas when you’re looking at, for example, calendars, ebooks, and maps.
Calendars on the BlackBerry Passport and iPhone 5s
It’s worth pointing out, though, that the square screen is terrible for watching movies. You’ve got a movie best suited for ants, playing on a huge black empty screen:
Movie on a BlackBerry Passport
Everything else you’d expect is here: front and back cameras, flash, Bluetooth, NFC, removable memory card, quick access to settings, and so on. The sound quality is terrific, both on calls and when playing music or movies. The battery is not removable, however.
There’s an app store — there are two, actually. One contains BlackBerry apps (several thousand), and the other is the Amazon Android app store (200,000 apps). Yes, the BlackBerry OS has a built-in Android emulator that lets you run anything from the Amazon Android app store. (You can even try running any non-Amazon Android app on this thing, but they’re not guaranteed to run smoothly.)
Entering textI’m guessing that diminishing numbers of young phone fans have ever even tried typing on a physical, clicky phone keyboard; it’s just taken for granted that text input means tapping on glass. Well, I’ll tell you: Physical keys are a joy.
The BlackBerry Passport offers a number of text-entry tricks — some old, some new — that make it even better. For example:
• Whenever you’re typing, a fourth row of keys appears on the screen, just above the physical ones. It offers punctuation keys, sometimes number keys — whatever is most useful at the moment. The point is that, on this phone, you never have to switch keyboard layouts just to get a comma or an exclamation point.
• Hold down one of the physical keys an extra half-second to capitalize it — and to open a row of accented variations (like é or î).
• You can dictate text. The recognition is fine, although it’s nowhere near as good as it is in iOS 8. It doesn’t display the words as you speak them, either, as Android and iOS 8 do; instead, you see nothing while you dictate, and then the words appear all at once.
BlackBerry 10.3The Passport is the first phone to come with the new 10.3 version of the BlackBerry software. It offers many large and small enhancements, but the company seems especially proud of BlackBerry Assistant — which everyone else will recognize as “Siri for BlackBerry.”
This phone has no Home button. To get back to your Home screens, you swipe the current app up off the screen. So to tell “Siri” to start listening, you hold down the Play/Pause button on the right side of the phone.
It’s an impressive facsimile. You can say, “Make an appointment for lunch, tomorrow at 1 p.m.,” “Email Cheryl,” “Set my alarm for 7:30 a.m.,” “Play some Billy Joel,” “Text Chris,” “Give me directions to the Empire State Building,” “When is the next Cleveland Cavaliers game?” “Turn off Bluetooth,” and so on. Each time, BlackBerry Siri does exactly what you’d expect.
Her voice is less natural than Siri’s. And she takes a long time to process things you say. Even so, the lesson of Siri is now the lesson of BlackBerry: It’s almost always faster to open an app, set an alarm, place a call, or start an email by voice — rather than tapping around for the app you need.
ShortcutsYou can type BlackBerry Assistant commands, too, which is great whenever it might be awkward to speak commands aloud (library, church, surgery).
That’s only one example of the kinds of efficient shortcuts that the BlackBerry has always been so good at. Me, I love these things. For example, when you’re looking at any kind of list (like your inbox), you can press the T or B keys to jump to the top or bottom of the list. N or P moves you to the next or previous section of something. In email, press C to compose, R to reply, F to forward, and so on.
There are 200 of these shortcuts in BlackBerry 10.3. You’re not expected to learn them all, but over time, you become truly amazed at how thoughtfully they’ve been designed.
BYOD“BYOD” means “Bring your own device,” and it’s a thorn in BlackBerry’s side. It refers to employees bringing their own personal phones (usually iPhones and Android phones) in to work.
Corporate network geeks are a paranoid bunch. As you know if you’ve ever worked for a big company, they hate people mixing personal stuff with company stuff; in fact, they often don’t allow it. They insist on your using a separate phone and laptop for work purposes.
BlackBerry has, for a couple of years, offered a clever “sandboxing” solution called BlackBerry Balance. In effect, it creates two worlds on the same phone, called Work and Personal. Your work calendar, contacts, and apps are kept separate from your personal ones.
To switch modes, you swipe down from the top of the screen and tap either Personal or Work. (In Work mode, your bosses can install their own wallpaper, provide their own apps, and even disable your camera.)
Screens showing personal and corporate sides of a BlackBerry Passport
Without your work password, you can’t see any of your company material. Your calendar shows appointment blocks but doesn’t identify them.
And if you leave the company, your bosses can delete the whole Work world or Personal world in one swift click.
With the BlackBerry Passport, however, there’s another development: something called BlackBerry Blend. It lets you connect your phone to any computer or tablet — your own personal laptop, for example, or an Android tablet or iPad — by WiFi or a USB cable.
At that point, using the Blend app on your computer or tablet, you can work with everything on your BlackBerry: email, text messages, BBM (BlackBerry’s popular private messaging system), calendar, files. It’s a live, encrypted link.
BlackBerry Blend
You can use your full-size keyboard and trackpad to work with all the company stuff that’s on your phone. And you can access your company’s email and networks without having to fuss with a VPN (virtual private networking) setup.
The best part is that nothing ever actually moves to your laptop. Your phone stays corporate-secure, and your overlords are satisfied. When you disconnect, no trace of your phone’s contents remain on the computer or tablet.
Unfortunately, BlackBerry Blend wasn’t ready in time for me to test. I saw a demo but couldn’t try it myself. If it works, it sounds very cool.
Passport to anywhere?The BlackBerry Passport is unusual, innovative, and weird. It has pros and cons that don’t line up with any other phone. It feels a little slow sometimes, and of course it’s like typing on a Pop-Tart; this is not a one-handable phone.
If BlackBerry can get its act together and finish assembling all the pieces … if it can get corporate worker bees to try it … if it can somehow get onlookers not to point and laugh … then the Passport might have a future, although a limited one with a select audience.
But public opinion is a big battleship to turn around. And unfortunately for BlackBerry, the tide is against it.
أكمل القراءة Résuméabuiyad

Apple Releases iOS 8 ‘Fix,’ but Users Report Major Problems with Update

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Apple Releases iOS 8 ‘Fix,’ but Users Report Major Problems with Update
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One week after the launch of iOS 8, Apple has already released its first update for the new OS in iOS 8.0.1, which contains a slew of bug fixes.
But you shouldn’t hit the Install button yet. Soon after the update hit, an abnormally high number of users immediately started reporting that the iOS 8.0.1 update is breaking cellular reception and other features like TouchID. For those affected, “No service” is displayed after the update has been installed, and toggling Airplane Mode or powering the phone off and on again doesn’t seem to be fixing it. We’ve reached out to Apple for comment on the situation.
image
According to the company’s release notes, iOS 8.0.1 was intended to fix numerous problems, including an issue that held back HealthKit apps last week. iOS 8.0.1 also patches up issues with third-party keyboards, a bug that prevented some apps from getting at the photo library, reliability around Apple’s Reachability feature, and more. The full changelog follows below. To install the update on your iPhone or iPad, just head into settings. This one shouldn’t require as much space as the original iOS 8 release.
• Fixes a bug so HealthKit apps can now be made available on the App Store
• Addresses an issue where third-party keyboards could become deselected when a user enters their passcode
• Fixes an issue that prevented some apps from accessing photos from the Photo Library
• Improves the reliability of the Reachability feature on iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus
• Fixes an issue that could cause unexpected cellular data usage when receiving SMS/MMS messages
• Better support of Ask To Buy for Family Sharing for In-App Purchases
• Fixes an issue where ringtones were sometimes not restored from iCloud backups
• Fixes a bug that prevented uploading photos and videos from Safari
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10 Awesome iPhone 6 and 6 Plus Cases

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10 Awesome iPhone 6 and 6 Plus Cases
Smartphone cases have gone from a necessary evil that protect your phone from the inevitable bumps and bruises of everyday life to sophisticated fashion statements.
And the newest crop of cases and bumpers for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are no different. We’re talking about cases that range from beefy pieces of rubbery plastic to shells made of all-natural wood and leather, and everything in between.
In other words, if you’re looking for some new cases for your iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, you might want to start with these.
iPhone 6 with Apple's leather case
Apple’s own leather cases for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are as simple as cases get. Priced at $45 and $49 for the 6 and 6 Plus, respectively, Apple promises that these leather cases will protect your phone without adding much bulk. 
Monoprice — Ultra-thin Shatter-proof Case for 4.7-inch iPhone 6
Monoprice’s ultra-thin shatterproof case for the iPhone 6 is available for just $5.60 and will protect your precious smartphone against the nicks and cuts that result from everyday drops. It won’t, however, protect your screen much. So if your iPhone face-plants, its screen is still at risk of shattering. But if you want a case for your phone and don’t want to spend $50, you can’t go wrong with this one.
OtterBox Defender series case for iPhone 6
OtterBox is known for offering super-sturdy smartphone cases, and its Defender Series is the company’s beefiest of all. Priced at $59.90 and $69.60 for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, respectively, the Defender Series packs three layers of protection, a built-in screen protector, and port covers to protect against dust. And for everyone stuck in 2009, the Defender also includes a belt holster that doubles as a kickstand. 
CandyShell Card Case from Speck
Want to protect your iPhone and ditch your wallet? The Speck CandyShell Card Case has you covered. Offering an impact-resistant outer coating and a raised bezel to protect your phone’s display, the Card Case is seriously durable. What’s more, its backside features room for three credit cards and some folded bills. Priced at $39 for the iPhone 6 and $44 for the iPhone 6 Plus, it’s a 2-for-1 special for your smartphone.
Case-Mate's Brilliance Case
If you want to add some extra pizazz to your iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, look no further than Case-Mate’s Brilliance Case. At $80 for both iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models, the Brilliance Case’s back panel is covered in shimmering crystals. The Brilliance isn’t just a pretty face, though. It also offers dual-layer protection, and its bezel extends past the iPhone’s display to keep it from smacking against the floor if you drop it face-down. 
Stowaway [Advance] iPhone case from Incipio
The Incipio Stowaway [Advance] is what happens when you smash a phone case, a wallet, and a kickstand together really hard. Priced at $34.99 for either the iPhone 6 or the 6 Plus version, the Stowaway includes a slot for up to three credit cards, your ID, or cash. A kickstand situated above the credit card slot lets you prop up your phone to watch movies or TV shows. Oh, and it’ll protect your phone, too.
Radius v2 iPhone case from BiteMyApple
The folks at BiteMyApple call this case the bikini of iPhone cases, and for good reason. The Radius v2 uses the bare minimum of material needed to cover and protect your iPhone 6 ($79) or 6 Plus ($89) from drops, bumps, and bruises. Unlike most cases, the Radius v2 doesn’t completely cover up the iPhone 6’s beautiful shell. The trade-off is that it also leaves the phone more exposed, making it susceptible to scratches and nicks. That said, it certainly looks cool.
Griffin Technology's Identity Performance iPhone 6 case
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have taken some knocks for being a bit more slippery than their predecessors. Griffin Technology’s Identity Performance case ($40) seeks to solve that problem with a no-skid back panel. And if your phone does slip from your grasp, the Identity Performance’s shell will protect it from drops as high as 4 feet. An included reusable screen protector will also keep your iPhone’s display safe from scratches and nicks.
Grovemade Walnut and Leather iPhone case
Grovemade’s Walnut and Leather iPhone Case lets your iPhone go au naturel without you having to fear that it’ll break if it slips from your hand. That’s because, Grovemade’s cases are made using all-natural walnut wood. Get it, naturel, natural? … Anyway, the Walnut and Leather iPhone Case protects your iPhone from falls while also doubling as a stand thanks to its flexible leather cover. These handcrafted cases cost $129 for the iPhone 6 and $139 for the 6 Plus.
Tech21 Classic Shell case for iPhone
Tech21’s cases use a special D30 material that is both flexible and durable to help absorb impacts from falls. They’ve smashed the stuff with a hammer in demonstrations, and it doesn’t break. Available for $35 for the iPhone 6 and $39 for the 6 Plus, the Classic Shell offers protection for both the front and back of your precious smartphone. But please don’t try the hammer thing.
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Report: Amazon Developing One-Button Ordering Devices for Your Home

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Report: Amazon Developing One-Button Ordering Devices for Your Home
Amazon.com will boost staffing at its secretive Silicon Valley-based hardware unit by at least 27 percent over the next five years as it tests Internet-connected “smart” home gadgets such as a one-button device to order supplies.
The plans, detailed in a little-known government document and by people familiar with the matter, signal Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos’ intentions to double down on the No. 1 U.S. online retailer’s hardware strategy. This is despite the lukewarm reception of Amazon’s new Fire smartphone and some investors’ criticism of its heavy spending on highly experimental projects.
The Lab126 division, which developed Amazon’s Kindle and other consumer electronics devices, plans to boost its full-time payroll to at least 3,757 people by 2019, according to the agreement reached with California in June that would give Amazon $1.2 million in tax breaks.
Amazon will invest $55 million in Lab126’s operations in Sunnyvale and Cupertino, the agreement posted on the California governor’s website shows.
This expansion comes as Lab126 tests connected-home devices that could open up a new front in its war against Google and Apple, two people familiar with Lab126’s activities said recently.
The sources requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.
Technology companies see Internet-connected dishwashers, thermostats, and other household devices that can “talk” to one another as ways to fuel demand for products and services. But skeptics say many of these devices cost too much for most consumers and could take years to go mainstream.
Amazon is testing a simple WiFi device that could be placed in the kitchen or a closet, allowing customers to order products like detergent by pressing a button, one of the people said. Lab126 is also interested in wearable devices, the other person said. Both sources stressed that such devices may never come to market.
These details shed rare light on the division at Amazon, which is notoriously tight-lipped about any unit’s operations and staffing.
In a statement, Amazon said Lab126 was moving “incredibly quickly” and cited the company’s 2014 devices, including the Fire phone, Fire set-top box, and several new tablets and e-readers.
“We will continue to invent and create new features, services and products, and to support this innovation. Lab 126 is also growing very quickly,” Amazon spokeswoman Kinley Pearsall said.
Whether or not Amazon ultimately sells connected home and wearable devices, the experiments hint at Bezos’ broader ambitions. Lab126 has become increasingly important to Amazon’s broader aim to use devices to make it indispensable to its more than 240 million active users.
Bezos is deeply involved in developing Lab126’s projects, from the 2007 debut of the first Kindle e-reader to the Fire phone.
The Fire phone, which Lab126 worked on for four years, debuted this summer to lackluster sales and reviews. Earlier this month, Amazon cut the price of its phone to 99 cents with a two-year contract with AT&T.
Amazon shares are down nearly 20 percent this year.
Other tech leaders are also seeking a central place in the home. In January, Google bought Nest Labs, a smart thermostat maker, for $3.2 billion. In June, Apple announced plans for HomeKit, its own framework for connecting household gadgets.
Embedding households with such devices would be much more lucrative than merely selling gadgets like wireless LED light bulbs or WiFi garage-door openers.
With Lab126’s experiments, Amazon envisions homes decked out with Internet-connected sensors that would allow it to tell customers ahead of time when they need to replace air conditioner filters or service their washing machines, one of the sources said.
“If I walk into my laundry room and there’s a big pool of water and the floor needs to be replaced, I’d love to know about it two weeks before it happens,” said Ryo Koyama, CEO of Weaved, a startup working on connected-home technology.
Lab126 had almost 3,000 full-time employees in its 2013 taxable year.
(Reporting by Deepa Seetharaman and Noel Randewich; editing by Richard Chang.)
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Owners Report That the iPhone 6 Plus Is Susceptible to Bending

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Owners Report That the iPhone 6 Plus Is Susceptible to Bending(DevinPitcher/MacRumors)
This story has been updated.
Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus appears to have a hidden feature, though it’s one you might not want to test out. According to a report by MacRumors, Apple’s latest smartphones are susceptible to bending out of shape if kept in your pocket for too long.
MacRumors’ report is based on posts by two of its forum members. The first forum member, Hanzoh, said that he kept his iPhone 6 Plus in his front pants pocket for about 18 hours.
During that time, he said, he drove to a wedding, danced, and sat down for varying periods. Later, when he took his iPhone out of his pocket, he noticed that it had a slight bend at its midsection.
Bent iPhone 6 Plus
(HanzohMacRumors)
A second MacRumors forum member, DevinPitcher, claimed that his friend’s iPhone 6 Plus bent after his friend put it in his pocket and got into his car. Both Hanzoh and DevinPitcher provided photos of their iPhone 6 Pluses to back up their claims.
As MacRumors points out, past forum members have seen similar problems with the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s. Those owners reportedly received replacements for their bent handsets from either Apple or their carriers.
That the iPhone 6 Plus is capable of bending isn’t out of the realm of possibility. The phone is not only Apple’s largest, but it’s also one of its thinnest.
In fact, Lewis Hilsenteger over at Unbox Therapy tried bending his iPhone 6 Plus after reading reports of its flexibility, and managed to put quite the kink in the handset. Though, it took a good amount of force for him to see any results.
Interestingly, Hilsenteger said in his video that he was putting pressure on the center of the iPhone, but it bent closer to the top near its volume keys. That’s also the same area where both of the MacRumors forum members saw their iPhones bend.
All of that is to say, it’s easy to imagine that an iPhone 6 Plus could be bent when an owner bends to sit down with the phone in his pocket.
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