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Ahead of its release later this month, BlackBerry has been showing off BBM for Android and iOS the Toronto International Film Festival. 

KYM wasn’t at the festival, unfortunately, so we don’t have any pictures or video but the fact that BlackBerry is now officially demoing BBM for both iOS and Android means the wait is almost over. 

UberGizmo managed to snap the below image, but there is currently no video footage of BBM running on the iPhone, however, as filming was strictly prohibited at the film expo. 

BlackBerry submitted BBM for iOS to Apple’s App Store over two weeks ago, according to reports. BlackBerry’s Senior Strategic Account Manager, Alex Kinsella, confirmed the news via Twitter: “Just in case we forgot to mention, BBM for iPhone was submitted for review 2 wks ago. #waiting #BBM4ALL”

BBM for Android and iOS has been spotted in official user manuals, right on the BlackBerry Global website.

Both manuals, leaked on CrackBerry, show users how to:

• Navigate around BBM
• Sign in with your BlackBerry ID
• Change your BBM status or profile
• Add a BBM contact
• Start a BBM chat
• View someone’s BBM profile
• View recent BBM activities
• View your chat history
• Join or create a BBM group
• Set sounds
• Add emoticons
• Plus troubleshooting information

Although we’ve heard a lot about BBM for Android and iOS launching this summer, this is the first true evidence we’ve seen that BBM is coming to Android and iOS devices very soon indeed.

You can download the BBM for Android and BBM for iOS manuals now.

At the beginning of the month, BBM for Android was leaked running on a Samsung Galaxy S3 ahead of the free IM client’s scheduled ‘summer’ rollout. BGR secured the image, giving us our first look at what BBM will look running on a non-BlackBerry device.

It’s been reported that BBM will arrive first on Android and then iOS. BlackBerry said the service would go live before the end of the summer, following its announcement at BlackBerry World Live 2013 in May.

More recent reports have claimed BBM will launch before the end of September although BlackBerry is remaining very tight-lipped about concrete release dates. Adding fuel to the speculative bonfire that is when-will-BBM-come-to-Android is the news that Samsung Galaxy handsets may get the service first via the company’s Samsung Apps portal. 

Here’s the scoop via Android Authority:

‘Samsung has confirmed that the app will indeed be coming to Android. But it also added that it will be in its own Samsung Apps as part of its Messaging Hub on its Android-powered Galaxy devices. Word is that Samsung is starting to work on its advertising campaign for the new feature.’

Samsung is also said to be running radio adverts in South Africa advertising the upcoming addition of BBM to its Samsung Apps portal, although we’ve yet to verify this claim. We’ll update when we know more. 

BlackBerry announced its plans to make BBM cross platform at BlackBerry World Live 2013. It was a big announcement and something that took a lot of people of guard. 

Android users will be required to sign-in with a BlackBerry account to use the service. Don’t have an existing BlackBerry account? Then you’ll presumably have to register for one. 

Not all BBM features will be coming across to iOS and Android – BlackBerry is keeping some exclusive to its own handsets. But Android will be a more feature-rich service, according to BlackBerry, on account of the platform’s more open nature.

Sunil Lalvani, managing director for BlackBerry India, has reportedly spilled the beans on when we can expect to see BBM released for Android.

Speaking to IBN Live, Lalvani stated that BlackBerry would launch BBM for Android inside the next two months. BlackBerry had previously said it wanted to roll the service out during the summer and now it seems that a late-September release is on the cards.

‘The service is coming to Android this summer. But summer as per North America, where it remains till September,’ said Lalvani.

The exec did not mention whether this date also applied to the iOS version of BBM. BlackBerry confirmed the launch of BBM for Android and iOS at BlackBerry World Live 2013, but it did add that the Android version, owing to the more open nature of Google’s OS, would likely be a more feature-rich version than its iOS counterpart.

BBM – in case, somehow, you don’t know what it is – is an IM client that allows users to send messages using their handsets web-connection. Think WhatsApp and iMessage, just bigger, better, and older. BBM is the IM app that started it all.

The rise of cross-platform services like WhatsApp as well as BlackBerry’s own diminishing presence in the mobile space during the past couple of years has forced the company into making one of its only remaining USPs available on competitor platforms.

Whether it’s a branding exercise or merely a money-spinner remains to be seen. BlackBerry’s official line on the matter is that BBM is the best IM client in the world and everybody – iOS and Android people included – deserve access to it.

BlackBerry has high hopes for the rollout of its BBM service on Android and iOS, so much so that we might even see it pre-installed by some manufacturers. 

BlackBerry fielded questions about BBM for Android and iOS at the London launch of the Q5 earlier today. Unfortunately the BlackBerry execs weren’t able to tell us anymore about concrete release dates for the service – ‘BBM for iOS and Android is coming this summer’. 

BBM, one of BlackBerry’s most unerring USPs over the years, is coming to iOS and Android this summer. BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins broke the news at the company’s BB Live 2013 expo in Florida last month. 

Android and iOS will both support the application and the messaging service is expected to go live at some point this summer. BlackBerry hasn’t been particularly forthcoming about a specific release date although summer is now very much underway, so the service could appear inside Google Play and Apple’s App Store very soon. 

Alluding to BBM’s pre-installation on some Android devices, BlackBerry’s COO Kristian Tear told CNET: ‘There is interest from other handset makers.’ And rightly so, too. BBM is used by 51 million users a month for an average of 90 minutes a day, according to reports.  

T-Mobile US dropped a ball this week, claiming the service would be available for Android users from June 27 on Twitter before subsequently retracting the statement, presumably after receiving a bollocking from BlackBerry. Here’s the retraction: ‘sorry folks, we got over-excited about the BBM app coming to Android/iOS. No specific availability date yet, stay tuned for details.’ 

BBM for Android is likely to be more feature-rich than its iOS-based counterpart, owing to the more open-nature of Google’s mobile platform, according to BlackBerry. And not all features will make the transition with the company keeping some BBM features exclusive to its hardware.

There will be chats (including multi-user chats), Groups and voice notes. Voice and video calls, channels plus screen sharing will be added later on. 

Is this exciting? We think it is – BBM is a great service and we’ve been dreaming of it making its way over to iOS and Android for years. 

ios-7-released-today-new-features-changes-and-exploring-the-new-interface

Later today, September 18, Apple will release iOS 7 — the biggest update to iOS since the first iPhone launched way back in 2007. In some ways, iOS 7 merely brings Apple’s mobile OS up to feature parity with Android and Windows Phone — but in other areas, iOS 7 leaps ahead of the competition. If you want to find out more about iOS 7′s new features and changes, read on. If reading isn’t your thing and you own an iPhone or iPad, go ahead and download and install iOS 7 today, ahead of the official release.

iOS 7′s radically different new look

After six years of looking exactly the same, iOS 7 finally delivers a massive visual overhaul that will make your iPhone or iPad actually look modern. In general, iOS 7 is flatter, more colorful, and lacks skeuomorphism (interface elements that resemble real-world objects/materials, such as wood paneling or a leather ledger). Despite the new look, though, iOS 7 still feels very familiar; everything’s still where you expect it to be. It just looks fresher. We’ve been using various beta versions of iOS 7 for a few months, and while there’s a bit of an adjustment period, Apple has somehow ensured that almost everything is surprisingly familiar.

In-line with newer versions of Android and Windows Phone, iOS 7 also now makes much more significant use of typography; in many cases, where there used to be an icon, there is now simply a label with the action/function spelled out. Underlying changes have been made to iOS 7 to give developers easier access to advanced typography features, too, such as kerning and ligatures.

iOS 7 is also more dynamic. The new Control Center (more on that later) is semi-transparent, allowing you to see the colorful Home screen beneath. Likewise, the Notification Center (which is significantly upgraded) is semi-transparent. When you tilt your iDevice, your Home screen icons move independently of the background, creating a cute parallax effect.

iOS 7: Control Center (left) and Notification Center (right)

iOS 7 Control Center and Notification Center

Once you look beyond the visual overhaul, which actually provides very little in the way of new functionality, the most significant changes in iOS 7 are the new Control Center and the updated Notification Center. Control Center is a new panel that is revealed by sliding up from the bottom of the screen. Control Center finally lets you configure iOS without heading deep into Settings. You can enable airplane mode, toggle WiFi/Bluetooth, change screen brightness, control music playback, use your camera’s LED as a flashlight, and more.

Notification Center has been significantly updated in iOS 7, so that (just like Control Center) it provides much the same functionality as Android. Instead of a single panel, you now have three — Today, All, Missed — that show you your notifications, appointments, emails, stock tickers, and so on.

iOS 7 Multitasking

Always one of iOS’s weaknesses, version 7 also improves multitasking. Now, instead of just a small tray at the bottom of the screen when you double tap the Home button, you get a full-screen interface with app thumbnails. Instead of having to push-and-hold to close programs, you can just swipe the preview image off the screen.

Apple also claims that iOS 7 can learn your app usage schedule, and trigger updates just before you open an app. If you always check Facebook at 9am, iOS 7 will apparently check Facebook for updates just before, so that your feed is ready and waiting. Presumably this will save some battery life over the conventional method of constant push notifications — though, to be honest, these are probably still turned on by default anyway.

iOS 7 Camera and Photos

As much as the tech press hates to admit it, faster processors and fancy features are really rather superfluous: What the vast majority of iPhone users really care about is the device’s ability to snap photos. In iOS 7, the camera app now lets you shoot in square format (ideal for Instagram), and a range of filters can be applied in real time — and you can remove filters from images later, if you don’t like it. If you have an iPhone 5S, Camera also lets you shoot in slow motion, which is pretty awesome (but the question is, will it still be awesome once you’ve seen a million slow-mo videos on Vine, Instagram, and YouTube?)

The Photos app (pictured above) has been significantly overhauled to introduce Years, Collections, and Moments — essentially new ways of viewing your photos that have been automatically organized by certain criteria. Collections and Years are self-explanatory (iOS automatically collates your photos), and Moments tries to highlight important photos, such as your visit to Times Square. If you snap a lot of photos on your iPhone, these new views provide some much-needed organization.

iOS 7 AirDrop

AirDrop closely mirrors Samsung/Android’s S Beam, but with the usual dollop of Apple flair and polish. Basically, AirDrop lets you easily share any file on your iPhone or iPad via WiFi or Bluetooth, with any other iOS 7 device that’s in range. Discovery of other devices is very slick and quick, and you can remain invisible if you prefer. This is obviously a lot easier than emailing a file, or sending a low-res photo via SMS/MMS.

Other changes to iOS 7

Siri has been updated so that it checks more sources for information, and so that it can interact with new features such as iTunes Radio (pictured below) — which, incidentally, is essentially free Pandora radio for every iOS user, and ad-free if you sign up for the $25/year iTunes Match.

The App Store now has Apps Near Me, which shows you apps that are relevant to your current location — and, more importantly, the App Store can now automatically update your installed apps!

Find My iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch has been updated, so that it requires your Apple ID and password to turn the feature off, or to erase or activate your device.

Safari has been significantly updated, too — now it feels a lot more like a modern browser, such as Chrome. There’s a unified search box (a la Chrome’s omnibar), and the tab switcher is very slick. Though it won’t be ready for release, iCloud Keychain will allow you to securely store/share your passwords and credit card details between your iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks devices.

All in all, iOS 7 is one of Apple’s largest and best software updates. In testing, we have found iOS 7 a lot easier and quicker to use than its predecessors. One of the biggest complaints — that too many features are buried away in menus — has been soundly addressed. In a story later today, we’ll be investigating whether iOS 7 compares favorably against Android 4.3, or whether Apple still has some ground to cover.

Now read: iPhone 5S reviews prove Apple got everything right – including 64-bit performance

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iphone-5s-reviews-prove-apple-got-everything-right-including-64-bit-performance

The first reviews of Apple’s iPhone 5S are in, and the news is unilaterally positive. Unlike the iPhone 5 launch, which was badly overshadowed by the Apple Maps debacle, the iPhone 5S has no such problems. General coverage of everything from the new camera to iOS 7 is positive. The issues that people were concerned might be gimmicky, like the new fingerprint sensor, are receiving high praise. The camera, with its dual flash LED technology, is noted as taking better low-light photos than its predecessor.

As for the relative strength of the upgrade, David Pogue over at the New York Times writes in his review that the 5S is one of the few smartphones that’ll keep you delighted over two years of your contract. AllThingsDigital echoes that it’s a big step up for anyone who doesn’t already own an iPhone 5, but says that it may not be a huge case for upgrading if you’re already on that device. Full reviews and coverage of iOS 7 is less a focus than the overall phone, but there don’t seem to be any obvious design flaws or issues the way there were a year ago. Daring Fireball confirms the positive sentiments.

Relative performance and 64-bit

If you’re curious about performance, Anandtech has the best coverage of any site that’s released a review. There’s a great deal of information there, including performance data for the CPU, GPU, 64-bit evaluations, and battery life. To hit the highlights first, before the mea culpa — battery life is on par with the iPhone 5 when browsing over 4G LTE, but over an hour worse when running on WiFi (10.2 hours vs. 8.97 hours). In their most power-hungry state, the iPhone 5S takes a 12% battery life hit, even though its battery is actually ~12% larger than its predecessor. Cellular, video, and wireless capabilities are all largely unchanged.

So let’s talk about the 64-bit/32-bit transition. Many of you were adamant last week when I maintained that this shift was mere marketing fluff. A great number of people swore that thanks to various advances, the iPhone 5S would offer 2x the performance in 64-bit mode vs. 32-bit mode.

Who was right, and who was wrong? All of us it turns out.

Many of the performance benefits that people claimed were a product of the 32-bit-to-64-bit conversion are actually the result of a superior CPU architecture. The new chip, codenamed Cyclone, has 20% lower latency to main memory compared to the old Swift core. The L1 data and instruction caches are twice the size — 64K, up from 32K. Memory bandwidth in 32-bit mode is increased by 6-58% depending on the operation. The new chip is 42% faster in integer code and 67% faster in FPU code.

It’s surprising to see Apple leveraging a new architecture this aggressive, but not impossibly so. The A7′s Cyclone processor is clearly a well-balanced piece of work. But the point I wanted to make that got lost within my 64-bit story is that huge performance jumps across a CPU generation don’t necessarily have anything to do with whether or not the chip is 32-bit or 64-bit. So how much does that 64-bit jump matter?

Excluding the order-of-magnitude leaps delivered by hardware AES blocks, the new chip is 245% faster in SHA-1 cryptographic testing. In more mainstream tests around file compression, JPG handling, PNG manipulation, and other various mathematical tests, the gain ranges from 25% slower to 28% faster. The floating point gains are stronger — none of the Geekbench tests go backwards, and the performance ranges from 0% (no change) to 195% for DGEM (double precision matrix multiply). DGEMM, it should be noted, is the sort of function that we’d expect to run much faster on the 64-bit chip thanks to the additional registers and NEON support.

Performance data courtesy of Anandtech

Anandtech’s figures point to 64-bit being a definite plus for the phone, particularly once certain functions are fully optimized. Clearly, the phone does pick up performance from 64-bit, even though it’s got just 1GB of total system memory. At the same time, it’s important to note that the gain is often modest. If you buy the A7, buy it for the 32-bit performance, and look to 64-bit mode to provide a longer-term boost as applications transition to the new model.

Is the 5S enough?

The general opinion coming back from reviews is that the 5S is a huge leap forward over the iPhone 5, with a better camera, better price point, far better performance in certain areas, and reasonable battery life. The fingerprint sensor works well (reports on the M7 motion sensor note its existence, but objectively reviewing such a low-level piece of hardware is difficult). If the market punishes Apple for this launch, it’s not going to be because of any shortcoming with the actual iPhone 5S, but because Apple failed to reinvent the entire market with a Jobsian “One more thing.” The downsides to the Apple 5S come down to lacking 802.11ac and LTE-A — fringe features, in both cases.

The iPhone 5S is a damned good phone. Whether or not it’s good enough to jolt you into upgrading is going to depend on what device you currently own. Benchmarks indicate that my own 4S is thoroughly outclassed. Will that drive more actual sales? I don’t know. The truth is, while my 3G felt ridiculously slow by 2010, the 4S doesn’t today. That’s partly because I live so far out in the boondocks, I’m stuck on 2G, and there’s little point to upgrading to a 4G phone, period. But it also underlines the fact that for a lot of people, a two year-old phone is humming along just fine.

Whether or not the iPhone 5S is balm to Wall Street’s fretting over Apple’s stock price, the device is fabulous on its own merits. If you’ve been eyeing one, it’s worth the investment.

Apple may offer the iPad Mini 2 in space grey

apple will offer the iPad Mini 2 in the same space grey as the iPhone 5s if the latest leaked pictures are to be believed.

The company is thought to be preparing to unveil the second generation of its smaller iPad at an event next month. The iPad 5, OS X Mavericks and details of new Macs are also expected to be unveiled at the event on October 15th. French website Nowhere.fr posted a new set of images comparing how the new space grey option will look compared to the current iPad Mini. Read more: Apple iPad Mini 2: Release date, price, specs, news and rumours The site has developed a reputation for publishing images of the next generation of iPad and iPhone panels. It is currently unclear if Apple would drop the current slate colour if it was to offer an iPad Mini 2 in space grey. Earlier in the year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple was debating offering the next generation of its smaller tablet in multiple colours.