Author: Brad Reed

One of BlackBerry’s biggest challenges after the release of its initial high-end BlackBerry 10 smartphones was to launch a lower-cost device capable of shoring up the company’s market share in key emerging markets. The company did just that on Tuesday by announcing the BlackBerry Q5, a fully QWERTY keyboard BlackBerry 10 device that will launch in July in select markets in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. The device features a 3.1-inch touch display and comes in multiple colors including black, silver and red. BlackBerry has not yet disclosed the device’s full specifications and pricing information.

As we’ve mentioned before, Samsung is a force to be feared in the smartphone industry. The latest numbers from Gartner show that Samsung absolutely mowed down the competition in the first quarter of 2013 by selling 64.7 million smartphones, good for a 30.8% share of the global smartphone market and a 59% increase from the 40.6 million smartphones it sold in the first quarter of 2012. These numbers are particularly impressive because they came before Samsung launched its new flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone, so it’s likely that the company will further expand its lead over its rivals in the second quarter.

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Given that smartphone users seem increasingly drawn toward larger displays, Apple could be feeling some pressure to come out with its own “iPhablet” to offer its users a larger alternative to the 4-inch iPhone 5. But Barron’s points us to a recent Bloomberg TV interview with Jefferies analyst Peter Misek, who says that we shouldn’t get our hopes up for a larger version of the iPhone anytime soon. Misek says that based on his firm’s “research on Apple’s technology, we don’t think they can produce a larger screen iPhone until the middle of next year” at the very earliest, by which time Samsung will likely have already released new versions of both its Galaxy S and Galaxy Note lines of devices. Misek also says that “pressure for a larger-screen phone will continue to mount” in the coming months, especially if Samsung’s 5-inch Galaxy S4 sells as well as early projections have indicated.

Whether or not Google has really pulled out of its “X Phone” project with Motorola, it seems that the device will still be making its way to AT&T sometime in the near future. AndroidGuys has spotted a filing at the Federal Communications Commission showing a new Motorola phone called the “Motorola XT1058” that looks very similar to leaked pictures of the X Phone that we saw earlier this year. The FCC filing shows that the new device will be supported by AT&T’s network, although it doesn’t give any technical specifications for the phone other than that it will support LTE, HSPA+ and Wi-Fi connectivity. Late last week we started hearing rumors that Google had backed out of its role in developing the device and would leave Motorola to finish up the project alone, which could very well reduce interest in the new phone when it’s finally released.

Nokia has released a tantalizing new teaser ad for its latest Lumia flagship phone that shows off both a shiny metal casing and a new camera that the company is betting will set it apart from the iPhone and high-end Android devices. The tagline on the teaser is “More Than Your Eyes Can See,” which strongly hints that Nokia will place a lot of emphasis on the device’s camera at its big launch event this week. The new Lumia device will apparently be different from the Lumia 928 that Nokia announced for Verizon last week, which features a 4.5-inch ClearBlack display with a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels, a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor and an 8.7-megapixel PureView rear camera with a Carl Zeiss lens. The full teaser video is posted below.

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Windows RT has always been something of an oddball in the new Microsoft operating system family. It’s not a pure mobile OS like Windows Phone 8 but at the same time it doesn’t have the full capabilities of Windows 8 and isn’t able to run desktop apps from older Windows platforms. The question has become, then, what exactly is Windows RT good for? The answer that many consumers have given back so far is, “Not a whole lot.” And it’s not just consumers, either: ComputerWorld’s Gregg Keizer spoke with several analysts this week and found that none of them were convinced that Windows RT will be around for much longer unless something fundamentally changes.

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The days when smartphone buyers valued devices that fit neatly into their hands appear to be over — nowadays it’s all about the big, beautiful display. A new survey from Strategy Analytics has found that consumers are increasingly attracted to smartphones with larger screens, indicating that the trend Samsung started with its Galaxy Note line of phablets has taken hold. Overall, the survey found that consumers preferred an average smartphone size of around 4.5 inches in the second half of 2012, or right in the middle of Apple’s 4-inch iPhone 5 and Samsung’s 5-inch Galaxy S4. What’s more, the survey also found that many smartphone owners have a case of “phablet envy” since “the majority of consumers surveyed indicated that they preferred prototypes that have a larger screen than their current phone.”

When we advised HTC to start fighting dirty a while ago, we didn’t expect them to take us quite so literally. In a new ad for its flagship HTC One smartphone, HTC shows off its new Blink Feed interface that the company bills as a single live stream that’s constantly showing the latest updates on all your apps, thus making it easier for you to find new data without switching through all your apps individually. In the new ad, HTC shows users of rival devices “digging” on their phones for all their apps as piles of dirt start to appear around their feet. HTC One owners, on the other hand, have a much cleaner experience and are shown getting everything they need through Blink Feed. The full advertisement is posted below.

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Pegatron may or may not be seeing falling demand for the iPad mini but it’s clear that the Apple device manufacturer won’t be slacking off for the next several months. Reuters reports that Pegatron is planning to boost its workforce in China by 40% in the second half of 2013, right when Apple is expected to start manufacturing its long-rumored low-cost iPhone. While there’s no definitive information linking Pegatron to the low-cost iPhone, Reuters says that the company expects its “revenue from communication products” to “contribute up to 40% to total in the six months from June, compared to 24% in the three months in the beginning of the year.” Or put another way, Pegatron expects to get a major revenue boost from producing “communications products” that will likely include some variant of Apple’s iPhone.

Sony has had surprising early success with its Xperia Z smartphone so it shouldn’t be much of a shock that the company wants to keep the momentum going by releasing yet another high-end device by the end of the year. Engadget notes that both specifications and pictures of Sony’s upcoming Xperia A have been posted on the Federal Communications Commission’s website and show that the new device will feature a 5-inch 1080p HD display, a 2,300mAh battery, a 13-megapixel camera and 16GB of storage. Given these specs, the Xperia A sounds more like an updated version of the Xperia Z rather than the full-blown monster 6.44-inch Xperia phablet that the company has been working on.

With Nokia’s share of handset sales in emerging markets under assault, the company may have an unlikely white knight come to its rescue: Facebook. No, Facebook isn’t planning to release a version of Facebook Home for Lumia models anytime soon but Quartz’s Leo Mirani explains that Facebook is bringing some features to Nokia’s $99 line of new Asha phones that could make them very attractive to first-time handset buyers. In particular, Mirani says that the new Asha 501 comes with “free data for Facebook if consumers use one of the wireless carriers that have agreed” to provide it.

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