Australian telcos Telstra and Optus have committed to ranging the new BlackBerry Z10 handset, though neither have committed to pricing or a firm release date for the handset.

BlackBerry is expecting that the Australian carriers will release the phone in a similar timeframe to that expected in the US, which equates to at least March before the phones are in stores. This would have Aussie BlackBerry fans waiting a month longer than those in the UK and UAE.

Optus and Telstra are two of the 110 carriers around the world expected to be stocking the BlackBerry Z10 over the next few months. The Z10 is the full touchscreen model BlackBerry 10 device, with a 4.2-inch screen, Qualcomm processor and 2GB RAM.

BlackBerry will also launch a handset with a full-QWERTY keyboard, called the Q10. Timing for this handset is still vague, though BlackBerry CEO Thorstein Heins did say that he expected the first Q10s to be available from the end of April this year.

You can read our review of the Z10 here and our preview of the Q10 here.

Joseph Hanlon attended the New York event as a guest of BlackBerry.

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The company formerly known as Research In Motion (RIM) will take on the more recognisable name of its product range and be known as BlackBerry going forward.

“From this point forward, RIM becomes BlackBerry,” CEO Thorstein Heins announced during an event to showcase the company’s new BlackBerry 10 operating system and devices.

“It is one brand, it is one promise. Our customers use BlackBerry, our employees work for BlackBerry and our shareholders are owners of BlackBerry. From today on, we are BlackBerry everywhere in the world,” said Heins.

The changes in company title are reflected in new Nasdaq and Toronto Stock Exchange abbreviations: BBRY and BB, respectively.

The change of name signifies an important milestone for the Canadian company, with its new operating system seen as a final attempt to recapture the imagination of technology users who have chosen iPhones and Android devices instead of BlackBerry phones for the last two to three years.

The BlackBerry 10 launch event was held simultaneously in six cities. Heins spoke in New York, but was simulcast to London, Dubai, Johannesburg, Toronto and Paris.

Joseph Hanlon attended the event in New York as a guest of BlackBerry.

The post Research In Motion is no more: “We are BlackBerry” first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

Sammobile is claiming to have the first image of the next Samsung Galaxy phone, receiving the photos from a reader.

If true, the new phone in the company’s flagship Galaxy family would look nearly identical to last year’s model, but with a larger edge-to-edge display. Under the hood is a similar story, with all of the phone’s key specs reportedly faster and more powerful, including a 2GHz quad-core Exynos processor, 2GB RAM and a Mali-T658 GPU.

The screen is rumoured to be a 5-inch Full HD panel (1080 x 1920 pixels) using Samsung’s SuperAMOLED screen technology. The camera will make use of more pixels too, with a 13-megapixel sensor.

What do you think? Are we looking at the next Galaxy or an afternoon spent in Photoshop? It would be a pretty easy photo editing task to take an existing image of the Galaxy S3 and increase the screen size. It would also be the first time Samsung hasn’t significantly redesigned a new Galaxy handset to look different from its predecessor.

Let us know by taking part in our poll.

The post Is this the Samsung Galaxy S4? first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

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Pocket Filmmaker: Lighting

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Welcome back to CNET Australia‘s guide to pocket film-making. The Pocket Filmmaker will be showing you how to turn the smartphone in your pocket into a camera capable of shooting video projects that are worthy of sharing with family and friends, online and even with the judges of some of Australia’s biggest short-film festivals.

In this episode, we look at the importance of correctly lighting your movies, whether it is with natural light, the use of reflectors or by using some very handy, portable and inexpensive light packs. We also examine which settings on your phone can help you get the best images possible.

Other episodes in this series include:

• Lenses for pocket cameras

• Smart tripods for stabilising your smartphone videos

• Recording great sound

• Tools for making your movies move

Jason Van Genderen was the winner of several short film-making awards at festivals including Tropfest NY, Tropfest Sydney and Aspen Shortsfest, and he has even won an IF Award. Jason’s projects have been shot on the Nokia N95, Nokia N8 and Apple’s iPhone. He recently took home first prize in the Telstra Mobile Masterpieces category at Tropfest Sydney for his film The 53rd Hour.

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There is a commonly held idea that girls are able to multitask, while boys are not. Whether this is true or not, it looks like girls are more likely to try doing several things at once, even when they are not supposed to.

According to insurance company AAMI, 56 per cent of young female drivers it surveyed recently said that they had read text messages on their phones while driving, and 43 per cent said that they spoke on the phone without a hands-free device. This compared with young men, of who only 43 per cent said that they sent SMS and 38 per cent made or received calls.

These statistics come from AAMI’s 2012 Young Driver Index, in which the company spoke with 3700 drivers aged 18 to 24 years old. While the results of the survey point to high illegal use of technology by young drivers, it also points to a possible decrease in drink driving amongst this group. The 2012 survey revealed that 15 per cent of respondents admitted to driving “while probably over the drink-drive limit”, down from 21 per cent in 2002.

This is probably a good time to remind our readers of the changes to the rules around phones and driving a car. As of 1 November, it is illegal to use a phone (or similar device) while driving unless it is securely mounted. The penalty for a cheeky text message on the motorway is AU$298 and three demerit-points.

The post Young women more likely to text or call while driving: AAMI first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

Apple’s Do Not Disturb feature is living up to its name more than iPhone users would like, with a bug stopping the feature from automatically switching off at the scheduled time.

In a post on it’s support blog, Apple acknowledged that the problem started on New Year’s Day and that it will apparently correct itself on 7 January. This date being a Monday, we wonder whether it refers to the first day that Apple expects someone with expertise to be in the office to fix it, as there appears to be no further explanation given for why the issue will be resolved on this specific date.

If you use Do Not Disturb, you will have to manually switch it on and off until next week. To do this, go to Settings, then to Notifications and then to the Do Not Disturb menu.

The post iPhone’s Do Not Disturb feature broken until 7 January first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

The Android operating platform is now the top mobile OS in Australia, according to research firm Telsyte.

In new data released today, Telsyte has calculated that Google’s mobile OS accounts for 44 per cent of the Australian smartphone market, just a per cent more than Apple’s iOS. Of the 10 million-plus handsets being used across the country, the remaining market share leaves little room for smartphone alternatives Windows Phone and BlackBerry.

It has taken several years for Australians to shift to Android, with the gain for Android due to price and more choices, according to the firm’s research director Foad Fadaghi.

“Our new research shows that the lower prices, faster product cycles and carrier support has helped Android become the leading platform,” Fadaghi said in a statement.

Telsyte’s figures differ pretty wildly from the OS market share data we saw earlier in the year from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, which had Android at 56 per cent in Australia, iOS at 30.5 per cent and Windows Phone at a small, but respectable 4.8 per cent.

Correction: The Kantar Worldpanel data referenced above relates to smartphone purchasing, not existing share of market. Kantar Worldpanel ComTech data related to ownership/installed base puts the numbers at 40.2 per cent for Android and 38.4 per cent for iOS, which paints a more closely aligned picture to the Telsyte figures.

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A recent Reuters article is predicting flexible screen tech for either the Samsung Galaxy S4 or its successor, with one analyst tipping the tech to be commercially available by 2014 at the latest. Is a flexible screen the hot new feature for your next phone?

And if it is, why would you want it?

Reuters is calling this screen “unbreakable”, with the new technology replacing the glass substrate in conventional smartphone screens with a plastic that should keep the display from being damaged. Stanford Bernstein analyst Mark Newman is quoted by Reuters as saying that “either the Galaxy S 4 or S 5 will have unbreakable, and even possibly flexible and foldable displays by 2014.”

We’ve known that Samsung has been working on flexible OLED displays for some time, so it is no great surprise that the technology is coming closer to reality and, in fact, this wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen a flexible display in action. Nokia showed a prototype flexible handset at Nokia World last year. This handset didn’t bend or fold, but Nokia had developed a UI that responded to the phone being twisted to perform commands, like zooming in and out.

As cool as this demonstration by Nokia was, we wondered whether we would use these sorts of phone-bending commands every day. In a similar vein, Samsung has incorporated a number of motion controls into its Android devices recently. These are used to control specific functions on the phones, like switching images in the photo gallery by tilting it one direction or another, but in our opinion, none of these gestures make using the phones easier than just using the touchscreen.

There are other obvious benefits of this approach to screen design, though. No glass means the possibility of a much lighter handset, and possibly thinner, too. Also, Samsung is said to be working with OLED display technology for its flexible screens, which should result in a spectacular on-screen image, given what we’ve seen from OLED screens already.

So, what do you think? Is a flexible OLED display the sort of groundbreaking tech that would have you queuing up for a new phone?

The post Poll: would you queue for a flexible, unbreakable Samsung phone? first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

Huzzah! Motorola Razr HD owners have something to cheer about this Christmas, with the update to Jelly Bean now rolling out to Telstra handset owners. We were lucky enough to get access to the update a bit earlier than most, and have revisited the Razr HD this week to see how it fares with the improvements that Jelly Bean brings.

Smooth as a baby’s Butter

The first noticeable improvement is in the general speed of the system. This is a difficult thing to judge, given that the Razr HD was a quick handset to begin with, but we do feel that the subtle stutters and pauses we noted in our review have been mostly ironed out. The animations across the majority of the UI are now smoother, thanks to Google’s Project Butter, giving the handset a nicer feel all-round.

These improvements are not visible in benchmark tests though, with the results we’ve collected all being lower after the update than before it. Geekbench 2 now displays a score of 1387, when previously, the Razr HD scored a 1450. This is obviously just a curious by-product of the update, as the feel of the system tells a different story.

New bits

If you remember our Razr HD review, you’ll know that, going forward, Motorola is planning on keeping the UI as close to Android as possible. As such, there are no obvious Motorola bits in the update, with all of the additional features being part of the Android system update.

The expanded notifications pane is the part you will probably see the most. Now when you get a notification, the panel shows you more detail that before, and gives you options to interact without having to launch a second app. When you miss a call, there is a button to return the call right on the curtain. Email messages show the first few lines of the missive, so long as there isn’t too many other notifications to clutter up the pane.

You’ll also start seeing new Google Now notifications too. Google Now is Android’s new mind-reading search tool that attempts to show you information it predicts you will be looking for, before you actually search for it. By default it shows the local weather and traffic reports for travel routes you often take — to and from work, for example. But you can add more, like movie show times, (limited) sports results, flight details, currency conversions and much more.

Battery

If there is one element of the update that disappoints us, it’s that battery life doesn’t seem to have improved at all. Not that Motorola promised that it would, but we had our fingers crossed for some improved efficiencies all the same. As you can see in the image below, the phone is still munching through battery life at a steady click; defying its huge 2500mAh battery capacity.

If you don’t have the update yet, standby. You should get it over the next few days. You might be able to force it to your phone by going into the system settings, clicking on About Phone, and selecting System Updates. If you spot anything else cool in the update, let us know.

The post Motorola Razr HD Jelly Bean update: road test first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

Dell has put its smartphone ambitions into reverse, announcing that it will not make new Android products and that its tablets will all run on Windows 8 from here on.

Speaking at Dell World in Austin, Texas, and as reported by Forbes, Dell’s vice chairman and president, Jeff Clarke, confirmed that there will be no new Dell Android devices. He said that the company could not figure out a way to build a business around Google’s OS, and cited companies like Amazon who undercut hardware vendors in retail pricing in order to sell digital content.

China had been the final foothold for Dell’s smartphone play, but this announcement has put an end to this as well.

The absence of Dell in Australian phone stores is unlikely to be felt by Aussie smartphone and tablet shoppers. Of the dozen or so Dell handsets developed by the computer hardware company, only the Streak tablet ever really made it onto a telco’s range; it launched with Optus well after its initial global introduction.

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