 Are you business? Are you pleasure? Let's find out. Hi guys, we're here. I'm balanced. I'm trying to do BlackBerry stuff. We're here, we're live. The new BlackBerry, a company that was called RIM and has now renamed itself to BlackBerry, just had its launch event for BlackBerry 10, the platform. Two phones, the Z10 and the Q10, and we're just going to emotionally react to that news Can I just say, by the way, that I didn't realize how confusing this whole new name thing is going to be until you just described it just now. So let's go through the announcements because there's a lot to talk about with the name change. So RIM, the company that you may know as RIM, research and management, held their event today. And just basically a lot of announcements. The new platform, which we had known about BlackBerry 10, they've been talking about it for a while. The two new phones, which have been pretty thoroughly leaked, but we have a review up, we have seen the phone now in extreme detail. They went through some demos, they announced a bunch of apps that are going to support the new platform. But arguably the biggest news is that they are changing the name of the company from RIM to BlackBerry. And Thorson Hines, the CEO, said that's what customers know us as, that's what people call us where they're cashing in on the BlackBerry brand cache that they have. And it is in fact very confusing. I mean on the one hand it kind of makes sense, right? Because RIM is BlackBerry and BlackBerry is RIM. We've always kind of associated the two. And I couldn't name a thing for you that RIM does that isn't BlackBerry. They might have had other stuff, I don't know. But he's right in that we associated those two things with each other. But now it's like is the phone called a BlackBerry? It's a BlackBerry BlackBerry Z10. So it's literally the BlackBerry BlackBerry Z10. Yeah I think that is insane. That's insane. I mean because nobody calls their iPhone their Apple. I love making calls on my Apple. But it's a good move for them. I think it's they're trying to reboot their company. I think it's a rebirth for them in a lot of ways. I think it's a good move to say, I mean people are going to say BlackBerry announced new phones today whether or not they changed the name or not. So I think it makes sense for them. I think they're focused on the platform and the phones. And the phones themselves, they're better than I expected. I think we're going to look at Josh's Z10 review a little bit later. But his overall takeaway is they've made a really strong first step into rebooting their platform. And that it's not, I think there's not a killer app to push you away from an Android or an iPhone if you have one and you're happy. But there's the potential for that in the future. Right. I mean that's the problem. And we have lots more to say about this I guess. But it's like everybody else made this first step five years ago. So now the question is like can they make enough of these steps quickly enough that they'll catch up. And like they seem to be, I was actually kind of impressed with this event. We're going to talk to a couple of folks who were there and I'm curious kind of what the mood was. But they seemed like they answered all the questions. They had, they said a lot of the right things. They came out, they were like look we need apps. And they showed apps. They were like we need good hardware. And they had good hardware. And they seem to be on the right track and they're saying the right things and doing the right things. But the question is going to be like they're so far behind. Can they, do they have a chance of catching up? Have we just moved past them? There's a lot to say there. And I think there's a lot of questions about whether they can effectively their competition is Microsoft right for that third place platform. I think there's a lot to unpack there. But speaking of people who are there, Vlad Savov is sitting in London. I believe he has a Z10 in hand. Vlad are you here? Greetings. Can you guys hear and see me? Yes. We can do both of those things. Show us this phone man. I love you but I want to see the phone. So here it is. So what do you think? What's your situation mentally? My first takeaway is that it actually reminds me of the iPhone a lot. I'm just going to try and hold the two up side by side. They really do. And I mean honestly it's kind of odd you can't call it an iPhone rip off because this kind of design leaked over a year ago. But it's a nice design. Like I'm a fan of it. It's a 4.2 inch screen which I've been talking about on the Verge mobile show for ages. It's pretty much the sweet spot as far as I'm concerned. And it's really the only true flagship phone that is anywhere near the iPhone's 4 inch screen size in terms of competing with it. It also has a micro SD card slot which now is kind of a unique feature. It's a flagship phone. It has a replaceable battery. And actually the funny thing about here in the UK everyone has been quite excited about this. There's been this latent excitement about RIM. They've just been waiting for them to do something new for years and years. And it's just kind of starting to bubble up now. So what was the mood in the room when you were at the live event there? What was the mood that you were kind of sensing from everybody as the announcements were happening? The funny thing is I think Tom Warren put it pretty well. I think a lot of us were just kind of stunned into silence because of the presentation itself. But the mood of the people here, the mood of the other UK press really has been one of anticipation. And it's a sort of innocent anticipation. Like we'd be so jaded and so cynical about the latest launch. The latest Android phone that just picks up and yada, yada, yada. This is really new. Like, Blabry 10 is really new. The first time I picked up this phone I was like, where's the home button? And the funny thing is you struggle with it for a while but then you realize that the home button is essentially a swipe from the bottom up and it works really well. It's pretty seamless. And Roomba's done a lot of new things which is why I'm saying we don't feel so jaded as previously because they're new things for us to explore. It's a novel platform. So I'm actually curious about what you just said about the gestures. One of the things that seems to me is that this phone would be really hard to figure out how to use. Like if somebody just hands it to you, like there's no home button. There's nothing that's like immediately obvious what you're supposed to do. So what you've spent a few minutes with it now, what was that like? Well, that's what I'm saying. You kind of have to, the first thing you grasp is that swiping in from the edges does things. So if you swipe in from the top you get the notifications area. Well, no you don't. You get settings and quick toggles. Then you get notifications over on the left on the hub. Then you go to this Moses asking menu. It's kind of like the Nokia N9 in some respects. And then eventually you get the grasp of this swipe up from the bottom to leave an app and come back to the home screen. So no, I don't think it's really intuitive to be fair. But you also have a nice lock screen, which I'm trying to bring up now. So you get a whole bunch of information and notifications on your lock screen. And you unlock it with this really nice fading animation action. And then there's, if you hold down the camera button on the screen, there's a little animation that kicks you into the camera. So pretty much that's everything that a modern user interface does. Can you walk us through the UI a little bit? Just hold it up and show us some of the gestures in action. Yeah. Okay. So the camera is up right now. Maybe try to take a photo. Vlad Savov taking a photo of himself. Oh god, I just flashed him in the face. Live on the verge everyone. Yes. Yes, and there's the result. It's my face. Okay, so I'm going to try and leave this by swiping up from the bottom. And I've succeeded. And this is the multitasking menu. There's all your apps. You've got three home screens of apps, multitasking menu, then you've got the hub, notifications, yada yada yada. And there's some other stuff which I'm yet to understand, like you've got this stuff popping up on the right, but you can't access it. So I'm going to need to spend some time and work on this. The multitasking menu is kind of like the iPhones insofar as it sucks because you have to shut down every single app individually. Yeah. And it's a pain and there's no close-all. One other thing I wanted to mention here is Rumi's coming out with a really strong lineup of apps, 70,000 apps, and they seem to have all of the big ones. And I was really excited to find a YouTube app. I kick into it. I go into it. And then it turns out it's m.youtube.com. Oh, that's such a wrapper. Yeah. So strong app lineup, but then Rumi's doing the same thing that Microsoft is kind of doing with Windows Phone today. Like, we'll send you to the mobile YouTube app, which sucks. But the final thing I want to also say is that the UK is getting this phone, BlackBerry Z10 tomorrow in white and in black, which is great. I've always said, you know, if Rumi wants to make a splash, it needs to launch immediately. It's not great for the US because you guys are going to get it all the way in March, but at least the UK and I think Canada is getting it really soon as well. So a couple of big markets are going to get this phone nice and early. But the final thing to say is there's no Q10 around here. There are no Q10. This is the keyboard version for them to go off. And they haven't actually announced availability anywhere for the Q10. It's kind of a mythical device. So do you think this is you said there's some pent up excitement and anticipation. Do you think this thing's actually going to do well and sell well in the UK? I think it will. I think it will. I mean, RIM hasn't done anything new for so long. Like I said, there's just pent up demand. There's pent up, it's kind of like with Nokia's loyalty. Like people's loyalties run deep. They grow up with their phones. If you spend three or four years with one phone from one company, you still want to, you might still have fun feelings for that company. And I think RIM is that company for a lot of former teenagers, might be my age at this point or whatever. So I think it will do well. But then a lot of people have also said, can RIM sustain that momentum after the first few months, after the initial assignment? And that might be the real question. Well, we'll see. All right. Well, thank you so much, Vlad, for calling us straight from the event. I know you're super excited. You're getting one, right? They're giving as each one to everyone there. So go collect your ill-gotten property. And you know, you just swipe away, buddy. You just do whatever you need to do. I will, guys. I will. Thanks, Vlad. Later. So I think that's actually a really important point that Vlad made, which is there is an initial burst of excitement. I think some people will buy the phone, but I think there was that initial burst of excitement for Windows Phone as well. I think there was always an initial burst of excitement that you get from a new platform. And especially RIM did an incredible job of these kind of Apple-y controlled leaks of the stuff coming up. Like, we basically knew all of this stuff coming into today. But we had kind of inklings of the software, and they'd shown off bits and pieces of even some of the hardware. And so they've been building stuff. I mean, they announced it in what, May, I think, last May. So we're pushing nine months since they first started talking about BlackBerry 10. And they did a great job of really building the anticipation as we got closer to the date. But now I agree. It's like, now what? Yeah. I mean, I think the now what for them is they've been traveling. At the event, they made a big deal. We've been traveling the world to collect app developers. Right. Alicia Keys has been traveling the world. Alicia Keys, personally, has been playing the piano on every continent to get app developers. She will come to your home and play the piano if you'll build apps. So this is the key. And I think that what Vlada was saying about the YouTube app being just a wrapper for the mobile site, there are a lot of apps that are very clearly lifted off the iOS version. And then there are a lot of apps that are just Android apps. And that, when I was playing with the review unit, it's the same thing I noticed, which was, Josh pointed out to me, which was once the BlackBerry app world has Android apps in it. The phone supports Android. It can run Android apps. Right. And it's not like it's not ported apps. It's like it's literally running an actual Android app. They put Android. There's a layer of Android somewhere in the system. But it's not the native UI. It's not the native, right? It's just- And it's Android 2.3, which is like three-year-old Android. So you can get a lot of these apps. They're there in the system. But there are a lot of inconsistent UI elements, especially as you run either the wrappers into the web apps or the Android apps that are going to make up, I think, a bulk of the ported apps to begin with, at least until the platform, at least until RIM can convince people to build native apps because the platform strengths are there. Right. So that seems like a huge mistake on Blackberry's part. I'm going to call them RIM for forever and no one can stop me. That's fine. But so I think they- 70,000 is a big number. They said the number a bunch of times and they were like, it's the most anyone's ever had at launch. And they were really excited about that. And that's good. And I'm glad they have lots of apps. But I feel like most people are going to go in and download YouTube and it's going to be a terrible experience because it's just a wrapper for the mobile app and not a very good one. They're going to download an Android app and be like, why does this look completely different? See, I don't think they're going to be like, why does this look completely different? I think the more important- I think it's fine. Apps on the iPhone, they all look different. Apps on Android, they all look different. But it's like the settings menu is different. The settings are different. They're going to work differently. Right. Right. I think Josh was showing me the text selection, just selecting text in a native Blackberry app versus the Android 2.3 text selector in one of the ported Android apps is- they're wildly different experiences. And that's just an inconsistency. But I disagree with you. I think putting the Android apps on there was a good idea. Why? Because literally what they said when they announced it, we're going to get the tonnage of apps. They can launch with a bunch of apps. They can say to people, look, there's a Facebook app. Look, there's a Twitter app. All this stuff- they're launching all the carriers in the US. They're going to be there. They can say to app developers, especially Android app developers, this is a minimum amount of effort to get onto a whole new platform. If you hit this first and we're a success, you're going to come along for the ride. Whereas I think Microsoft Windows phone has to say it's a big effort to port your app. It's a bigger effort than use your existing Android code and make the tweaks. If we're a success, you'll come along for the ride, but you've got to invest all this stuff. So I think they have a better story for developers at the outset, but the right story has to be make a native BB10 app. And they haven't, as far as I can tell, haven't really made that case to anyone yet. No, and to their credit, they have a bunch of pretty big name apps. I didn't expect to see RDO. I didn't expect to see the New York Times. They have a bunch of big name games. Where's my water that everybody knows? But it's like, for me, and I was talking to a couple of folks about this the other day, the question is not can you get RDO? RDO ultimately is going to build for everybody because it behooves RDO to be everywhere. But then it's the one dude who's like, oh, I have a pretty good idea. I'll build a game. And that's what makes iOS so great. Vine. Vine, exactly. And there are these apps. You just can't see any porn vines on Blackberry 10. And that's really all I have to say about that. They're announcing everything here. They've got a music service and a video service and their partnerships. They're trying to be the holistic device OS service company that you kind of have to be. Even if you look at Samsung, that Samsung is trying to turn into. And that's a lot of stuff to take on for a company that traditionally made an enterprise server and a handset that got email. So they've got to grow into this thing. One of the things I thought was interesting at the event was during the Q&A, they were asked, what are you doing with the Playbook and tablets? And they said, well, update the Playbook to Blackberry 10. But we have no further plans to announce for tablets at this time. And he even said it's hard to figure out the mix between cost and profit or something like that. And it basically was this kind of depressing answer. Yeah, it's kind of like we just don't know how to make money selling tablets right now. The market isn't validated. But the market for a tablet will be validated for them if they figure out all these other pieces that make their phone good. So if they have a music service that people like, if they have the apps that people like, people will say, well, I want to take this experience onto a tablet. They just aren't. You've got to make the phone work first. But then that comes back to the bigger question, I guess, which is this is catch up. And they did. They caught up a lot in one day. They caught up a lot. They did it all between in the last 24 hours. No, but they have a legitimate Google Play and iTunes competitor now. I mean, I haven't spent enough time with it to know if it has everything. But it has enough that you can download movies and music and TV shows. And they have enough of an app store that they can say, yeah, you can listen to music and read news and all this stuff. But why that versus anybody else? I mean, it seems to me that their only advantage is that people know the word BlackBerry. And that's where the renaming part becomes really interesting to me, because it's like they're just going to shove the word BlackBerry in your face as much as possible to remind you that, oh, I like this. Well, they have a Super Bowl ad campaign coming out. Right. And I loved my BlackBerry. I had one years ago now and loved it and got rid of it because it couldn't do any of the things I wound up needing to do. But it had a really good keyboard and got my email. And they're just relying on that, it seems like. I don't know what else they have other than relative competitiveness. Is BBM really still a thing? I don't know. But it's there. I will say it's awesome now. So it has BBM, BBM Voice, and BBM Video, which is awesome. And they're doing the video chat with the screen sharing of phones. Which is something I always wanted to do. Like for whatever reason, I've always been like, I just want you to look at what I'm looking at. Why? I've never in my life wanted to do that. Really? But I was sitting in a meeting with Josh and he said the same thing. He was like, I always wanted to do this. Yeah, no, absolutely. Why do you want to share your phone screen? So we keep talking about Josh in this review. So we should just run the review video. So we're going to run the whole thing. It's like seven minutes long, eight minutes long. But it's a complete overview of BlackBerry 10. It's our review. So check it out. Hey, this is Josh with The Verge. And we're taking a look at the BlackBerry Z10, the first ever BlackBerry 10 device. The phone might look a little bit familiar because it shares a lot with the iPhone 5 in terms of design language. Though the Z10 is a bit larger. It's got a 4.2 inch display. It feels good in your hand. The back is made from a soft touch, kind of rubbery dimpled material, which is really nice to hold. As I said, it's got a 4.2 inch display and the resolution is 1280 by 768. And it looks quite nice. Inside there's a 1.5 gigahertz dual core processor, two gigs of RAM and 16 gigabytes of onboard storage. Though that is expandable through the use of a micro SD card. The Z10 has Wi-Fi, GPS and all of the other sensors that you would expect in a modern smartphone. It also has two cameras, an eight megapixel shooter on the back and a two megapixel camera on the front of the device. The cameras on the phone are decent, but the software is interesting. RIM is touting a function called time shift, which allows you to snap a picture kind of in burst mode and then select through the different frames of the photo that was taken to find the perfect moment. Overall, the phone is nicely designed and I liked using it. I was a little disappointed with the battery life, however. There were a few days during testing when I took it off the charger around 9 a.m. and ended up with a dead phone at about six or 7 p.m. But the story here is not really about the Z10. It's about BlackBerry 10, the new operating system from RIM. It has nothing to do with BlackBerry 7 or any previous versions, though there are some similar design traits exhibited. The basic concept of the BlackBerry 10 interface is that there are really four states you can be in. There's in an application, that's pretty straightforward. On your home screen, which does double duty as your multitasker. In your app drawer, where you can open up an app just like on any other device. Or in BlackBerry hub, which encompasses all of your messages that you get on the phone and that could be email, MMS, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, etc. You get into those various states with a couple of gestures. The main gesture on the phone is to swipe up from the bottom of the display, which unlocks it and takes you to your home screen. If you're inside an app, you can swipe up, you'll go out to your home screen. The other main gesture that you use is kind of a continuation of the home screen gesture. You swipe up and then continue holding and swipe to the right, which gives you a view of what notifications have come in. And eventually, if you swipe all the way over, you get into your unified inbox. Your home screen is limited only to eight items. And those items can only be arranged by what you've most recently opened. So if you've got Twitter open and it's your ninth app and you open another one, Twitter is gone and you've got to reopen it. The second problem with the concept is that some of those apps turn into widgets when you minimize them, which is great. For instance, the weather widget works really well and updates in the background right on the home screen. The problem is you can't keep the weather widget on the home screen. So you have to keep reopening the app every eight applications you open. But the bigger issue with the OS is the way it handles notifications. So instead of having a notification bar like Android or iOS, you're actually just looking at the very message that you were notified about. The biggest problem with notifications is that when you go into your hub and you check a message, it saves that state, which means that when you get another notification and you go to check that notification, you actually end up in the notification you were checking before that. What happens is you've got to start backtracking into your hub to figure out where that message actually is located. But in terms of general speed and capability, I would put Blackberry 10 on par with Android or iOS. It doesn't seem to be lacking any or many of the features that those operating systems have. It's got a different idea about how you should navigate it. But the question is whether or not it's a better idea. And in my opinion, it's not. On the app front, RIM has done a pretty good job with its first party offerings. The browser is very good and certainly as capable as any other modern mobile browser that's out there. The email experience, which RIM of course has been known for historically, is good even with my Gmail accounts. But I would not say great. Multiple message management proved to be a little bit tricky in particular. You have to long press on a message, then select another item from a popover menu, and then start selecting your messages, and then tap on the trash to get rid of those messages. It seems like there could be a much quicker way to get at multiple message management. One of the great things that RIM has done is integrate a lot of third party services into its core apps. They've got an app here which is a note taking, a reminder app called Remember that integrates Evernote so you can sync your account and folders right into that application. There's also a surprisingly clever app called StoryMaker which allows you to combine video clips with music and a variety of effects and titles. I thought it was pretty fun to play around with and was impressed at the typography and the effects used in the application itself. The device comes pre-installed with a Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare app. In my case, however, I thought the way it handles Twitter was a little bit clunky. Much like Windows Phone, it will show you a list of your latest messages on Twitter, but in order to fully read those messages, you have to click into each one individually. And speaking of the Twitter app, it's actually kind of bad in the version that I tested. It looks and feels very much like Android or iOS Twitter, except that it doesn't auto update in the background, and when you pull to refresh, it takes you from wherever you were the last time you checked the app to the top of your timeline. RIM has improved BBM for BlackBerry 10, adding some really interesting functions like BBM video calls, which worked well most of the time when I was testing the device, and a novel function which allows you to share the screen of your phone with somebody else over BBM video. RIM claims that BlackBerry 10 will launch with about 70,000 third-party apps in its BlackBerry World app store, and that may be true, but it kind of feels like 69,000 of those apps are bad. A lot of them are rehashed playbook titles, and some of the ones that I tested which are made for BlackBerry 10 just didn't really seem up to snuff. It is clear, however, that making great apps for BlackBerry 10 is possible. The USA Today app, for instance, is very good, as are a handful of the games. Angry Birds Star Wars, for instance, plays as good, if not better, than it does on other platforms. And RIM says there's a lot more coming, including some fairly significant app contributions from EA Games as well as Gameloft. RIM has added a content marketplace to BlackBerry World, so you can now buy music, TV, or movies pretty easily through the same interface that you get your apps in. One spot that I think RIM has executed fairly poorly in is the inclusion of Android apps in BlackBerry World. The device is capable of running Android apps in a runtime environment, which is essentially like software emulation of Android, and the apps definitely run like they're being emulated. They don't really run that well, and as soon as you're inside an Android app, you're literally inside an Android environment. And just a reminder, this isn't this year's Android or last year's Android. This is Android 2.3. It's not really an addition to the OS, and in some ways kind of detracts from what RIM is doing with BlackBerry 10. The Z10 is going to be available for $199 on contract. Overall, the Z10 is a fine device. It's even a very good device. And BlackBerry 10 is a very good mobile operating system. I think it's extremely capable, and I'm excited about what it's going to develop into. The bottom line is that it's a good phone, but it's lacking a killer app or killer piece of functionality that's going to sway most buyers from Android, iOS, or Windows Phone. We're back. So that was our review. That was a review video that Josh did, I think, last night, late last night. So we gave the phone a seven. You want to kind of talk about that score and how you guys got there? I mean, basically, the story is that it's a good phone. It does everything you need it to do, and it does all of those things well. It's smooth and intuitive, and I've spent less time with it than Josh. But I was really impressed with just the basic navigation of the phone is really easy. It's great for phone calls, which I guess people still do from time to time. And it's still a really good email device that's still the thing BlackBerry does as well or better than anybody. Well, so I disagree. So I got a lot of emails from Josh while he was... He had the phone for a while, and I got a lot of emails from him while he had the phone. And I could always tell when he was sending me an email from the BlackBerry Z10 because it would break all of my Gmail threading. It was in blue. It was formatted with, like... You know how when you get an email that's a part of a long thread, it hides? It would break all that. These emails are three times longer than everybody else's. So like... And this is something I've noticed with Windows Phone too, which I think is funny that these two companies that are classically known for messaging and messaging devices have not figured out modern email. So I gather the email experience while using the BlackBerry Z10 is great, but everyone will know that you're using the BlackBerry Z10. Right. No, that's fair. And yeah, and they have... Windows Phone 8 is the worst. And every time somebody is using it, I get the re-forward, forward. I'm like... But no, I mean, I think the Gmail experience is sort of bad everywhere. But the email experience is good on the phone. And I think they're banking on you using your internal exchange server at work, in which case it won't be as much of an issue. Right. So we've got some questions here. Well, there's a few things to talk about. That was actually one of our questions. Actually, before we get to questions, we should... The other phone they announced today, which we didn't review because it's not out yet. The Q10, we at the event just got to spend some time with it, and we have a video from that. So let's run that before we keep going. Hey, this is Ross Moore with The Verge. We are in New York City at the BlackBerry 10 launch event. The company today announced two devices, the BlackBerry Z10 and the BlackBerry Q10 with the physical keyboard. Let's check out the Q10. Unfortunately, we cannot touch it, interact with it. They're making this a very controlled demo. But we can actually put our fingers on the keys, and it feels very much like the traditional BlackBerry keyboard. We've got a 720 by 720 square display. We're told that all the apps will be optimized for the screen, but unfortunately, we can't see those right now in this tightly controlled demo. Thickness and width, it actually is pretty close to the iPhone 5. It's a little bit thicker. Obviously, it's also got a physical keyboard. No word on pricing or details. There's little knowledge to say here. It's a BlackBerry with a square screen and a physical keyboard. It's a traditional BlackBerry you've come to know and love. And it's here with the BlackBerry X. First of all, I'm never ever going to forget just seeing Ross just stroke the keys from far away. That was a tremendous hands-on from Ross. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's the thing. So there's a lot of questions with the Q10, right? It has a totally different aspect ratio of its screen. And they've got all these Android apps, which theoretically can handle themselves in different size screen. That's a part of the Android promise. But every Android device I've ever seen with a square screen has been a disaster. Yeah. But I feel like if they can pull that stuff off, especially with the native apps, I'm curious how they'll do it for the different aspect ratios. But if they can pull that off, I feel like the Q10 is a way more interesting phone than the Z10, at least to me. Really? Because in the way that the Z10 is just a good phone without any particular killer app, the killer app is the keyboard on the Q10. That's why people have bought BlackBerrys for the last seven years. That's the only reason. And if they can do that with this kind of modern interface and high-end or at least competitive specs and the new apps, then it suddenly becomes a phone that you're not making compromises to get this great keyboard. It's actually a good phone with a really good keyboard. And that becomes super compelling. Well, that really raises the question. I think RIM disagrees with you. I think so, too. If that was the case, then the... So in the UK, the Z10 is launching now, tomorrow, in Canada. Any place with the Queen on their money, you're getting the Z10 tomorrow. Not any place, just those two places. I really hope that was the rule they actually made. They're like, if the Queen is on the money, we launch the very first. Well, they're Canadians. That's true. For the Commonwealth. The loonies. Just throwing phones in the air. No, so the Z10 in the UK and Canada tomorrow, and then the Q10 is not even at the UK launch event. Yeah, and they won't let us touch it. It's bizarre. But here in the States, it's the Z10 in March, and then the Q10 sometime in April, sometime afterwards. Right. And we still don't really know pricing. We don't know carriers. It's still kind of in the dark. Right. And I'm telling you, there's two reasons for that. One, RIM, I think they want to emphasize they've made a device compatible with the iPhone. Their device looks like the iPhone. There it is. So I think they want to emphasize they've taken a step into what everybody else has considered to be the future. And I think the second piece is that the carriers themselves are not leaping to the Q10. Verizon isn't saying to RIM, oh my god, thank you. Please focus on the Q10. Right. Because that's what our customers want. Verizon is saying our customers want big touch screens and give us that one first. But Verizon has, I mean that's the thing. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Virgin Mobile, whoever. They all have a ton of big phones with big touch screens. And that's to me why the Q10 could be interesting. If I want a big phone with a big touch screen, I probably am not going to buy the Z10. You're also like, you're part of this vanishingly small, that's why. I mean Sprint was putting out big touch screen phones with keyboards a year ago. They just don't anymore because nobody was buying them. And I will say, I know Ross said it's about the size of an iPhone 5. That phone looks enormous. The Q10 looks like a big phone to me. And I think the ultimate Blackberry is the Blackberry Curve 8900. I thought that was like the ultimate refinement of their industrial design. The bulge are great, but I think that one is small and perfect. And it's way bigger than that thing. At least as far as I can tell. It seems to be. That's like, they've got to recapture sort of that feel of you've got this tiny, powerful computer with a keyboard. But it seems they have to, selling that to America and the world again is a bigger challenge than we made a full touch screen phone that happens to have a really good keyboard. So we should talk about that. Josh was talking about it in his review. Actually I believe Mossberg in his review said it's the best touch screen keyboard around. Wow. I mean, RIM has been saying that for months. Yeah, I mean Josh said it's very good. They're like, we went out to make the best, which is sort of hilarious. I just want somebody to be like, we went out to make a pretty alright touch screen keyboard. We've made a mediocre keyboard. As long as you don't hate it. Buy the one with the real keyboard. It'll be fine. So you used it. I played with it for two seconds. I found it, I think there's a steeper learning curve than you might expect. Because I found it very confusing to use in the two seconds. But Josh says that once you use it for a while, it gets better. What were your thoughts? Well, so that's really the thing is it learns, it adapts to you in a number of different ways. So it figures out, like if you, the way I type, I always hit B when I'm trying to hit N and it'll actually figure that out over time as you start to correct and it'll figure out where you tap your thumb and essentially make the touch target on the N bigger. So you'll hit the right thing instead of always pressing the wrong letter. So that, but it takes time to learn how to do that. And then there's the predictive text where it'll actually guess what word you're typing or will even type next. And it'll actually index, which I thought was cool, it'll index your sent emails and your messages. So like as soon as you add an email account to the phone, it starts figuring out how you type and what you say. And so automatically has all this information about you. And then over time starts to guess and it'll actually present what it thinks you're going to say next above the keys. We saw a little bit of that in the review. And you can just flick it up and for one. So that's the part I found confusing. Yeah. Because I'm used to on the various Android keyboards that I use to tapping above the key. Right. There's the line of words at the top. Yeah. But this is like you just flick up. Yeah. And it's like for one handed use, if you, for me, I type things like, you know, I'm on my way all the time. And so if you start to, if you type like I'm on, it starts to quickly guess that you're going to say my and then way. And if I'm just like running down the street with one hand, being able to just flick twice is pretty great. How often do you run down the street with one hand? Just always one hand in the pocket. Well, yeah. I mean, I got to keep the blazer back for the GQ look and then just flick, flick on the blackberry. That's good. See, but that's a classic keyboard blackberry look. Right. It's a very 2002 business. Totally. Business 2002. Yeah. It's like on the cover of GQ is a whole thing. It's my new novel. Business 2002. But so I think that in the, they're using SwiftKey tech to do a lot of this prediction stuff and SwiftKey does a lot of the same stuff for Android and works really well. Like, especially with the predictive stuff is kind of remarkable once you take the time to actually, you know, get way into it. My problem is I always switch around too much before I can really dive into one. But with this, you don't have a choice. And both from what Josh said and in my own sort of limited experience, it definitely seems to be it gets better as you use it more. Right. Which is pretty cool. I think that's actually the whole interface. That seems to be the theme with blackberry tech, right? Is it is very different. They've done some things that are very different. Now they're not necessarily better, right? Because there are so many ways to accomplish the same task, but they're different. And the more you use them, the more kind of intuitive they become. And I want to talk about them. So we should talk about the blackberry hub, which is kind of, I would say the centerpiece of the platform. Yeah, I think so. That's where everything goes. And I think it's, what's interesting about that is we've now come with this progression of when the iPhone first came out, it had no centralized ambient information place. Right. Right. It had no notifications and no notification center. And then they eventually built up to whatever thing that they have now. Which is still not very good. Right. Which is OK. But you can tell that that is the core experience of using an iPhone for me is very much about notification center. Totally. I see what's going on. I think with Android, the core experience of using Android is defined by how good the notifications are. Yeah, I agree. I think that's the killer app of Android in general. And so there's been that progression. And now with BlackBerry 10, you see they've literally taken notifications and combined them with incoming data and said, there are essentially no notifications. Your notification center is just your inbox. Right. And maybe that's a good idea. I'm very curious to see how it works in practice, having only played with the phone for a little bit. But it is definitely an extremely bold. Would you call it curvy? Yeah. I think it's a storm idea. It's terrible. No, it's a very bold idea for a platform to say, we're taking this thing from these other platforms that is central to the experience, the notifications, and a centralized place for ambient information. And we're going to make it literally the centerpiece of the platform. Which I actually think could be really cool. From the beginning, this is the thing I've been most excited about about this phone is that I love the idea of having my emails and my texts and my Twitter messages and the LinkedIn messages and all this stuff just in one place. Whereas in iOS, I'm constantly flipping between 11 different apps to see what's coming at any given time. But the problem here is that I feel like the idea is really good and they missed some stuff on the execution. So when you get, say, an email, and if I'm reading a text message and then I leave the hub and I get an email, I flick back into the hub. And since they're not abstracted, the notification's not a link to a thing, it just is the thing and it tells you you have a new thing. So you go back and you open up the hub to see what's new. And instead of taking you to that new message, it takes you exactly where you were. So then I have to back back all the way out and then go back into where I wanted to be. And it just seems it's a bunch of extra steps because there's no abstraction. All it's telling you is you have a new thing and it's in the hub. And that's good. But I want, there's no way to get to it. And it becomes, you're just constantly hunting for this new thing that you know has come in. Right. Which just seems crazy. And also, I get a lot of notifications that I kind of like don't need to see. So I have an app on my iPhone that tells me when it's going to rain. It's called Dark Sky. It's a good app. It's a great app. Dark Sky's great. And literally the notification is it's raining. Yeah. And then I clear it and it goes away. Right. And so I'm wondering how those kinds of apps are going to function with the hub because the hub wants you to interact with notifications basically. Right. Which is, Blackberry's very, now they're called Blackberry. I'm never going to get this right. I'm with you. So for years it's like you correct yourself when you say Blackberry instead of RIM and now you have to correct yourself the other way. Anyway, Blackberry's all about the inbox. It always has been. And they've made everything fit into an inbox metaphor. And I think that works really well for some things. Josh was pointing out in the review that it doesn't work so well with Twitter. Twitter isn't an inbox thing. It's just supposed to be there. Right. You just look at tweets and then you go away. Right. And especially for him and you who, Twitter is a big mode of communication. It just happens. Josh was saying this works great if you get a couple of app replies every once in a while. But when you're using it more as a communication tool and stuff's always coming in and going out it becomes either super stressful to use almost or just kind of untenable because there's just a million notifications and you have to read every individual one to clear it and you can't just kind of jump in whenever you feel like it. Right. I mean I think that's, again, it's a very... It's an inbox metaphor. It's an inbox metaphor and it's a very daring metaphor to take the entire concepts of notifications and to take the very strong Blackberry concept of inbox and just mash them together I think is very interesting. But how it plays out for all the various kinds of apps that we now count on to deliver notifications is up in the air. So actually speaking of Twitter, I asked for questions on Twitter and I've got a lot of them. So here's one I think is really interesting. I want to ask you this because you were a Blackberry user, right? For a while, yeah. So this is JohnLiu1984. Does it still feel like a Blackberry, whatever that means? So I actually... The hardest part for me was that the feeling of the Blackberry was always the trackball and then the optical trackpad and it was like that was how you moved around. And I feel like touch in general just kind of makes it stop feeling like what I associate with a Blackberry. Really? That's interesting. But I think that's also kind of to their credit. I mean in the same sense that you're always jumping back to your inbox and it's all about the communication tool and it's very much a messaging phone and the keyboard is really paid attention to. And I think it still feels like a Blackberry in that sense but it also feels more... It feels more modern. I'm going to say it flows and then I'm going to cry about that. But it flows better. It makes more sense than... You know I was constantly... You're always digging into menus on old Blackberries and you were always pressing the little Blackberry button to try and figure out where you should go next. And this feels much more intuitive. There's like this big learning curve with the gestures at the very beginning. And then as soon as you get past that, it starts to feel much more natural as you move around. And it's very much to Blackberry's credit that they've pulled that off without getting rid of the communication stuff that makes that trick. That's actually another question I have here. Where'd it go? It's gone. Oh from... I can't pronounce your name. Get a better Twitter handle. From Sema to Cementus. Are the gestures intuitive? So Josh actually... We were talking about this yesterday and I think he put it perfectly which is that if I just handed you the phone, you'd have absolutely no idea how to do it. And you would just look at it and be like what? When you boot it up, does it tell you? Yeah, so the initial startup is you connect to Wi-Fi and you set up an account. And then it basically says... It's kind of what Windows 8 does where it's just like swipe in from any edge and see what happens and the biggest thing you need to know is that you swipe from the bottom to get to your home screen. And that's really true. Like as soon as you figure out or are told or learn that one swipe up from the bottom to get to your home screen gesture, you can kind of figure everything else out. Even the peak? Well, so the peak is...I mean, again, it's the same with Windows 8 where you don't need that. Yeah. But it's a nifty thing and it walks you through it and teaches you how to do it. But it's...yeah, I mean, if I just handed you a turned off phone that I had already set up, you'd have absolutely no idea how to use it. You'd be completely clueless. Right. But in two minutes, I can get you pretty set up. That's interesting. Yeah, it's up and down. All right. So from Ian Robinson, what is the Maps app like? It's bad. It's bad. I mean, it's so... It's Bing. I assume it's Bing. It's Bing. It just isn't as good as Google. Yeah. And especially Google's Maps app on iOS continues to be my favorite thing in the world. Right. It's good. It's very good. Yeah, and it just continues to get better. And Bing Maps doesn't have the same number of points of interest. Its transit stuff is not as good. The app itself is fine. It runs perfectly well. It's kind of the same story as everything. It's smooth and fast and works fine. But I think Josh was saying in his review that he looked for a restaurant and it led him to a town in New Jersey with the same name as the restaurant. Bing. I mean, that's Bing. That's the back end of Bing. And that's just... That's something that's also totally out of Blackberry's control and something I don't know that I see Google hurrying to build an app. We know Paul Miller's theory about... What's Paul Miller's theory? If you put Bing Maps on your phone, you don't care about your users. That's what he always says. Wow. And it's rough. It's a rough thing to say. There's something to that. What is the level... A lot of people ask this question. What is the level of integration with Google services? Because old Blackberry's had some funky Gmail thing going on. Right. But it was okay. But what's the true level of integration? So basically what we've been told is that it's not there yet, but it's coming. Things like stars and labels, which were always great in old Blackberry's and on Blackberry 7 and I was kind of surprised they were there, are not there now. But they're very much on the roadmap and it's part of the plan and it's going to be there. But for now it kind of treats it like any other IMAP client basically, which leads to the problems that you're describing where my thread is gigantic and it doesn't play as nice with Gmail. But Google Talk, Google Voice, none of that stuff is there yet? It's not integrated in the same way. And Google is... I'm curious to see if Google jumps on this board like they have on iOS. This comes back to the Windows Phone 8 kind of conversation where Google is kind of making a lot of steps, taking a lot of steps and doing a lot of things to make sure Windows Phone 8 stays down. Because people are bought into the Google ecosystem of services. They use Gmail, they use Maps, they probably use Google Talk. Most people I know use Google Talk. Because they use Gmail. Because they use Gmail. Maybe use Google Voice. And they're not, everybody uses YouTube, and they're just not there on Windows Phone. Because they know that the Google is on as we go to where the people are. But they're preventing the people from going there. They've looked at the chicken and egg equation and they're firmly denying chicken. Whatever that means. They killed all of the chickens so they can't lay eggs. They're chicken limited. Limiting chicken. But it's the same question for Blackberry. Maybe you can plug in a Gmail and the experience is fine, your friends will yell at you because it reformats all your email. But at least you have it. But all of the other, the spectrum of other Google services is not there. I wonder if Google will be happy to let Blackberry be the third player. Because that will continue to prevent Microsoft. And I think Google is aligned very strongly against Microsoft. So I wonder if they will ally with Blackberry just to say, Microsoft you're out of the game. And that's a wide open question. Or maybe, and this is potentially true as well, maybe Google really is just going to where the people are. And they're gonna wait to see where the people go. And then they'll provide the services. Yeah, I mean, I think it's, they have a really interesting hand in this. If they build a Gmail app and a Maps app and a YouTube app for Blackberry and not Windows Phone 8, that's a huge thing in Blackberry's corner. I think it's just, I don't know. I agree, I don't know necessarily what happens. I think Google and Blackberry are much less competitive than Google and Microsoft. They just overlap a lot less. So I wouldn't be surprised to see Google play a little nicer with Blackberry. But yeah, I mean, for right now the YouTube app is a wrapper to the mobile site. Google clearly had nothing to do with that. And it's gonna be really interesting to see. For right now, some of that stuff, if you're a heavy Google user, it's just, it's missing. And I think consumers are. So we have a question here that I want to answer with a video. If that makes any sense to the world. It's from Keith Prime. Do you think we're impressed, do you think those impressed with Blackberry's efforts are genuinely impressed or did we just have low expectations? And I just want to show you, maybe we had lower expectations and were impressed that they beat them. But I think there is an incredible, Blackberry, I keep wanting to say rim. They spent a lot of time this morning pointing out how much worldwide anticipation there is for the phone. Which is something we heard from Vlad in the UK. But I just, but then the way they chose, just watch this video. It's tremendously embarrassing. Hey, is that my phone? Who are we? My affiliation with Blackberry and why I set up Blackberry Community. Because I'm falling in love with Blackberry at the first start. That's it. Blackberry 10 will give a jaw dropping moment for everyone. I have to share my passion and enthusiasm to as many people as possible. That's the challenge. We want Blackberry 10. Blackberry 10, I'm dying to own it. Let's set up this Blackberry Nation. My name is Lil E. What went into the song was I started losing sleep waiting for the launch date of Blackberry 10. I wanted to create No Sleep Till Blackberry 10 to give to Blackberry a song to get everybody ready and pumped up for the launch date, January 30th. What I like and support about Blackberry 10 is that you're able to do multiple things without leaving the application. People in Dallas can't wait. Bring on Blackberry 10. I want you to imagine Thorsten Heinz rocking out to that song. Can you imagine that? I certainly can. Something else very important has happened. I've eliminated David Pearce. It's going to be okay. In his place, we have Ross Miller who has with him a Blackberry Z10. I can't believe you're taking credit for the vanquishment. I took a pretty strong role. You did strike it very hard in the head. How did you coordinate your shirt? I BBM'd Thorsten this morning. I was like, yo dawg, talk to me. Don't BBM me. Don't BBM me. We have one. Let's open this thing up. The Z10. The Z10. Yeah. Let's see. It's nice. The experience. It's redesigned. It's reimagined. I will say this. This is not going to be the one that you end up buying. This is actually really... I really don't like this shirt thing. I did not. Please get it away from me. I have it. I'm not... Less contrast. I'm not going to buy the company. So I will say this. This is probably not the packaging unless you buy this thing unlocked. Probably not the packaging you'll see from your carrier. But it's very nice. Z10. Now, you're matching. Oh yeah, it's good. Come on. Come on. We are the combined Z10 packaging right here. This is nice. This. All right. This guy. We got it. It's all happening here. Is there stuff in here? Maybe. You know, I will say the one... We don't do unboxing videos at The Verge anymore. Or photos. It's things in a box. I don't have much to say. But I will say that having done a lot of them in my life, there's nothing more depressing than like taking the phone away. You're like, oh, we see the phone. And then you put it aside. Now we look at these great components. Here's the battery. Battery could be useful. All right. And that's all we need. Is there a SIM card? Here's the charger. Plus and minuses are lined up. So in case you're wondering, the Blackberry Z10 is in fact a phone that comes in a box. Yes. This is breaking news right here, folks. It's got a charger like every other charger. And it comes with a case, which is very nice. The film is over. It is on. There we go. Boot this thing up for the people. All right. It's booting up. And it is kind of out of focus. It's coming back. There we go. Here's the case. I don't think we need any of this other crap. I don't think there's so much plastic crap in that. Look, you know, you should have packed this stuff in recyclable paper, Thorsten. I know you did it yourself. Every single one of them. This is broken. That's over there. Oh, it does come with a case. Great. I can clip this on my belt. I want to show... This is what Vlad is talking about. And what we noted in the review and I think what a lot of people have said. So this is a Z10. Here's an iPhone 5 with many notifications on it. They are, I mean, just remarkably similar devices. The Z10 is a little bit bigger. It has a bigger screen. But at a glance, there's really... Let me unlock this thing. You've got a pretty banged up iPhone 5, just as a tangent. My iPhone 5 is basically like... It's like a car in the Road Warrior. I mean, it has a lot of character. But you can see, I mean, these things look just very similar. And part of that is making a black phone with a black screen. You just end up with something that looks like an iPhone. You know, we'll see what Apple says about it. But it's very handsome. It's got a textured back. It's got these little chrome bumps and it's got this soft touch finish. And somebody in Twitter actually asked me if this feels like the Nexus 7. And I would say this feels, to me, a lot better than the Nexus 7. Really? Yeah. I mean, that's like a faux leather. But this is... It's actually... Ross and I are fighting over this right now. I don't know if you see the low level like... Wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm learning how to insert a SIM card. That's your first problem. That's why I've left to continue. Yeah. All right. Sorry. So we've got one. So you were at the event. I was at the event. What was your sense of the event? It started out on a very weird note. I don't know how much was actually broadcast live. Did you see Crackberry Kevin cut off his hair? Yes. You did. I watched that on an iPad in a car on my way to the studio. It was very strange. It was before the event. The event hadn't officially started. They were streaming it. I wasn't sure if that was beginning of the event or not. I was actually really confused about that. So it started out with this guy kind of coming on doing a telecast in front of us. We didn't know what was happening. They didn't really say. They just had the guy come out. He said, we're going to tune in live from London. And then nothing happened. It turns out there was a small blip on the back TV that no one noticed until they started putting it on the other countries. It was just the most awkward, weird thing live. I didn't know either. Right. So what they were trying to show, and I think this is something that maybe our wider set of viewers in the US doesn't know, is that Blackberry is still very huge in countries around the world. When other Blackberry phones, Blackberry 6 phones or Blackberry 7 phones, have come out, there have been lines internationally for Blackberries, which has not been the case in the United States. No. So there is a lot of pent up Blackberry frustration, demand. Demand. Waiting for a device like this. Well, I mean. I think what they were trying to show at the event, and I think they didn't do a very good job of it, but what they were trying to show is that around the world, Blackberry is still a strong brand and that there is demand for it. What they ended up showing was a lot of rooms of people watching TV and a guy in Paris going like this. Now, correct me if I'm wrong. Now, years and years ago, when they were still research in motion, they did the keynote about saying Blackberry was popular in third world countries. Was this the same company as at Palm? No, no, it was Blackberry. It was Blackberry, okay. I don't think Palm was ever popular. Sad to say. That is, it's unfortunate, but. What is this thing doing? What are you doing? Is it what? So we're just trying to connect this around to Wi-Fi and failing out. That's what's happening here. Here, we should continue. Just keep soft touching. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to, you. Thanks for talking about the event while I get this. I mean, so like, it was, it often weird start. It kind of got more normal as it went on. I mean, Thorsten Heins did a good job. It was weird seeing Michael Azarius there. Oh, he was there. Well, he's on the board, isn't he? He's on the board. He was in the front. You know, he was on the front. He stood up and Thorsten thanked him for driving us into the future of Blackberry, which is an odd thing to say for the man who drove the company into a ground. Well, he did and he didn't. I think the investors lost confidence in him, but I think he, at one point Thorsten said, we have to thank some people who helped us make a very hard decision, which was, do we make our own platform or do we pick a competitor platform? And I think I failed to connect to them. And they kind of did both though. I mean, we have the Android emulator in here, which is... I really wish I could connect to a network here so I could show people. Do you want me to try one? Do you know what the password is? I don't know what the password is. Yeah, I got this. I got this, says Ross. I got this. Watch this. What else did you see at the event that was going on? Like, during the announcements, there was a lot of time spent demoing the UI. There was a lot of time...Ross, I think Ross figured it out. There's a lot of talk about the UI, about the announcements. What were their selling points for some of the stuff they were saying about the UI? I mean, again, it's a new thing. They didn't really bring up any competitors. They were just saying, we have a swipe, we have this way of getting notifications. Of course, they did a lot on the enterprise, which is their big selling point. I mean, they wanted to basically give this in a bubble. You know, a lot of times you see Microsoft, you see Apple kind of go on and they'll vaguely reference the competition. They didn't really do that here. They're just like, this is the rebirth of Blackberry. Well, I mean, that's like...I don't think they can reference a competition. I don't think that works out well for them if they keep talking about the iPhone because I don't think they want to invite the comparisons yet. I think that's bad for them. Well, not the iPhone so much. I don't think they're going to go after the iPhone Android market right now. I think they're fighting for third place. Thorson said that many times before. He's fighting for third place. And first and second is clearly iPhone and Android, depending on what your metric is. Once and first, once and second. Did you break it? They just said it connected to a Wi-Fi network and then immediately did... Oh, keep swiping. It's all about swiping. Again, it's all about swipe gestures. Swipe left to continue. Fix everything by swiping. But Windows Phone, I think that's a fair comparison. They should have made... I mean, do you want to compare yourself to Windows Phone at this point? I think saying you're going to beat a platform that isn't successful is not a good... Do you have a Blackberry ID? No. You want to make one? I don't want to make one. I'll make one. I'm sorry. Well, I want you to talk. I don't want you to fiddle with the phone. All right, then you make a Blackberry ID. We're just going to have the phone. Yeah. We can show... We can show it up. There's a review on The Verge with a complete video of this UI. There's a Blackberry Z10. But we have one. We have another one. I think we have a few more that are going to come floating in from all the people who were at the event. We have four or five people at the event. So we have the phone. I will say that just hardware-wise, it is very handsome. It does look an incredible amount like an iPhone. There's just no getting around it. I remember when we were waiting, they showed a small picture of the Z10 on screen. I was like, I thought they were holding the iPhone. I thought it was going to be a comparison thing. I will point this out. You can take the battery out, which maybe you're into. That's very Samsung, the Flexi back. Let's talk more about the event. We've got a few more minutes here. I just want to get your sense of, as the event was going on, as you witnessed Alicia Keys deflect questions about Blackberry. Speaking of like, pent-up frustration, Alicia Keys metaphor to her experience with said boyfriend. Oh, with the boyfriend. With the boyfriend. No, no, I know. Alicia Keys is not a metaphor. She's a real person. What was going on with Alicia Keys? Just tell me straight up. Why was she there and what the hell was she doing? I don't know. We're all taking bets on who was actually going to come out because they're like, we have a new creative director. We know what that means in the tech space now. It means we've hired a celebrity to show for us and to make us look cool. Be it Gaga, be it Will.i.am. Do we have the picture from the live vlog of Thorsten greeting Alicia Keys? This is like a romantic comedy. It literally looks like he's about to kiss her. It's somewhere between a romantic comedy and that movie poster for What About Bob? Yeah. Like, I'm going to hurt you, but I also want to love you. That was her relationship with Blackberry, apparently, also. She defined it as a boyfriend and then at some point- She did not. She did? Yes. What? Tell me everything about this. She was a boyfriend, you know? At some point, I started looking at the, you know, kind of playing the field a little more. Oh my God. Checking out these sexy new options. She definitely said sexy. Wow. Which we're talking about obviously the iPhone and Android and all that. But you know, I came back to Blackberry essentially because it's the nice guy that's always there. It's dependable. Oh my God. That's terrible. But I want to say, as someone on Twitter noted, Alicia Keys is still heavy in Instagram. Not really. So even though she says she's exclusive to Blackberry, where's the Instagram app? So I will say this. There was a lot of rumors. So they did a lot of talking about apps. And one of the rumors that we'd heard endlessly was Instagram was coming to Blackberry 10. Didn't happen, right? We're not seeing it. But what other apps do we see? We saw Skype, which is, you know, it's good. It's Microsoft thing, but it's also a huge communication business platform. We saw Kindle, which is Amazon's and everything. I'd be surprised if it wasn't. Right. So we basically saw services that benefit from being on every platform. Yes. So Twitter, Facebook. Well, except for Foursquare. LinkedIn. Well, that benefits from all social networks. We saw a lot of stuff where they need people to be a part of that platform. Right. But do we see any Blackberry blow up apps? No. We saw those. We saw Angry Birds. I don't think we saw Netflix or Hulu. There's no entertainment app to speak of. Interesting. First thing you can tell. That's fascinating. I mean, unless it's in the app store, but they did not highlight it on stage. And if you have Netflix, they absolutely should. Oh, here's Alicia Keys in a- I mean, this is terrifying. Like whatever- He is a very tall man. I think if anyone talks to him, it's gonna look like this. We should do a caption contest for this photo, because I look at that and I literally see the words, you're dead to me. Like that's what I see when I see that picture. Suddenly appear. Don't sing. No, it's romantic to me. I don't know what you're talking about. See, you see romance, I see malice. That's what I see in that photo. I don't think there's a difference to you. And that's how I feel about the Blackberry title. It is what you see of it. It's my sadomasochistic partner, which is why Neil Gaiman is now a show for this too. That's terrible. Oh, is he really? Yeah, so there's a new- What? There's a new Blackberry initiative. That sounds terrible, right? It's a new Blackberry initiative and it's basically Alicia Keys going around getting other celebrities to play with Blackberry. One of them was Neil Gaiman. That's ridiculous. I don't know who the other person is right now, because I kept focused on like, they had this trailer and it was Neil Gaiman in a diner playing with his Blackberry. There's Neil Gaiman walking through the snow with his giant dog playing with his Blackberry. And I can only assume the next picture is Neil Gaiman talking with ethereal demons and brainstorming on his Blackberry. That's the only logical step. Maybe I should start an emergency call. Oh, God, no, it's doing it. You did, you did. I know it's not quite as fun. So look, there's one question, which might start wrapping this up. The one biggest question I got from Twitter, straight up, and it's something you just touched on was between Windows Phone 8 and Blackberry 10, you had to pick one to use. Which one would you pick? Gut reaction? I would still probably- And you've been at Windows Phone. I tried so hard to love the 8X and Nokia Lumias. I would probably still go with Windows Phone. Really? If for no other reason than, and this is something I was talking about with Billy and Jordan, our video crew before, Blackberry is just Blackberry. There's nothing else it's connected to. If I get a Windows Phone, it may be that third party experience, I'm just looking for something new, but I also know I've got Windows 8. I've got the Xbox experience. And the fact that it will tie together, I can just assume that Microsoft will put everything it has to Windows Phone. I think it's probably a little bit more longevity. That has nothing to do with actually using this phone. I mean, that's the interesting thing about it. It's still using a third place thing. It's swipe gestures versus bad, they're both bad multitaskers. They both have kind of okay keyboards and the swipe gesture- So you think this keyboard's just okay? It's okay, yeah. Interesting. I've just heard of now a broad spectrum of reactions about this keyboard. I mean, if I get used to it, I'm sure I'm gonna love it. I will say I love the physical keyboard, but I'm at a point in my life where I've been five, six years- You played with the Q10 a little bit. I did play with the Q10. As much as they would let you. It's really weird. It's like we got there, there were four devices in the whole thing, in the corner, we had run to them, we had found them. We tried to pick it up, he's like, no, no, no, you can't pick it up. We tried to play with the keyboard, like I swiped it a little bit. He's like, can we push the buttons down? No, no, no. We pushed them anyway. But like, I mean, they're very, they're calling it a control demo. They won't show any of the apps, but they say they're all optimized for this square 720 by 720 screen. That's a really weird resolution. And it looks really good. Really? Yeah. Well, I mean, BlackBerry screens have always looked good. Yeah, this looks exceptionally well. This looks like the best BlackBerry there's been, which is not saying much in this day and age. But I will say they can dominate the physical keyboard market. If people remember that and want to have that- If that market still exists. If that market still exists, they own it. Like it's a great piece of, you know, it's a great piece of hardware. The keyboard did feel good in a little bit. We played with it. Yeah. And what else is there? It's BlackBerry with the keyboard. That's all we really need to know. Fair. I mean- So final thoughts here. We are wrapping this up. Right. This is a battle for third place. It is absolutely. I don't think that they're going to take Android's market share away from them. I don't think they're going to take the high end of the market away from Apple. I think those are difficult problems to solve. And I don't think BlackBerry even wants to. Like they don't seem like they're trying to go for first. They want to settle into a- They want to survive. Right. And I will say this. On the last Apple, Apple always makes a big point of how well they're doing in enterprise, right? And they do it to tweak, and they do it every event, they do it on every earnings call, and they do it to tweak not only Microsoft, but to point out that they have effectively killed the BlackBerry in enterprise, right? With bringing your own device, or you have an iPhone now, whatever's happening. There's a huge potential market here for BlackBerry with balance with this thing where you have different profiles for work and personal. There's a big potential market for them to go back to their former enterprise customers and say, look, we're back with a phone that's compatible with the iPhone, but it's far more secure and more familiar to you, Mr. CIO. And did they make that argument today when they were at the live event? They did a little bit. I mean, they did spend a lot of time on the enterprise. They touched base on this whole bring your own device trend. And they're saying, we need to bring this back. I think BlackBerry balance is one of those things they want to do is like, this is your personal life, this is your business life. And both are very secure and separated, so you can have everything you want in one device. It's no more like carrying your BlackBerry and then carrying this fun device that you actually want to use. Right. They're trying to say this is a single ubiquitous device that your IT professionals will love and you will hopefully enjoy yourself. I mean, your IT professionals will love this device. You know that's what they want. It's a sad argument for the world. It's a sad argument, but they're hoping it's an argument that actually works before bring your device completely eats them up. Right. So final thoughts. You were at the event today and you got to play with the device a little bit. We're holding one that I'm taking from you. You mean that I'm taking back as soon as we're off the air. There's a lot of- We're going to rattle. There's a lot of anger. Don't say that we're rassled. It's done. It's too late. Tell me, wrap this up for me and I'll throw some knowledge to the world. Okay. Wrap it up. It's BlackBerry. I'll say it's actually a compelling device. I think we have a lot, actually a good chance of taking that third place. Yeah. And Microsoft's going to step up and really say we've got this whole ecosystem. We have this whole weight behind it that BlackBerry just cannot do. And then reclaim this enterprise market too because everyone's using Microsoft Office anyway. Yeah. But BlackBerry came out there and was like, we've got a great, this UI is actually interesting. It's fun to use. They don't have the apps, but they're clearly pushing harder than Microsoft has been. You know what I thought was interesting? And this is sort of my final thought was when they started saying we're going to reboot BlackBerry, we're going to do BlackBerry 10, their line was this is like a revolutionary new way to use a phone and a revolutionary new way to do messages. And they've backed all the way down to we have a hub. Right? And I think that's an important point. This is an interesting UI is no longer a sellable point. I don't think you can go to the mass market and be like, this is an interesting UI. I think you can say to people probably watching this, I think you can say to us, here are some new gestures that are interesting. But what you really have to say is this makes your life better in these tangible ways. And I think some of that stuff is here. I think some of their ideas about messaging, especially I think the notification hub kind of coalescing I think for a lot of people will be very interesting. But they've got to figure out exactly what that message is. So they can go to the mass market. They can run their ad on the Super Bowl. And they can say this phone versus this, these two things look the same. Here's why this one is better. Right? And they really do look the same. Like those app icons, like that basic sense of like you're holding something that's very familiar is just going to be there. Right? So they need to show exactly why this one is literally ahead of the other one. And here's the thing. You're saying like it's actually I want to take back. This is not like a fight for third place because it's iPhone atop. It's Android. And there's so many different versions of Android out there that are actually fighting for second, third, and fourth place. Right. Like there's clear Android. There's TouchWiz. There's Samsung's variant. I mean I think these Android OEMs. TouchWiz is Samsung's variant. Yes. What did I say? You said TouchWiz. It's fine. There's basically TouchWiz. It's basically TouchWiz and regular Android. And then, yeah, it's almost a fourth place fight because what you want to do, whatever they can show in terms of gestures, you're right. Android can do it. Or someone will make Android do it. It's an open platform. So really it's kind of weird to say Android's second place when it's all these companies interpreting Android their own way. Market share. It's market share. Yeah. But there's a lot of Android out there. And I think that brand is strong. When I see ads in the taxi for like a newscaster who has an app, he's like it's for your iPhone or Android. And that's what that is. So you can never say it's for your Samsung or your Motorola or it's just Android. There's this massive Android out there. No. You can get whichever Android phone you want and it has some variations, but the app store is huge and it's ubiquitous. And you've got to justify your apps are better than someone else's. And we just saw them catching up. And not quite there yet either, but they're catching up to other people's apps. Right. Well, if you're a BlackBerry user, you were once a BlackBerry user. Like for like a year. Would this bring you back? No. No. No. No. So look, that's the end of our live stream for the day. There's a lot of content on the verge, a lot of hands-on, a lot of analysis. We're going to do some reports. If you haven't read Josh's review, you should definitely go and look at that. We ran a video a bit earlier, but if you missed that, you should definitely go and watch the video. It's very illuminating. But that is, here's the BlackBerry Z10. We have it. It is launched. The time has come for you to move your thumb in a circle to see notifications. David is there. Goodbye, David. I'm sorry that you were cast away. All right, folks. If you have any more questions and stuff, we actually, we have a BlackBerry hub and a BlackBerry forum that hopefully we'll begin to see any visitors whatsoever. For the first time in months. For the first time in months. I'm excited. I want to see what they do with it. But there's a lot going on. This thing is on sale in the UK right now, or tomorrow. Tomorrow on sale after Super Bowl adverts in March in the US. So for the meantime, all of your BlackBerry stuff here at the verge. Thanks a lot for watching.