[CrackedBarry]

The screen is really nice, like the combination of small(ish) screen and 720p resolution.

The rest of the hardware however is disappointing.

The 8960 will be last years hardware by the time BB10 launches, and it'll be at a significant performance disadvantage to not just Apples A6 SOC, but also all the Cortex A15 based CPUs we'll see by that time, and of course Qualcomms own quad Krait Snapdragon.

They/we knew that this would be a risk, and might possibly be the consequence, of the delay from Q4 12 to Q1 13 however.

The 8960 isn't a bad chip, however. It's much faster than the OMAP part in the Playbook. It just won't be top tier hardware in six months, and that might mean that quite a few people from the Android camp (where specs are king) who might otherwise have been persuaded to give BB10 a chance, will take a pass on it.

But it'll be interesting to see what else RIM has in the pipeline...

[Thunderbuck]

It doesn't matter to you and I but when a customer walks into my T-Mobile store and asks about the new Berries. The 1st thing the sales guy will say is you dont want that, it has old hardware compared to what is out now. Makes me mad, but that is the truth we have to deal with. Hopefully the carriers will really be on board and push sales of BB10 and not let their front line employees write it off.

This is not "old hardware". It's the same spec as the N920 and arguably better than the iPhone 5.

[Bla1ze]

lol.. superphone..

Sorry, but I need to remind people that this info should be taken with a big ol' fat grain of salt. There is nothing surprising here, nor is it anything that couldn't be done up in MS Paint in like 2 seconds heh. In fact, some of it is just outright off and based on old info. Use common sense people.

[ClassyBOLD]

...ignoring the fact that the A6 in the iPhone 5 totally trounces the MSM8960 S4.

As long as RIM manages to fit an adequate battery in the phones, i'm sold. Can't wait to get rid of this 9900 and move to the next level.

when I said horsepower I wasn't referring to the processing capabilities of the device. I meant that fact that Blackberry phones are designed to be workhorses not pretty machinery. So i was pointing to the fact that the phones will have removable batteries, expandable memory via micro-sd slot, and have an nfc chip. Sorry for the confusion.

I agree, it's impressive that Apple built a custom SOC...I'm not sure that most users will notice any difference though. Just see the youtube video where people were given the iPhone 4 as the new iPhone 5 and people said it felt faster than the 4S. Apple's custom chip really serves 2 purposes: 1) Apple has tailored the chip to sip energy, which is totally necessary given LTE's thirst for battery life [read: Apple underclocked the CPU and has one of the cores mostly in idle] and 2) the A6 enables better gaming. Gaming is really where the power of the A6 shows through, otherwise most consumers will not notice a difference.

[jakie55]

Ok, so if Bla1ze, who is one of the "chosen" to have ACTUALLY handled a ten, says we need to cool our jets, and remember that anyone can fake a spec sheet...maybe we should listen. I know, it is addicting to speculate, as we are all so darn anxious to play with...the devices

[Bla1ze]

Ok, so if Bla1ze, who is one of the "chosen" to have ACTUALLY handled a ten, says we need to cool our jets, and remember that anyone can fake a spec sheet...maybe we should listen. I know, it is addicting to speculate, as we are all so darn anxious to play with...the devices

You should never trust a copy and paste blog for info, lol.

RIM Gives Developers the Arduino Uno Microcontroller at BlackBerry Jam Americas | Rapid Berry

RIM Gives Developers the Arduino Uno Microcontroller at BlackBerry Jam Americas | NerdBerry.net

[texazzpete]

when I said horsepower I wasn't referring to the processing capabilities of the device. I meant that fact that Blackberry phones are designed to be workhorses not pretty machinery. So i was pointing to the fact that the phones will have removable batteries, expandable memory via micro-sd slot, and have an nfc chip. Sorry for the confusion.

I agree, it's impressive that Apple built a custom SOC...I'm not sure that most users will notice any difference though. Just see the youtube video where people were given the iPhone 4 as the new iPhone 5 and people said it felt faster than the 4S. Apple's custom chip really serves 2 purposes: 1) Apple has tailored the chip to sip energy, which is totally necessary given LTE's thirst for battery life [read: Apple underclocked the CPU and has one of the cores mostly in idle] and 2) the A6 enables better gaming. Gaming is really where the power of the A6 shows through, otherwise most consumers will not notice a difference.

Most consumers notice an actual difference. It's not night and day, but it's much quicker at many tasks including taking photos, app launching etc.

I also Don't see how having a removable battery or even expandable memory makes a phone a workhorse. The idea is for the phone to last the day with heavy use, not to force users to carry around a second battery.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[texazzpete]

This is not "old hardware". It's the same spec as the N920 and arguably better than the iPhone 5.

No. It's not nearly on the same level with the A6. It's a pretty good SoC but it isn't anywhere near 'better than the iPhone 5'

Not sure we should care though. From the demo videos, it looked fast enough. Definitely worlds away from my 9900


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[Bla1ze]

Definitely worlds away from my 9900
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

That's not much of a feat, lol. Reality is you could have jammed NEXT YEARS processors into a current gen BlackBerry and it wouldn't have helped them any at all, the OS crippled the latest BlackBerry devices -- not their specs. Legacy code from 12 years or so ago on new power just wasn't gonna work, no matter what RIM did.

Now, with BlackBerry 10 RIM will have the specs and the OS but really people need to get the heck over specs anyway. OS optimization is the key really. Make the OS work the best with whatever you put in it and you're golden.

In the case of RIM though, they need to show off some beefier specs in order to turn some heads sadly.

[kbz1960]

I wouldn't say "totally trounces"....

Apple's iPhone 5 Chip Design Seriously Impresses - Is The Competition Asleep? - Seeking Alpha

"Qualcomm is fine because its dual-core Snapdragon S4, within a similar power envelope to the Apple A6, is able to keep up with the A6 on the CPU side (and the quad-core iteration in a similar power envelope will be significantly faster). The higher-end Snapdragon S4 Pro is faster than the Apple A6 on the CPU front and competitive on the graphics front."

This is all still assuming this info from the leak is correct. Rumor had it that it would be the S4 Pro. We'll know soon enough

LOL they said leap frog in the article. Musta been listening to RIM.

[GreenCopperz]

Will the new BB 10 devices support UMA / wifi calling like the current phones being sold now?

[Rello]

I sure hope they do. UMA is a absolutely lovely feature. Saves not only data but battery life. Such a shame its not in more current devices

[dd3]

I sure hope they do. UMA is a absolutely lovely feature. Saves not only data but battery life. Such a shame its not in more current devices

I really hope so too, and it needs to be the hardware implementation and not the software only abortion they provide on the 9900, else they may as well not bother :S

loving the bb10 hype and momentum in the last week...

[SlcCorrado]

Face detect for phone calls. This sounds super interesting. Will this be the BlackBerry version of FaceTime?

Saw this and had to respond Our BB7 devices have that feature. Just turns the screen off when you hold the phone to your head

[aragone79]

I'm so excited about new OS update for BB10 Alpha, this is far from what BB 10 Alpha can do at the first time it's introduce. Many of my friends which already have iPhone 5 are so amuse and ask me where and how much they can get this BB 10 Alpha, or if I can help them to pre order this smartphone.

If the real BB 10 spec is what has been told in this post, I totally agree that this product will gain or maybe will create its own space in smartphone market and grab the market of IOS or Android gadget.

What I love from the newest OS on BB 10 Alpha, is that you don't have to subscribe for BB service. All you have to do is just make sure your carrier has unlimited internet program for you to purchase. If you connect BB 10 Alpha via WIFI, the internet connection will be run through WIFI and still you can use BBM features.

Btw, I'm testing BB 10 Alpha right now. My friend, which attend BB World at Orlando, borrow it to me. Although there are many bugs need to be fix for this OS, but I admit that RIM do the great job for BB 10 O.S.

[VerryBestr]

No. It's [the SnapDrgon S4 Pro MSM8960T] not nearly on the same level with the A6. It's a pretty good SoC but it isn't anywhere near 'better than the iPhone 5' ...

Anandtech has some early benchmarks for the iPhone 5, which they call a "performance preview":
| AnandTech - The iPhone 5 Performance Preview
The biggest surprise however is just how well the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro with Adreno 320 GPU does by comparison. LG's Optimus G, a device Brian flew to Seoul, South Korea to benchmark, is hot on the heels of the new iPhone.

In the last four benchmarks in this article ["GLBenchmark Egypt"], iPhone 5 and the Optimus G have essentially the same graphics performance. In these cases, the S4 Pro is clearly on the same level as the A6, but it is not superior. The Optimus G, announced Sept 19, uses the quad-processor version of the S4 Pro rather than the dual-core version rumored for the first BB10 phones.

The other benchmarks in this article compare the iPhone 5 to Android phones with the non-Pro S4. In these, the iPhone outperformed the S4-based phones except in one test (the Google V8 JavaScript benchmark) where the iPhone 5 and HTC One X had nearly the same score. I think that JavaScript benchmarks are not the best way to compare processors, since JavaScript speed depends so much on software.

The article infers, from the SunSpider JavaScript test ...

SunSpider is a small enough benchmark that it really acts as a cache test. The memory interface on the A6 seems tangibly better than any previous ARM based design, and the advantage here even outpaces Intel's own Medfield SoC.

It remains to see if the Pro version of the S4 improves the memory/cache performance or anything else besides the much improved graphics performance. I haven't seen any benchmarks other than these AnandTech ones, which has only a few comparisons of the A6 with the S4 Pro quad-core processor. As far as I know, no phone yet exists which uses the dual-core S4 Pro, so it would be ... difficult ... to make benchmark comparisons today.

[VerryBestr]

...The 8960 will be last years hardware by the time BB10 launches, and it'll be at a significant performance disadvantage to not just Apples A6 SOC, but also all the Cortex A15 based CPUs we'll see by that time, and of course Qualcomms own quad Krait Snapdragon. ...

What other processor should RIM be using, given that the phones are going out for telco tests this month? This testing will surely be longer than for a one-more-Android phone, and will probably uncover problems in the brand-new system that RIM will have to address.

The 8960T (the "T" makes the difference) isn't even out yet in any phone, so how will it be "last year's hardware"? The S4 Krait architecture is said to be "A15ish" and I think the dual core S4 Pro SoC will compare well with dual core A15 SoCs.

I am a bit disappointed, if the rumors are true, that RIM is using only 1 GB of RAM -- I hope that BB10 will work well with it. RIM is probably optimizing battery life by this choice and choosing a dual-core rather than a quad-core SoC.

[PlayBookUserMT]

Like Bla1ze said, I'm going to have to take these specs with a grain of salt. I think I'd be pretty happy with a BB10 phone that had these specs, although more ram and the pro processor would be great.

Since some of the CrackBerry guys have had the hands on treatment and know more than we do I take it as a sign that these are not accurate specs when they say 'take it with a grain of salt', and I find it strange that these leaks have been out for a day and have yet to find their way to the front page even though they're being heavily discussed in the forums. It would be great to know what Bla1ze and Kevin already know. Its too bad I couldn't just walk over to Waterloo and sign an NDA to get a sneak peak at whats going on.

I'll be interested to see what the final specs are, bring on BB10!!!

[BBPandy]

You should never trust a copy and paste blog for info, lol.

RIM Gives Developers the Arduino Uno Microcontroller at BlackBerry Jam Americas | Rapid Berry

RIM Gives Developers the Arduino Uno Microcontroller at BlackBerry Jam Americas | NerdBerry.net

hmm I wonder who wrote it & who coppied it....or maybe they both coppied it from a 3rd source lol

[bungaboy]

Have any charts on that? I'd like to see the comparison.

Charts? Charts? Like in Apple Maps?

[gariac]

I'll be on Tmob, so these specs don't effect me directly. However, the trend is to drop EDGE and use the band for higher speed services. If anything, quad band UMTS is what you need.

I don't recall any mention of micro-HDMI on the new Blackberries, but sounds good to me.

Sent from my BlackBerry 9780 using Tapatalk

[yenyob]

I'm glad we still have a few months to go. Maybe by then I won't be too upset using my S3 as a secondary phone. If the final specs come close to the S3, I'll be happy. I honestly can't see myself needing much more for at least another year. I mean, what else can they come up with that would require even faster processors and more memory over that time?

[Bla1ze]

newer specs, lulz!

[GTiLeo]

Click to view quoted image


newer specs, lulz!

LMAO did you edit it

[Bla1ze]

LMAO did you edit it

Nah, just made my own in MS Word. FWIW.. Rapid Berry now thinks I'm arrogant and ignorant for poking fun at the image and joking that it was done is MS Paint but hey.. they're promising further proof tomorrow, which is awesome and what I was hoping for. Would like to see a full on specs sheet out there in a more solidified form for sure!