Author: Brad Reed

It looks like BlackBerry fans really do love their physical keyboards. Barron’s points us to a new note from Jefferies analyst Peter Misek, who claims that several “store checks” of outlets in Toronto show that the “BlackBerry Q10 has been selling extremely well and has been sold out or seeing limited availability” in the city. Misek’s note on Canadian Q10 sales follows a similarly optimistic note he wrote earlier in the week about strong early Q10 sales in the U.K., so it seems that the Q10 has some solid momentum on its side during its first week of availability. The Q10, which is designed to look more like iconic pre-touchscreen BlackBerry phones, includes 3.5-inch display, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, 2GB RAM, 16GB of internal storage and a 2,100 mAh battery.

When I first learned that President Obama had nominated the former president of CTIA and the National Cable Television Association to be the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, my stomach turned: If there’s one thing that this country doesn’t need, it’s yet another former lobbyist appointed to a high position in the United States federal government. But after my initial gag reflex wore off, I found myself intrigued by the reaction from many activists whom I’d expected to slam the pick — Public Knowledge CEO Gigi Sohn, for instance, said that Wheeler was likely to champion “strong open Internet requirements, robust broadband competition, affordable broadband access for all Americans, diversity of voices and serious consumer protections, all backed by vigorous agency enforcement.” And Ars Technica notes that Cardozo School of Law professor Susan Crawford, who has long been a fierce critic of the cable industry, has also endorsed the nomination.

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In Apple’s seemingly endless quest to make its products lighter and thinner, the company may have come up with a clever way to save space in future versions of the iPhone and iPad: by using curved batteries that nestle more comfortably into its devices’ contours. AppleInsider has found a pair of Apple patent filings that describe “curved battery cells for portable electronic devices” and “non-rectangular batteries for portable electronic devices” that the publication speculates could be used in future iPads and iPhones.

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Slowly but surely, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean is inching its way toward overtaking the two-and-a-half year old Gingerbread as the dominant platform version of Android. The latest numbers from the Android Developers website show that Jelly Bean now holds a 28.4% share of the Android device market, marking the first time it has had a larger share than Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which now has a sits at 27.5%. All that said, Jelly Bean still has a ways to go before it catches up with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the operating system that was released all the way back in December 2010, which still clings to a 38.5% share of the Android market. In other words, it looks like Gingerbread will still be the most widely used version of Android as Google announces yet another new version of the platform, Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie, which may be coming at Google I/O later this month.

The biggest question for the HTC One hasn’t been whether it’s good enough to go toe-to-toe with Samsung’s Galaxy S4, but whether it can survive under fire from Samsung’s marketing Death Star that spent a whopping $402 million in the United States alone last year. Barron’s points us to a new research note from CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets analyst CK Cheng, who has upped his sales estimates for the HTC’s new flagship phone to 3.5 million units in the second quarter of 2013, up from an earlier estimate of between 2.5 million to 3 million. For the full year, Cheng says that HTC will probably sell between 9 million and 10 million HTC Ones, which is an improvement from sales of the HTC One X that topped out at between 7 million and 8 million units. Cheng also says that the glowing reviews the HTC One has received will keep its sales strong throughout the year even as Samsung is shipping upward of 60 million Galaxy S4 models to markets around the world.

Nokia may not be selling nearly as many smartphones as Apple or Samsung but it wants to make sure the smartphones it does sell have the world’s best cameras. Bloomberg reports that Nokia continues to make major investments in camera technology firms and most recently invested an undisclosed amount in camera software startup Pelican Imaging to develop software for array cameras that “use multiple optics and mesh the data into one image,” like the Lytro camera that debuted last year. Bloomberg says that Nokia sees cameras as a major differentiator to help set itself apart from its rivals because “imaging quality is one of the top three reasons to buy or return a phone.” Nokia’s upcoming Lumia 928 flagship smartphone is expected to showcase the company’s PureView camera technology as one of its killer features.