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BlackBerry made a few big announcements during the kick-off to the BlackBerry Live conference today. There are over 120,000 apps available for BlackBerry 10. BBM is coming to Android and iOS. And the BlackBerry Q5 phone is coming soon to emerging markets.
But what about tablets? It’s been a few years since the launch of the BlackBerry PlayBook, and judging by the way sales prices for the 7 inch tablet took a nose dive, it’s not exactly a besteller for the company.
BlackBerry doesn’t seem to have a new standalone tablet in the pipeline, but CEO Thorsten Heins says the company is still looking at the space — and that the future may involve pairing a BlackBerry 10 phone with a larger screen so that the phone acts as the brains of the system.
It’s not exactly a unique idea, but it’d be a new approach for BlackBerry.
Here are some of today’s tech news stories from around the web.
- BlackBerry isn’t swearing off tablets, but future models might not be standalone devices
It looks like the future for BlackBerry tablets could be more Asus Padfone-like than BlackBerry PlayBook-like. CEO Thorsten Heins says the company is still looking at the tablet space, but doesn’t like the approach most companies are taking now. Eventually you may be able to pair a tablet dock with your BlackBerry phone to use a larger screen. [CNET] - BlackBerry 10 Android App Player now supports Android 4.2.2 apps
BlackBerry has updated the Android App Player for BlackBerry 10. Now it supports apps written for Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. Previous builds could only handle apps written for Android 2.3 and earlier. Developers will still need to port their Android apps before distributing them to BlackBerry users, but the process is pretty simple. [PocketBerry] - Tronsmart T428 Android TV stick reviewed, WiFi issues encountered
The Tronsmart T428 is an Android TV stick with a Rockchip RK3188 quad-core CPU. It’s nearly identical to the MK908 I reviewed recently, but it supports 5GHz WiFi networks and Miracast wireless display… but it turns out that the WiFi performance is pretty shoddy. [CNX Software] - MoDaCo Toolkit lets you enable multi-user support on rooted Android 4.2 phones (normally tablet-only
Android 4.2 Jelly Bean includes support for multiple user profiles — but only if you’re using a tablet. This tool lets you bring the same features to your rooted Android phone, so you can hand your smartphone to your kid without worrying about him getting into your files or making purchases from your account. [MoDaCo] - Toshiba working on a “Smart TV Box”
Is Toshiba planning to launch an Android TV box, a Google TV device, or something else altogether? I don’t know… but it looks like the company has something in the works designed to make your TV “smarter.” [Notebook Italia]
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