• News:  The News category has been expanded to include magazines.  This category is now called News and Magazines and includes Blogs as a subcategory.
• Beta:  The Beta category is discontinued.  The apps located the Beta category have been moved to relevant categories.
• Reference and eBooks & Education:  The Books and Reference category has been divided in to separate categories so that these are now individual categories respectively.  The Reference category includes Education.  This new category is Education & Reference.
• Shopping:  The Shopping category has been renamed Lifestyle.
• Maps & Navigation:  The Maps & Navigation category now includes Travel and has been renamedNavigation and Travel.
• Music Creation (*NEW*):  There is a new subcategory Music Creation available under the Music and Audio category.
• Children’s Categories (*NEW*):  There are two new children’s focused categories:
  • New Children’s Games category within the Games Channel
  • New Children’s Books subcategory within the Books category

Source : Berryreview.com

It’s no secret that the Playbook will be getting upgraded to the new BB10 OS. The question has always been a matter of timing. It was released yesterday from RIM via the wonderful world of tweeter that “Cascades support for PlayBook will come w/ the PlayBook OS upgrade to BB10, shortly after launch of 1st BB10 smartphone.” When is this you may ask?  New BB10 devices are scheduled to be announced in August of this year, with a release of the first new BB10 devices in October.  The upgrade to BB10 OS may still be a few months off, this could be taken as a sign of good news that  things are moving along nicely and on schedule for RIM.

Source : N4BB

Have you ever wanted to have a battery on your belt, RIM has! The patent details how RIM is planing to use flexible batteries in their holsters that will give you that extra charge for your berry on the go. It doesn’t stop there as the holster is said to house it’s own speakers allowing for notifications and ringtone’s to be heard with ease.

Source : Engadget

The Porsche Design P’9981 smartphone by Blackberry has just been awarded “Smartphone of the Year 2012” by a distinguished jury at the renowned Plus X Award. The sleek one-of-a-kind device includes a typical straight-line and “puristic”design by Porsche Design and innovative technologies from BlackBerry.

The Plus X Award is awarded in the categories technology, sport and lifestyle paying particular attention on innovative and future-oriented products that distinguish themselves from others by an aptly named Plus X Factor.

Axel Kettenring, Managing Director RIM Germany, says: “We are very proud to receive this seal of quality. Receiving the Plus X Award for the Porsche Design P’9981 smartphone confirms we are operating at the cutting edge with our demand for design and quality.”

Source : Porsche Design Press Release

As mentioned before RIM has been very faithful to their physical keyboard in the past and it doesn’t look like that is going to change either. A patent back from ’09 for an “Angular keyboard” has had some life breathed back into it, as RIM continues to try out all kinds of different keyboards this one is said to be more for the chubby fingered individuals out there. As you can tell in the picture above, the angled keys would make texting and emailing a little easier for our chubby fingered friends.

Source : Engadget

Today RIM officially launched the new 9320 Curve, you may have heard about this device and that it will be coming with its own dedicated BBM button for all you non-stop messengers, very cool! No word on pricing or who will be carrying the new device but we will keep you posted, as for the OS it will be hitting the streets with Blackberry OS 7.1.

For those of you who like it official, click the link below to check out the press release from RIM.

Curve 9320 Press Release.

After looking over theses new screenshot’s I found myself salivating slightly, just wait until you look at these leaked images of the new BlackBerry 10 software. The pictures have been found floating around the web recently and have been generating some buzz. They show more details about the everyday functionality of the new BlackBerry 10 OS, with some very cool new tricks and treats built into the software.  If these pictures turn out to be true, RIM may very well have a few more surprises up their sleeves. Enjoy!

(more…)

Sources :

1. http://crackberry.com/rim-internal-documents-offer-better-look-blackberry-10-homescreen-and-how-it-all-will-work
2. http://crackberry.com/twitter-and-facebook-concept-uis-blackberry-10-devices-revealed
3. http://crackberry.com/more-blackberry-10-screen-caps-blackberry-10-lock-screen-and-notificaitons

Today Thorsten Heins made clear the speculation that RIM is NOT abandoning the physical keyboard that so many of us have grown to love. During a Q & A session he said “We want the typing experience on BlackBerry to be the best in the World… both touchscreen and physical keyboard”. So unless he is just toying with us we can expect to see some type BB 10 device with a physical keyboard in the future, one with a killer keyboard by the sounds of it.

Source : crackberry

The Blackberry Playbook is rumoured to be getting an update to OS 2.1 in the coming months. Thanks to some lucky people attending the shindig down in Orlando, it has been reported that the Playbook will be releasing a developers build by the end of the month and should be releasing it to the rest of us sometime around the beginning of the summer!

It looks as though this could be a rather hefty update, check out some of the new features  listed below.

• Portrait Email, Calendar, and Contacts
• App World Carrier Shelf
• Bridge Texting and WiFi Transport Support
• Android Multi-Tasking
• Camera API and In-app Payments for developers
• Over-the-air activation with Mobile fusion
• Personal Encryption

Source : Berryreview.com

The latest update for Blackberry Bridge came out late today, with a fix for predictive text issues on Playbook OS 2.0.1. It isn’t a huge update but one that I’m sure most of us Playbook users have been waiting for. Check out App World or use the link below to get the updated version.

• Click here to download Blackberry Bridge

Source : crackberry

Perhaps in preparation for all the news that will be coming from Blackberry World and Jam this week, Twitter for Blackberry was updated to 3.0.0.24 this morning. There are only a few minor bug fixes and changes with this update, check them out below.

• Fixed error preventing some users from launching app
• Fixed a freezing issue that some users encountered when becoming BBM connected
• Limited valid username characters when signing up for new Twitter account
• Re-enabled Profile Location mapping for latitude/longitude coordinates
• Fix continuous loading bug when encountering certain tweets

If you are interested in getting the new updated Twitter for Blackberry check out the link below and happy twitting.

• Download Twitter for Blackberry Here

If you’re starting to get that itch for something new than check out the latest leaks for the Curve 9380 and Bold 9790.  At the moment we don’t exactly know what has changed from the last version to this one, but if you’ve got that hankering check out the links below.

• Click here for Curve 9380 OS 7.1.0.402
• Click here for Bold 9790 OS 7.1.0.402

**WARNING: This is not an official release for BlackBerry and therefore has not been fully tested and may contain bugs. TheBerryFix.com cannot be held responsible for any issues that may arise ether during or after installation. You are installing the leak by choice. To help the BlackBerry community please don’t forget to post your findings in the comments.

Source : N4BB

According to Reuters RIM has hired Law Firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP to work out a restructuring plan that could include selling assets, seeking joint ventures or even licensing patents. As part of the Canadian smartphone maker’s strategic review, the RIM board is discussing ways to boost revenue from its new BlackBerry 10 operating system and possibly opening up its proprietary network.

This could be a game changer for RIM if we see this get implemented in the near future. Oddly enough, I can’t help but get the feeling of déju vu. Before leaving the company former Co-CEO Jim Balsillie had come up with a strategy allowing carriers to use RIM’s network to content delivery, messaging and analytics. Members of the board quickly rejected the idea, as they feared releasing BBM to the competition would further erode ailing market share. Balsillie left RIM in March.

Source : Reuters

Whoops! For a brief moment, the Playbook App World had a new Tab in its line up reading “Verizon Wireless Store”, if you were able to click it nothing would happen except of course for widespread internet speculation! That being said there has been recent chatter that 3G and/or 4G models of the Playbook have gone into carrier testing, it would certainly appear so with Verizon being the first to give us a test of what is to come.  Should be an interesting next few months!