BlackBerry Porsche Design P'9983 Launching on September 17

BlackBerry has already confirmed it will launch its innovative Passport smartphone on September 24, so fans must already be excited by the new release.

However, it looks like the Canadian company is readying another surprise for its fans in the form of another BlackBerry 10 smartphone, namely the Porsche Design P'9983. The premium handset has just confirmed for launch on September 17, which is about one week ahead of the BlackBerry Passport announcement, CrackBerry reports. While the Passport will be officially introduced in three major cities in the same day, London, Dubai and Toronto, BlackBerry Porsche Design P'9983 will only be launched in Dubai. Still, this shouldn't be a surprise given the fact that all premium BlackBerry smartphones branded Porsche Design have been initially launched in Dubai. According to the latest rumors, BlackBerry Porsche Design P'9983 should cost no less than $2000 / €1500, which does seem to come in line with the price tags of some of the previous models.

Apart from the phone outright cost, we also know how the smartphone will look like thanks to a series of leaked press shots that we've attached in the gallery section of the news. Along with the said photos, all the specs of the BlackBerry Porsche Design P'9983 have been leaked as well, so now we know what's underneath the premium chassis. BlackBerry's premium smartphone may cost up to $2000 / €1500. First of all, the Porsche Design P'9983 will be the first to ship with BlackBerry 10.3 operating system out of the box. The new OS will be offered as an update to all other compatible BlackBerry smartphone, but the Porsche Design P'9983 and Passport will be the first to come with OS 10.3 onboard. Hardware-wise, the premium smartphone is expected to be armed with a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 2GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. There was no mention of microSD card in the leaked specs sheet, so we must assume it lacks one.

On the back, BlackBerry Porsche Design P'9983 will pack an 8-megapixel photo snapper with autofocus, LED flash and image stabilization, while in the front there will be a 2-megapixel camera. The smartphone is rumored to sport a 3.1-inch OLED display that supports 720 x 720 pixels resolution. It's also worth mentioning this will be the first Porsche Design handset with physical keyboard that's powered by BlackBerry 10 OS. Last but not least, the Porsche Design P'9983 will be equipped with a removable 2100 mAh battery and a wide range of connectivity options, including LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS with A-GPS support.

lackBerry Porsche Design P'9983 launch invitation
Image credits to TBreak

BlackBerry Porsche Design P'9983 (front)
Image credits to BBin

BlackBerry Porsche Design P'9983 (back)
Image credits to BBin

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Samsung Trolls Apple over iPhone 6’s Size, Says Galaxy Note 4 is “More Than Big”

Apple’s announcement that the next iPhone will pack a much larger than 4-inch display, seem to have fueled competition’s attacks against the company’s new products.

BlackBerry, Sony, HTC and Microsoft all had their laughs on Apple’s iPhone 6, but Samsung had to have the last laugh. The South Korean company took it to Twitter to mock the Cupertino-based company for one of its previous statements, which does not stand anymore in light of the new iPhone 6 announcement. Steve Jobs said once that “no one is going to buy a big phone,” but as much as we’d like to think of him as a visionary, he didn’t get it right this time. Samsung had tremendous success with its Galaxy Note lineup of phablet and many other companies seem to enjoy popularity with its bigger smartphones. Jobs quote does seem like a low blow from Samsung, especially that it’s followed by another statement that highlights Apple’s hypocrisy: “Guess who surprised themselves and changed their minds.”

However, we don’t know if Apple would have gone official with such a large iPhone if Steve Jobs would have lived today. Perhaps he would have found new way to make the iPhone desirable, even with a small display.

Is Samsung Galaxy Note 4 really "more than big"? Samsung ends its trolling with a smart reply to Apple’s iPhone 6 “bigger than bigger” tagline: Samsung Galaxy Note 4 “#more than big.” Now, we’ve already compared the iPhone 6 Plus and Samsung Galaxy Note 4, but until both phablets actually hit the market there’s no way to tell for sure which one’s better performance-wise. This means that this kind of trolling will continue even after both smartphones will be available on the market. There’s no doubt about it, bit phablet have their strong points and their downsides, so in the end, it’s a matter of personal taste or needs. In fact, there’s more to that given the fact that when you choose a certain smartphone you choose an ecosystem. iOS and Android are completely different platforms and those who back them up had to shape their products around these operating systems.

Ironically, both iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy Note 4 are expected to have lower sales than its predecessors, but until they actually hit shelves there’s no way to tell for sure. That’s certainly to be expected from two devices that really don’t bring anything innovative to the table. So, which one do you prefer? The new, bigger iPhone 6 or the good ol’ Galaxy Note 4?

Samsung's tweet on iPhone 6's size
Samsung Philippines

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Intel Core m Broadwell Benchmark Shows Better Graphics than AMD

The Core m mobile central processing unit (arguably System-on-Chip, or SoC for short) is one of the most ambitious ventures that Intel has had in years. Now, the company has the benchmarks to prove it.

Although that's not exactly accurate, since it wasn't the company that ran the tests that we're about to look through. Instead, a third party got ahold of a tablet powered by it. Not that we're complaining. Independent benchmarks are always preferable to the ones that companies may or may not release. Less chance of them being biased after all. So what do the tests show, you might ask? Actually, they paint a pretty promising picture for everyone who had high hopes from the new processor.

The chip beat everything pitted against it; A 12.5-inch tablet powered by the Intel Core m central processing unit was compared against the results previously registered by equivalent devices based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 and even AMD's E-Series APUs (accelerated processing unit). We mostly expected the chip to be better than the Qualcomm one, since that was a specific point raised by Intel during its IFA 2014 keynote that we attended on September 5. However, the real surprise was that the processor came out better than the AMD APUs as well. APUs are famed for having better graphics than pretty much every other processor out there, but Intel's Core m apparently does better even there. In Cinebench R11.5, the GL bench to be precise, the processor managed 17 FPS with 2.48 pts CPU. A lot better than any Atom, Pentium, or AMD E-Series tests ever recorder. Fair enough. Cinebench R11.5 is CPU-intensive, and Intel clearly holds the leadership in that area.

Not much to say about the SunSpider benchmark. Core m scores 142.8 under Internet Explorer 12 in Windows 8.1. Good, but nothing we didn't see coming. That leaves the surprise: in 3DMark IceStorm Unlimited, Core m scores 50,985 points, twice what Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 can do, and more than even the actual GPUs in AMD E-Series APUs.

The specs of the Core m; Just in case you haven't seen them yet or would appreciate having your memory refreshed, the Core m offers the following: two Broadwell x86 64-bit cores, PCI Express 3.0 root complex, 4 MB L3 cache, dual-channel LPDDR3 support, and a graphics chip with 192 stream engines and 24 execution units. Everything runs at a TDP of just 4.5W; not quite as great as on ARM chips, Snapdragon 800 included, but close.

The 12.5-inch Core m tablet running Cinebench R11.5

SunSpider benchmark results

3DMark benchmark results
Images credits to HotHardware

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