Mistakes happen. That is a universal certainty and I’m really not one for conspiracy theories so I’ll just count this as a human mistake. The mistakes aren’t just a matter of copy and pasting the wrong info though. This Wirefly smartphone OS comparison chart has errors that deal with each OS signature feature. Who doesn’t know that Android has a notification center? Sure it is referred to as the notification shade but still everyone knows it’s the same thing. Just like everyone knows that FaceTime is Apple’s integrated video chat service. Windows Phone 8 has NFC and has had it since day one. I have a hard time seeing such major errors not being noticed but like I said I’m not a big fan of conspiracy theories.

Source: Wirefly

BlackBerry this morning has announced their 2013 4Q results. The company has managed to return to profitability earning 22 cent per share ($94 million) on $2.7 billion in revenue. This beats analyst projections and is a good sign for the company going forward. The company shipped 6 million smartphones in Q4 2013, 1 million being BB10 devices. Significantly, BlackBerry lost 3 million subscribers in the quarter (79m to 76m).

A key thing to remember that the Z10 has only been on sale for a little over a month overseas in a few markets and the US launch was last week on one carrier. T-Mobile and Verizon sales start this week. BlackBerry’s financial figures for 1Q 2014 will shed clear light on the market reception to BlackBerry’s mobile makeover and their place in it. The Z10 carries with it higher margins which should help BlackBerry continue to turn a profit.

BlackBerry noted it will increase its marketing spending to support BlackBerry 10 by 50%. It is a good sign that BlackBerry is investing even more in marketing their product.

Source: BlackBerry Earnings Live Blog

Guess the Z10 hasn’t wowed?

From NPR News’ Twitter feed:

It is quite the norm to see a new device hit the market to a resounding chorus of fantastic reviews left by new users who are giddy to finally have their new phone in hand. The newness tends to overshadow anything else in your first 24 hours of having the handset. There was just something off about BlackBerry’s reviews so I read them and check out what I found.

Folks, there is no red Z10 option on AT&T. I find it completely hilarious that someone posted about all their fancy accessories and covers for the phone hours after the many reports surfaced of the poor initial sales on Amazon. Secondly, quite a few of the reviews are from people who went into the store and tested out the device. What? How can you leave a review claiming it to be superior to other phones after just a few minutes of playing with it and you can’t testify to the messaging hub superiority without having your actual data on there.

This folks, is what I call smudging the numbers. Seriously read the reviews, on second thought, don’t. You’ll only be pulled in to fanboyism at its peak of absurdity. I’m not saying the Z10 is not a good phone and choice for some who prioritize the email experience over everything else. What I am saying is that these reviews are clearly over the top and clearly are meant to be adverts more than personal testimonies of their individual use cases.

Source: Amazon Wireless User Reviews

Yesterday there were quite a few articles on how poorly the BlackBerry Z10 had been selling on Amazon. At that time the Z10 had failed to even crack the top 100 list of best sellers. As of right now the Z10 is listed as the 20th best selling phone on Amazon Wireless from AT&T. That is quite the leap for one day.

Source: Amazon Wireless

Remember when everyone was sick and tired of smug iPhone owners? How about when Android took flight and gave rise to the Android Army. Me, I’d probably be called a Windows Phone fanboy and certainly there are quite a few who say nonsensical things in the name of their beloved mobile platform of choice. The thing is I never realized how absolutely pathetic the BlackBerry fanatics make fans of the other platforms look with their blind devotion to the BlackBerry brand and experience. I was perusing the USA Today article “BlackBerry Z10 Greeted With Caution; Stock drops 8%” and boy was there some doozies in there and sums up the madness BlackBerry fanatics believe to their core.

Social worker Jamie Hersh-White checked out the new phones at a BlackBerry Experience event in Chicago, and loves them. "I’m thinking of camping outside my Verizon store just so I can feel the excitement."

Can we tell Jamie it’s a pretty safe bet to sleep in her warm bed. She could go into hibernation and still make it in time to pick up a Z10.

Harvey Gee, 47, was purchasing a BlackBerry Z10 for his wife, who was stuck at work. Gee, who works near the AT&T store but lives in Castro Valley, said his wife was worried there would be "a run on them" and thought she should get one right away.

"She’s a BlackBerry fanatic, so she didn’t even consider an iPhone," say Gee.

Long story short, Mr. Gee’s only competition was himself.

A word of advice to our readers. If you see a BlackBerry fanatic do not bring up the Z10 & the complete irrelevance it has to most of us. That is pretty much the equivalent of teasing a bear with food who hasn’t ate in a very long time.

Source: USA Today

Its March Madness time. The time where people who are even remotely interested in basketball tune in to hours and hours of college basketball. It is one of the highest rated television periods each year. Companies try to maneuver and debut new commercials for their products & services taking advantage of the tens of millions of viewers tuning in each day and grab as much exposure as they can. The two mobile phone OSs most consider serious candidates for third position behind Android and iOS (BlackBerry 10 and Windows Phone 8) have launched commercials during the games. If you’re going to have a commercial it better be effective or it is just a giant money pit. Let’s see how each of them stacks up and who’s advert is the most effective.

BlackBerry Z10 Commercial (feat. BlackBerry Z10)

Windows Phone 8 (feat. Nokia Lumia 920)

For my money the Windows Phone 8 commercial is more effective because it shows one of the most popular tasks consumers use their phones for (pictures) in a simple and related way. It then has a simple tag line and call to action statement. The statement “its like a professional camera” will resonate with consumers. People like to repeat things they see or hear on TV as if it was gospel. The commercial then ends with a look at what Brittany’s Lumia looks like. Its personalized to suit her.

BlackBerry is clearly trying to invoke a positive visceral response when we hear BlackBerry Hub. They also spend much of the commercial drawing your attention to the moving scenes and not towards the device itself. Finally the commercial is 30 seconds in length. The device appears for a total of 10 seconds and of those ten seconds 3 seconds were wasted trying to show off the Peek feature. They didn’t show the device being superior or better in any way. Very few people in the U.S. have BlackBerry devices anymore or know people who do so the draw to BlackBerry Hub is negligible at best.

Winner: Windows Phone 8

In case you’ve been living under a rock, or living your life, you might have missed the news that the BlackBerry Z10 launches on carriers AT&T (tomorrow 3/22) and T-Mobile (3/26?) and Verizon (3/28) by the end of March. AT&T pre-orders started on March 12, and Verizon 2 days later. T-Mobile opened up pre-orders for business customers but not regular consumers. With recent reports of how well BlackBerry sales had been exceeding expectation in previous launch markets the hope was that BlackBerry would continue to build on momentum and positive reports to take back marketshare in the U.S.

The latest round of reports paint a more sobering picture. Instead of long lines of consumers camping out it appears if you are in the market for a BlackBerry Z10 you will have a good chance to walk into your local carrier store and pick up a device. Checks indicate U.S. consumer pre-orders for the BlackBerry Z10 “have been light and well below expectations,” says Detwiler Fenton’s Jeff Johnston.

Are you getting a Z10 on day one? Are you even going to give it a try? I’ll be checking out the device and putting it through it’s paces tomorrow and will also gauge consumer reaction. I’m looking forward to see if the device really is as intuitive as people claim and how the RSPs present the Z10 as an option when a customer hasn’t made their mind up before walking into the store.

Each day brings more clarity to the most asked questions in mobility. Today’s information delivers the date and pricing info on when AT&T wireless customers will first be able to get their hands on the BlackBerry Z10. BlackBerry’s first BB10 device will be launching on March 22nd as I previously mentioned for the price of $199.99 with a two-year agreement.

The BlackBerry Z10 features a 4.2-inch display, packs a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and an 8-megapixel camera that records video in full 1080p. Key features BlackBerry is touting is the BlackBerry Hub, BBM, BlackBerry Balance and their time-shift camera tech.

The wireless carrier will start pre-order sales for the device on March 12th. Are you getting one day one? Let us know in the comments below.

Samsung Qi

New rumors point to Samsung employing the near industry standard for wireless charging, Qi, in their upcoming flagship the Galaxy S4. It supposedly won’t come built-in but can be added by purchasing a Qi-enabled back cover. For Samsung this is most definitely a decision based on scale and cost. They have recently stated their preference for plastic materials over CNC machined-body devices because that allows them to produce with the scale and speed necessary to deal with demand. That makes total sense to me even if it angers a few folks.

If Samsung supports the Qi wireless in the Galaxy S4 I think we’ll see more wireless chargers regardless. Samsung has become a huge brand and their Galaxy S phones are now selling in big enough numbers that accessory manufacturers can justify making accessories for them. Since Samsung will be using Qi technology any other phones using the same wireless tech should be able to use the accessories as well.

As far as Apple is concerned nobody should be surprised as Apple likes to pretend they know better than everyone. It has worked for the past half decade until recently people started to realize they had a say in the matter.

Apps That Really Matter

We have discussed ad nauseam what apps make a platform viable and appealing. We tend to focus on the hottest apps like Instagram, Angry Birds, Draw Something, Words With Friends before that. This is all a bunch of crock. A platform isn’t adopted by flash in the pan apps that go through the 15 minutes of fame cycle. Platforms are built on things that make up the infrastructure of your productive life. Category of apps that meets this criteria are airline, banking, social, and weather apps. The support of major brands in these categories and excellent first-party apps drive the user experience through the roof. I’ve said in a recent article that until every phone gets battery life on par with the Droid Razr Maxx HD I won’t be spending a ton of time playing games on my phone. I travel a lot and have quite a good amount of time on my hands during layovers. Every time I pull out my phone and think of playing a game the thought is followed by an equally important one “What will this do to my battery?”. I promptly end up changing course and checking Twitter and reading the latest news.

Spec Race Jumps The Shark. Leaves Battery Behind

In an era where there has been a spec race in every major way sadly the battery has been an afterthought. You want my money when it comes time to purchase my next phone its really simple. Deliver me an excellent first-party app, camera and battery experience. The look of the phone is far down the list of things I consider. The argument that iPhones are sold because they are beautiful to look at is stupid. It is a rare sight to see an iPhone owner not using a phone case. We keep getting glimpses of the promise of super phones that do 90% if what we need in a device but the battery situation leaves us hung out to dry. OEMs please fix this!

Mobile Maturation Is Close

Major smartphone platforms have reached the point where regardless which OS your phone is running the features you really need are present. Now the focus should be on improving the quality of apps. Gone should be the days where a developer can release an app and let it sit and rot. This starts with first-party apps and should be examples for third-party app developers. There are hundreds of thousands of apps that never get updated because the developer didn’t get the initial support they were expecting and just gave up. Keep up the good fight developers we want you to succeed. We just don’t want you to succeed based off a poorly implemented idea. Take feedback and try again and try again after that. Our phones have become extensions of ourselves and don’t we all like to imagine ourselves as the best possible versions of ourselves?

As always drop a comment and let me know what you think. Happy Friday folks!