Full-Touch BlackBerry 10 in March, QWERTY Devices in June

Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion is once again said to be set to bring its first BlackBerry 10 devices to shelves only in March next year, although it will make them official at the end of January.

The company has already confirmed plans to officially launch the BlackBerry 10 platform and handsets running under it on January 30, 2013, yet availability will occur only a few months later, analysts believe. According to Boston-based research firm Detwiler Fenton, cited by Forbes, the first full-touch BlackBerry 10 devices will land in the United States only in March next year. Furthermore, the firm notes that QWERTY-enabled BB10 smartphones from RIM will not be launched before June next year. The research firm notes that RIM’s first quarter of the next year will not show impressive figures, although the company will make the new mobile operating system official. The second quarter is expected to be better, but the availability of QWERTY-based BB10 devices only in June is expected to affect sales in the timeframe as well.

“It’s our opinion RIM will ship approximately 400,000 BB10 units in the February quarter and 2.2 million to 2.5 million units in the May quarter,” the firm reportedly said in a research note to clients. The first BlackBerry 10 devices are expected to make their debut in the US only on AT&T and T-Mobile in March, while being set to land at Sprint and Verizon in May. At the same time, the research firm claims that RIM’s focus on the high-end of the market with its new devices will hurt sales. RIM is also said to be negatively impacted by the lack of interest from developers towards its new mobile platform. BlackBerry is currently on the fourth position when it comes to developers’ interest, the firm notes.

Earlier this week, IDC projected that Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system might be able to overtake the BlackBerry platform on the smartphone market to become the third largest mobile OS in the world.

BlackBerry logo
Image credits to RIM

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ZTE Nubia Z5 New Photos, Shows 440ppi Screen

Chinese mobile phone maker ZTE has already confirmed plans to bring to the market a 5-inch smartphone as part of its new Nubia series, but it hasn’t provided further details on when the device would arrive on shelves.

Dubbed Nubia Z5, the smartphone has emerged in a new series of leaked images, this time showing its 440ppi full HD screen in all of its glory. The handset is also said to arrive on shelves with a unibody design, while also packing a quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor inside, and 2GB of RAM.

The device is also said to sport a 13-megapixel photo snapper on the back, along with a 7.6mm thin body. Furthermore, ZTE is rumored to plan on making Nubia Z5 official in China as soon as next week.

ZTE Nubia Z5
Images credits to Weibo

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New MSI Micro-ATX Released, Supports Intel Core CPUs

PCI Express 3.0 x16, USB 3.0 and dual-channel DDR3 RAM (random access memory) are inherently supported by the Intel B75 chipset, which gives even the weakest of motherboards a lot of potential, if built properly.

The entry-level B75MA-G43 motherboard from Micro-Star International definitely does all it can to live up to that potential. Though priced at $60 / 46.41 Euro, is still has everything mentioned above, as well as a PCI Expres 2.0 x16 slot, four USB 3.0 ports, a SATA 6.0 Gbps connector, five SATA 3.0 Gbps ports, Gigabit Ethernet, some USB 2.0/1.1 connectors, and three video outputs (DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI).

All Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge socket LGA 1155 processors are supported. All in all, this is a nice motherboard for regular PCs, and even gaming prowess is assured, provided a good graphics card is installed.

MSI microATX motherboard
Images credits to MSI

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Apsalus Is Scythe New Closed-Loop Liquid Cooler

There are several ways to describe the new product from Scythe: closed-loop liquid cooler, all-in-one liquid cooler, self-contained cooling unit, etc.

That means that, despite using a fluid instead of air, it does not need a reservoir and extra pumps to keep the temperature of CPUs low. Speaking of CPUs, the Apsalus liquid cooler (APSALUS3-120) supports not just AMD AM3(+), AM2(+) and FM2/FM1 CPUs and APUs, but LGA 1155/1156/2011/1366 central processing units from Intel as well. Even so, the product is still an entry-level item, meaning that it is actually cheap compared to most others.

Though only available in Japan for now, its tag of 6,980 Yen ($84 / 65 Euro) is enviable. The base of Scythe's liquid cooler measures 72.3 x 72.3 x 27.3 mm (2.84 x 2.84 x 1.07 inches), the radiator 120 x 150 x 27 mm (4.72 x 5.90 x 1.06 inches) and the coolant pipes 326 mm (12.83 inches). A 120mm Scythe fan chills the radiator.

Scythe Apsalus liquid cooler
Image credits to Hermitage Akihabara

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