BlackBerry shifts focus to software as smartphone sales slump

As BlackBerry's restructuring program continues with the announcement of 200 job cuts, the Canadian smartphone maker has seen miserably low handset sales with barely a handful of devices still on the market. As a result, BlackBerry seems to be changing direction, shifting focus to applications for consumers and services for business.
BlackBerry now only has a tiny market share of global smartphone sales, reaching a paltry 0.3 per cent in Q3 2015, according to Gartner research firm. However, the software sector -- more specifically business security software -- is becoming a more fruitful field for the brand, which has been forced to diversify its activity.
BlackBerry switches to Android
BlackBerry ditched its homegrown operating system with the arrival of the Priv smartphone, released in 2015, a device designed to transition the brand to the Android OS. However, BlackBerry has allowed the use of Android applications on its phones since the 10.2.1 update to its OS in early 2014.
The BlackBerry Priv (short for "Private") is a phablet that twins a 5.4-inch touchscreen (2560 x 1440 pixels) with a slide-out mechanical keyboard. Pitched at the high end of the market, this smartphone has an 18-megapixel main camera with autofocus and image stabilizer, and is capable of filming 4K video. The handset comes with NFC connectivity and promises around 22 hours of battery life with mixed use. It comes preloaded with several applications dedicated to privacy and security. As always with BlackBerry, this smartphone is designed as much for consumers as it is for business users. The BlackBerry Priv is out now, priced at €779 SIM-free ($699 in the USA).
A look towards services

Following in the footsteps of the Priv, a second Android smartphone is said to be in the works for 2016. Other than that, there's no more information about BlackBerry's upcoming handsets, and it increasingly seems that the company's focus is on services -- particularly for businesses, the brand's historical client base. Now that BlackBerry has definitively lost the battle on the hardware front, the firm's only real option is to fight back in the world of software.
So while BlackBerry may not be phasing out its smartphones just yet, the firm's handsets seem destined to become increasingly few and far between as the months go by.

Virtual reality set to transform filmmaking

Chris Milk stepped onto a TED Conference stage and took the audience on an awe-inducing trip into the future of movies. While much of the early attention on virtual reality has focused on use of the immersive technology in video games, Milk and his US startup Vrse are using it to transform storytelling and filmgoing. "We have just started to scratch the surface of the true power of virtual reality," Milk said. "It's not a video game peripheral. It connects humans to other humans in a profound way... I think virtual reality has the potential to actually change the world." He had everyone in the Vancouver audience at TED , which ended Friday, hold Google Cardboard viewers to their eyes for what was billed as the world's collective virtual reality experience. Google Cardboard gear is literally that -- cardboard

Explained: Camera Improvements in the New HTC 10

With the HTC 10, the Taiwanese company is promising to undo the past wrongs in the cameras of its previous flagship phones. The camera has long a weak point in HTC devices. At first, HTC sacrificed image resolution in the M8 and made the size of individual pixels larger to capture more light (what HTC called Ultrapixel). But the resulting 4 megapixel images were often fuzzy, especially when cropped or enlarged. To fix the issue, in its next flagship - the M9 - HTC went with smaller individual pixels in a 20-megapixel camera last year, but it still underperformed in extreme situations, such as indoors and close-ups. In the HTC 10, the company attempts to strike a balance with larger individual pixels (1.55µm), but not as large as before and a 12 megapixel sensor in its camera coupled with a ƒ/1.8 lens. HTC accepts that in the imaging performance in the M9 was not up to the kind of spec of what they really like to see in a flagship. HTC is giving a slight boost to the selfi...

Freedom 251: 30,000 Units Sold, Components for Up to 2.5 Million Will Be Imported

Ringing Bells, the makers of the Rs. 251 smartphone - the Freedom 251 - confirmed to Gadgets 360 on Tuesday that it has still only accepted payments for 30,000 units of the phone. It also added that the components for these phones will be imported, and only assembled in India, not made here. Ringing Bells stopped accepting orders on February 19, and claims to have received over 70 million registrations. The company President and Director both repeatedly stated that the price of the phone would be made possible through economies of scale, and making the phone in India to cut out import costs. Economies of scale? However, in a discussion with Gadgets 360 the company revealed that it had only sold 30,000 units of the phone on day one. The company has now confirmed that it has not sent out the payment emails to anyone else who registered - "we were working out details of cash on delivery, which we are announcing now, so we will be sending emails to the first 2.5...

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