Blackberry gets its own Personal Assistant : Blackberry Assistant

Apple has Siri, Google has Google Now, Windows Phone has Cortana and now last addition into the Personal Assistant is Blackberry which is Blackberry Assistant. The Canadian smartphone giant yesterday revealed the Blackberry Assistant on its forthcoming device, Passport which is expected to release this fall.

This assistant is a part of Blackberry OS 10.3 and was revealed on the company’s official blog. Although the details were not quite explained but it was evident that this assistant can be used to compose mail, search web or create a reminder with your voice.

Blackberry said that the more you use it the better it gets, which was also said by Microsoft for Cortana. BlackBerry Assistant also takes advantage of the Passport's physical keyboard, letting you perform actions by typing directly from the home screen.

Although Blackberry is behind its peers in the race to a more personal smartphone but can the Blackberry Assistant smooth its way. Well, it’s a question that will take some time to clear out.

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Blackberry Z3 Launched

Sunil Lalvani, MD, BlackBerry India at the BlackBerry Z3 launch in New Delhi

Asanticipated earlier BlackBerry has launched the new BlackBerry Z3 at a launch event in New Delhi today. This smartphone is priced at Rs.15, 990 and will be available for pre-order from Flipkart, The Mobile Store and BlackBerry stores from Wednesday and will be available officially for sale from 2^nd July.

The Hub

The BlackBerry Z3 makes its way towards the market at a time when phone manufacturers, after focusing on the top-end for much too long, have realised the importance of the budget/mid-range segment. With the launch of good (and sometimes exceptional) phones like the Motorola Moto G, Nokia’s line-up of Windows Phones and challengers from Indian phone makers like Micromax and Xolo, the segment that falls between Rs. 10,000 and Rs. 20,000 hasn’t been this alive in years.

The BlackBerry Z3 features a 5-inch display with a resolution of 540x960 pixels. It runs BlackBerry 10.2.1 OS, which has an added ability to run Android apps as well. It’s powered by a Qualcomm MSM8230 Snapdragon 400 and is having 1.5GB of RAM.

Side-View of Z3

It comes in 8GB built-in storage which is expandable to 32GB using microSD card. It has a 5MP rear shooter with flash and 1.1MP front camera. Connectivity features include GPRS, EDGE, 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC. It has a non-removable back panel.

Back Panel of Z3

Notification Centre

Look and build of this phone is just fantastic. Although it’s made of plastic still it’s got a quite rugged and premium finish. The bottom line is it makes BlackBerry look quite strong in this mid-range segment, with strong contenders from Motorola, XOLO and Nokia Lumia Series.

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Blackberry unveiled Classic and Passport : Coming back in the Game

Blackberry's quarterly earnings report saw the unveiling of the Blackberry Passport, which was previously rumored to be a phone codenamed "Windermere". 

Blackberry CEO John Chen with Blackberry Passport

Also Blackberry unveiled Blackberry Classic. This phone is expected to be running the latest Blackberry OS 10.3.1 which will also be available to all the current Blackberry 10 phones.These were expected to be launched with the Blackberry Z3 expected to be launched in India soon.

Blackberry's plan for FY15

Passport is expected to be the company's flagship this year and looking at the design it actually looks like one. An important thing to note on Passport is the lack of punctuation and numeric keys on the keyboard.

Classic on the other hand will come with a traditional QWERTY keyboard that Blackberry users are quite familiar with.

A closer look at Passport

Passport has a 4.5-inch display with a resolution of 1440x1440 which makes it a square unlike other smartphone of rectangular shape which we are accustomed of seeing. Its square display makes it quite wide at 3.18-inches making it wider than Samsung's Galaxy Note 3.

Even though specifications are not released officially but its rumored to be powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 800 with Adreno 330 GPU and 3GB of RAM. It will be launched at a London event in September. It's now available on Amazon for a price of INR 49,990.

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Blackberry's Z3 to Launch in India Next Week......

For the past 2 years the Canadian smartphone company Blackberry has faced quite a number of of glitches in the Global Mobile market. But now its ready to regain its lost status with its latest smartphone Blackberry Z3 which is set to launch in India next week, on 25th June.

Blackberry has already started sending out press invites to media houses for the launch event on 25th June. This will be the first smartphone to come out of partnership between Blackberry and Foxconn which is commonly known for its relationship with Apple Inc.

The same device was launched in Indonesia earlier this year at a price of IDR 2,199,000 ($190 or INR 11,500). Expectations are that this device will be launched at around the same price making it the cheapest Blackberry smartphone running on Blackberry 10 OS putting at par with Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Microsoft(Nokia) and Micromax.

Blackberry now aims to regain its top position in the Indian smartphone market in which its been a laggard for the past few years as it failed to keep up with competition and the requirements of the consumers.

Blackberry’s new Z3 fashions 5.0-inch qHD display, running OS (v10.2.2) powered by a 1.2GHz snapdragon dual-core processor with 1.5GB of RAM and 8GB inbuilt storage (expandable up to 32GB). The budget Smartphone is also equipped with 5.0-megapixel camera with flash, 5x digital zoom, image stabilization, and full HD video recording ability and a 1.1-megapixel front camera.

KEY FEATURES

• OS: BlackBerry 10.2.1 OS
• Dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400
• Dimensions: 140×72.8×9.26mm
• Weighs 164 grams
• 5-inch qHD (960×540 pixels) 220ppi
• 1.5GB RAM
•  8GB expandable up to 32GB using a microSD card
•  5MP rear/ 1.1MP front Camera
•  2,500mAh Battery

Do you think Blackberry will be able to rule the markets again?

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