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BlackBerry's next phone announcement doesn't have to be big or flashy. It just needs to be affordable.

With the BlackBerry Z10 and Q10, the company has shown it can make a competitive smartphone. Now it needs a budget-friendly version that it can market to the regions of the world that have shown the most growth over the last few years.

"I think a low-cost phone is critical," said Maribel Lopez, an analyst at Lopez Research. BlackBerry "can still gain traction in emerging markets."

That could come as early as Tuesday, when BlackBerry kicks off … Read more

Imagine carving your way down a particularly challenging slope, your skis kicking up clouds of snow, trees flying by, your death-defying stunts captured perfectly on camera. And you're all by yourself.

How would you pull off such a feat?

Short of those with a film crew on hand, or at least a buddy with a GoPro camera tracking your every move, it's hard to imagine it being possible at all, let alone while you're alone.

But you may not have to imagine it for long.

Next week, a startup called Universal Air will finish shipping out its … Read more

The plethora of photo filter apps on the App Store sets the bar very high for any new app that attempts to carve out a space for itself. So it is with that in mind that Sketchoto Lite hits the iPhone, offering a number of clever, but oftentimes limited drawing and sketching filters for your photos.

The idea behind Sketchoto should be familiar at this point. You load a photo into the app or take a new one with your camera, crop it to fit the size of the app, and then choose a hand-drawn filter. Each filter will convert … Read more

Android dominated the global smart mobile device market in the first quarter, according to a new report from Canalys.

That market -- which combines smartphones, tablets, and notebooks -- hit 308.7 million units in the first quarter, representing year-on-year growth of 37.4 percent, according to Canalys, which released the report on Thursday.

By operating system market share, Android was on top with 59.5 percent of all smart mobile devices shipped. Apple was second with a 19.3 percent share, while had Microsoft had an 18.1 percent share.

Global tablet shipments grew 106.1 percent year-on-year to … Read more

The first time you install a BlackBerry 10 app you're required to approve or deny the app access to various types of information on your device. For example, the Foursquare app requires permission to access your location (among other things) in order to find nearby venues. While other apps may request permission to access your photos, music or connect to BBM.

Denying an app permission to one of the requested categories is a good way to protect your personal data, but should you mistakenly deny an app permission, you'll need to know where to go to edit these … Read more

With so many apps offering photo editing in some form, it takes a unique function to warrant downloading yet another app on most people's phones. Photo Mosaic Maker Free does a decent job of offering such an experience with a very easy-to-use mosaic creation tool that pulls directly from your photo library, but is it enough to warrant the download or upgrade?

When you start Photo Mosaic Maker, you're presented with the upgrade screen outlining exactly what features are missing from the free version. You can then immediately start creating your first mosaics. Assuming you've linked your … Read more

With so many to-do list apps for the iPhone, how do you know which ones are best suited for your needs? For the casual user, a free app is the best option, but there are hundreds of them to choose from, and some offer only marginal improvements over what Apple's Reminders app does. With Plain Tasks, you can enhance your to-do list creation without taking on dozens of tools you'll likely not need with this elementary yet effective, free app.

Plain Tasks operates exactly as you would expect. Upon opening, you are presented with a white screen and … Read more

The iPad is a natural task-tracking tool, and with dozens of apps released every year for just this reason, there are plenty of options for those that want to use it as such. While iDidIt is a very stripped-down version of some other task list and to-do list apps on the App Store, it is a fine looking and functioning app that will work well for anyone that needs only the basics.

The core functionality of iDidIt is limited, but it is immediately intuitive regarding what you should be doing, and for a free app, that is exactly what you … Read more

One of the most interesting aspects of the iPad is the increasing ability it gives users to interact with media that before would have just been consumed. From movies and games to trailers and music, you can share, comment on, and interact with multimedia content in new and exciting ways via hundreds of apps. GRAVIDI is designed to take this interaction to the next level by embedding additional clips, links, and information within music videos and movie trailers and connecting all of it to a social media interface.

When you first open GRAVIDI you'll need to register an account … Read more