Verizon Wireless just launched a useful service for business owners and general mobile devices users alike: Verizon Cloud.

Verizon Cloud serves as a business solution and a lifestyle solution, as it gives customers a secure place to back up and access information from multiple devices. As more and more customers use multiple devices, sometimes running on different operating systems, Verizon Cloud allows for the transferring of some content between Android and iOS devices, making the content accessible across smartphones, tablets and computers.

Everything from text messages and call logs to music and multimedia files can be backed up and accessed via Verizon Cloud, with a storage capacity of 125GB. Customers utilizing Verizon Cloud will receive 500 MB of storage at no monthly charge. Additional pricing and operating system-specific information can be found on the Verizon Wireless website.

Verizon Cloud is available initially for Android, with iOS smartphones and tablet devices following soon. Additional operating systems are expected to be supported later this year.

Sprint has announced that it will begin selling the highly anticipated successor to the Galaxy S III, the Galaxy S4, on April 27th with pre-orders set to begin tomorrow on April 18th. Customers will have to pony up $249.99 to get their hands on the latest 16GB smartphone from Samsung. At $249.99, the Sprint Galaxy S4 is $50 more expensive than AT&T’s unit, but Sprint says if you’re taking your business to the carrier from another mobile operator, they’ll offer you a $100 credit; knocking the phone’s price down to $149.99, so long as you agree to a two-year contract.

Sprint will offer both Galaxy S4 colors: Black Mist and White Frost. The Galaxy S4 features a 1.9GHz quad-core processor, Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, a brilliant 4.99-inch Super AMOLED HD display, and a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera. The device will also work on Sprint’s LTE network, which is expanding throughout many areas of the United States and is expected to cover millions by year’s end.

On Monday afternoon when the tragic bombing occurred at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, it wasn’t too long before hundreds of thousands of people became aware of the tragedy through photos and updates posted all over their various social media accounts. Spectators immediately took to social services like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to share their first-hand, gut wrenching, nightmarish experiences and most of them took it upon themselves to upload extremely gruesome and graphic photos of the injuries and the chaos that surrounded them.

Journalist vs Citizen Journalist – What’s the real world difference?

Scrolling through numerous news feeds on Monday afternoon while the incident in Boston was unfolding, I noticed a Facebook friend had posted an update that stated she was offended by people who were posting graphic images all over Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook as the events were happening. She expressed her opinion that it was a “distasteful” and “disrespectful” act to post photos of injured human beings who may have family members looking for them, trying to find out if they’re okay. While understanding her notion, as a company who uses the power of social media to help build its brand and grow a business every day, I was put off by the fact that someone would have such a negative outlook on one of today’s most powerful media tools.

As a comment debate raged on, I took note to something someone had said during the argument.

“You’re not a journalist just because you have your smartphone in your pocket and can take pictures of someone who has just had their leg blown off and their life shattered.”

While not everyone with a smartphone is a journalist, they all have the power to turn themselves into “citizen journalists,” who, by definition are a completely different entity when compared to a traditional journalist. The sole purpose of the citizen journalist is to report on something that others wouldn’t be able to find elsewhere.

A famous American journalist named Courtney Radsch once defined citizen journalism as “an alternative and activist form of newsgathering and reporting that functions outside mainstream media institutions, often as a repose to shortcoming in the professional journalistic field, that uses similar journalistic practices but is driven by different objectives and ideals and relies on alternative sources of legitimacy than traditional or mainstream journalism.”

Without the images we first saw on Twitter of the blast radius, would we have been able to see the carnage the bombs caused? Probably not. Sometimes the mainstream media is afraid to show that kind of stuff. After watching all of the news coverage on Monday, there weren’t many broadcasts of graphic images. There was a video of the bomb going off, but it quickly cut away as soon as it got close to showing people who were injured. Many people may say that isn’t something that needs to be shown, but people, this is the real world we’re living in. These things happen by the hour in countries not named the United States of America. We’re so seasoned to seeing violence and gore in movies, but there’s something about real violence and real blood that drives us into a state of shock.

Social Media & The Power of Now

Now the question needs to be asked. Without the likes of Daniel Lampariello, a Boston resident, who snapped a quick photograph of the explosions as they were happening, or Bruce Mendelsohn, who snapped a photo of the carnage after being swept off of his feet in his office building above the explosion site, what would networks like ABC, FOX News, CNN, and MSNBC have shown leading to the moment when they were given more video from credible reporters on the scene? What would those who wanted to know where the explosions happened have done until they found out the precise details? Why is it frowned upon for someone to spread information as quickly as they can to help others identify loved ones and discover if they’re safe or not?

Certainly, news networks would have survived had they not gotten near immediate access to the scene, but those news networks also got something that would immediately draw in viewers and keep them watching. As terrible as that sounds, that is the purpose of their ventures, isn’t it? This isn’t all about the news networks, though. Actually, it’s about the complete opposite. It’s about being in the year 2013 and the fact that news networks are becoming less and less relevant in a world where we can get all of our information from clicking on a simple hashtag link on Twitter. For instance, one click on the #BostonMarathonBombing hashtag Monday brought me information from on-scene responders, the Boston Police Department, the Boston Marathon management team, and spectators who witnessed the horrible tragedy. It took four minutes to learn the information that otherwise would have taken CNN twenty minutes to collect and distribute.

That’s the beauty of social media and by now, we all know what it’s capable of. However, in the year 2013 and our obsession with hyperconnectivity, social media can also distort the truth and lead to false reporting on a larger scale and that’s when things become problematic.

Moments after Monday’s incident, numerous reports broke on Twitter about a third explosion, a man who was seen wearing what looked to be a bomb vest, false reports of people laying on the pavement dead (when no one was pronounced dead on the scene), and a plethora of other things that were just flat out wrong.

Misinformation has always been prevalent in reporting, but in today’s world, we see news outlets jumping on the first bits of information without any kind of verification. Today, the “payout” for “being first” is so much greater than it was ten years ago, because information spreads instantly. Today, that payout for being “first” is worth the risk of the horrible shame put on your organization if you’re wrong, yet we still see outlets taking it. Misinformation can cause unneeded fear and hysteria to a point where people take matters into their own hands and cause more trouble.

Breaking the Mold

There are organizations who still pride themselves on their journalistic integrity and still uphold a strong code of ethics in their work, but they are few and far between and often don’t need to please the amount of people that a mainstream outlet would.

If we can bring ourselves to a place where citizens are more accurately delivering breaking news information and doing so at a quicker pace than the mainstream media outlets, why shouldn’t we just accept it for what it is and let it feed our desires for information at a constant state of availability? That way, we know what kind of information we’re getting. We’re more likely to get accurate information through the social media feeds of a local police department, aren’t we? They’re only going to put out information as they’re getting it and confirming it.

Maybe if there’s a big wave of people who look to other sources for their news, some organizations may work on rebuilding their credibility and may take a look at their ethics and codes of conduct.

Whenever there’s a tragedy like the one that occurred Monday in Boston, it reminds us that we really shouldn’t trust a word that comes out of mainstream media’s mouth until hours after the event takes place.

Is that really something that you’re still comfortable putting your trust in?

[Update] Seconds after we posted this brief about the HTC One’s release on T-Mobile, TmoNews received yet another screen capture from T-Mobile documentation that confirms the April 24th launch date of HTC’s new flagship device. Like the original tip suggested, the One will still be launching only in select retail outlets. This new screenshot also hints that T-Mobile employees will be brandishing special T-Mobile HTC One t-shirts for four days, as well as a sales incentives program for associates who help sell more One devices.

If you’ve been waiting for the HTC One on T-Mobile, today’s a good day – you don’t have to wait much longer.

The HTC One’s US launch has been riddled with production problems far and wide and it seems that we’re finally getting close to a homeland release, at least on Magenta’s network. Thanks to our friends over at TmoNews who got the scoop on a T-Mobile store’s upcoming planogram store layout changes, we may be able to expect the HTC One to launch on April 24th. For T-Mobile customers aching to get their hands on the new device, you’ll have to hope that your local store is able to sell it; the leaked documentation gives planogram options for “stores not carrying the HTC One.” If your local store isn’t carrying the one, we’d suggest heading into another carrier’s store to play with a demonstration and then ordering the device online through T-Mobile’s website or another wireless reseller.

AT&T will begin shipping its HTC One units tomorrow, April 16th. Sprint will begin fulfilling their preorder shipments in time for the carrier’s April 19th launch date. Verizon Wireless still hasn’t made a commitment to the HTC One, but we haven’t ruled out Big Red from carrying HTC’s flagship device just yet.

You’ve undoubtedly been asking yourself where the heck we’ve been. While we haven’t been working all that much on ByteNow’s editorial front, we’ve been working tirelessly behind closed doors to bring you this – the second iteration of ByteNow.net. When we were in Las Vegas for this year’s CES, we began thinking of a new way to bring content to our readers. At it’s core, 2.0 is a complete re-write of the site we’ve been bringing you for the last two years. After a year and a half, our old site became slow and wasn’t optimized for our newest database version. This site is, and you can tell when you’re navigating from page-to-page, from category-to-category. All that being said, this is a 2.0.0 release and it is very much in its infancy and in the final stages of beta testing. We decided to open it up to the public to get some feedback and learn about bugs as the site gets hammered with our daily usage – something that can’t be simulated on our private virtual servers. We’ll be releasing incremental updates to the site as a whole with bug fixes and new features, so the next version will be v2.0.1. Major site updates will come in the form of 2.x.0 updates. You get the idea.

Please note: If you see any bugs that you feel need fixing, please leave a comment in the comment section of this post.

You’ll notice right off the bat that all of our content is adaptive for your mobile devices. That means no more ugly, blocky mobile themed website. The new website will adjust to whatever device you’re viewing it on, ranging from your laptop, to your smartphones and tablets, to your television sets and gaming consoles. If it has a browser, you’ll see ByteNow the way it was meant to be seen – beautifully. We’re sticklers for minimal designs that aren’t invasive and we believe we’ve really hit the nail on the head with this design to get our content out front to our readers while keeping things clean and simple. ByteNow 2.0 is about the content and nothing else. One note: If you’re viewing this on mobile, know that our advertisements will soon be optimized for your devices and may stretch things out a little bit in the meantime. This is something we need to work on with our advertising partners and we’ll get everything updated as soon as we can.

Our post images, thumbnails, and images in our new featured post slider on the homepage are all automatically resized to fit their respective areas. You may see some issues with images resizing improperly while we get all of our content organized in our new category structure, but they shouldn’t look too ugly. If they do, let us know and we’ll be quick to get things fixed. We want our readers to understand that some of the old content will never look good on this new design, because it wasn’t made for this design. On our old site, we used images at lower resolutions, so upscaling and downscaling them will cause some loss in quality. Because our new images are so high in resolution, you’ll get an incredible and immersive experience when we start posting our new reviews in the coming days and weeks.

Right now, this is all we have to share regarding the new design. When we add new major features, we’ll be letting you know through another post. Minor fixes and feature rollouts can be found on our Twitter and Facebook pages. We want ByteNow to be a platform for technology news and reviews – not just a website and publication. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be diving even further into that goal and we’re excited for the future.

Aside from our new design and our aspirations for where it’s headed, we’re also streamlining our content. You’ll see that we’ve pretty much eliminated all of our old categories and post tags. This may be an inconvenience for a few days, but as we post new content, you’ll begin to notice that it’s easier to search for new content and get a more relevant return when clicking on certain tags and categories. We’re organized and fluid and it’ll make for a better reading experience. We’ll be gearing our new content strategy in a direction that really makes ByteNow different from the other noise on the Internet. This means you’ll get tons more editorial content, more reviews, and more of us ranting about things that really matter in this industry.

Thank you for sticking with us. We can’t wait to continue rolling out new features and creating great content.

Two weeks ago, I caved and purchased a BlackBerry Z10 using an upgrade I had available on my AT&T account. Originally, I wanted to wait it out for the full-QWERTY BlackBerry 10 device, the Q10, but I decided that the larger screen found on the Z10 was something I’d really prefer over a physical keyboard. When I got the phone back home and began setting it up, I realized I had made the right decision. As much as I have loved BlackBerry’s physical keyboard devices in the past, the software keyboard on the Z10 is pure perfection and offers a better typing experience than I’ve had on any device I’ve ever used. So, I decided that I’d keep the Z10.

A week passed and I was in love with the Z10. From the day that I first used the Z10 at BlackBerry’s launch event in New York, I really enjoyed the fresh feel of the operating system. The cascade and gesture based navigation is so refreshing and feels so much different than anything that iOS, Android, or Windows Phone offer at this point in time; all of those user interfaces have become really stale and boring and are in dire need of a refresh, if you ask me. I wasn’t too put off by the lack of applications in the BlackBerry World store and found many third party solutions or web apps that did what the missing apps would do for me. My phones are mostly communication devices. I spend the majority of my time using messaging applications, checking and sending emails, and keeping up with my social networks. BlackBerry 10 handles all of this wonderfully, but the fun quickly stopped.

The weekend after I purchased the Z10, I was helping a friend of mine move into a new house. I spend the majority of the weekend out of range of any WiFi networks, so I was connected to AT&T’s 4G LTE and HSPA+ networks for the better part of two days. I wasn’t doing anything different from how I would normally use my phones outside of WiFi range, and to be frank, we were so busy that I was hardly using the phone at all. I would check on Twitter and send some text messages while we were driving back and forth between the two properties (I wasn’t driving).

At the end of the weekend, I wanted to log into my account on AT&T’s website to see where my data usage stood after the month because my billing cycle was set to end two days later. When I checked my usage, I was hovering around the 800MB mark, which is just above what I’d normally use in a month. I wasn’t all that concerned and I figured the extra usage was just linked to me using a new device a whole lot for the first few days. At the end of the day, without turning WiFi back on, I went to sleep. I woke up the next morning and checked the AT&T website again, only to find out that my data usage had climbed to 1.4GB overnight. In the 6 hours that I was sleeping, my phone used just about 600MB of data just sitting idle. I dug a little bit deeper into AT&T’s usage charts and discovered that every 5-20 minutes, the BlackBerry Z10 would send and receive packets of data ranging anywhere from five to twenty megabytes in size. At one point, the phone had sent a packet session of 32MB in size.

I couldn’t understand why this was happening. None of my applications were set to poll or refresh automatically and the only thing that would have been constantly bringing in data were three email accounts, and just one of them was set to “push” email to my phone. After looking deeper into the charts, I found that most of the month’s data consumption occurred from the day that I enabled the Z10 on my account – a mere 9 days to use roughly 1.4GB of data, or just over a third of my 4GB data allowance.

Once I discovered that this was an issue, I took to the Internet to see if anyone else was experiencing this problem and sure enough, a bunch of folks over at the CrackBerry.com forums were going through the same thing. Some people were even having their accounts deactivated, because they were going over their allotted data. After reading a suggestion from a forum member to delete any Android apps that I may have side-loaded onto the device, I followed suit, and found out that my Z10 was still burning through data at an alarming rate. With no resolution anywhere in sight, I decided to make the executive decision and head back to the AT&T store to try and return the device for something else. As much as I’ve loved BlackBerry 10, I knew that trying to fight AT&T on data overages would be nearly impossible and it wasn’t a battle I was willing to partake in.

Upon entering my local AT&T store — which is one of the stores that actually consistently pleases me with its customer service initiatives — I was immediately greeted by a woman, who I would later find to be the store’s Assistant Manager, and she asked me the usual questions. How are you? Can I help you with something today? Etc. I immediately explained my situation. I told her I was about the issues that I was having, mentioned that hundreds of others were having the issues that I was, which would point to a software malfunction, cited my sources, and politely asked for an exchange to another device. Since this was a software issue and, seemingly, a problem on BlackBerry’s side of the fence, I didn’t want to exchange my Z10 for another Z10 and run into the same issue, only to have my return window closed two days later and get stuck with a device that has an issue that BlackBerry may or may not patch.

The Assistant Manager informed me that, like I was told when I purchased the device, I would not be able to return the device without paying a $35 restocking fee. I shook my head and told her that I understood the company’s policy, but that I also wanted to know why I was being held responsible for the return cost of a defective device. She informed me that if I were to exchange my Z10 for another Z10, there would be no charge. Again, I nodded in understanding, but also restated that any issue I was having with my current Z10 was not specific to my particular unit and could inevitably happen again on the new device, and was not a risk I wanted to take with a return window that was rapidly closing and potential overage fees that AT&T surely would not refund.

After going back and forth with the Assistant Manager for roughly ten minutes, again explaining that I wasn’t the only person with these issues and that the consumer shouldn’t be held accountable for the restocking fee of a faulty product, I inevitably got tired of trying to make a case and ponied up the $35 to return the Z10 and swap with an iPhone 5 unit. For my troubles, the Assistant Manager instructed the associate who ended up helping me to credit my account with a a free month of wireless Internet service, which I graciously thanked her for.

With the credit, I will basically break even with the $35 restocking fee, but the fact remains that AT&T, and any wireless carrier for that matter, is selling a product and needs to be held accountable if something is going wrong with that product. They’re endorsing a product as being “good enough” to operate on their network. I had no problem keeping the two-year contract extension I had signed a week prior to returning the Z10, nor was I seeking any kind of refund for the device. I just wanted to leave the store with a device that worked properly and wasn’t going to cause me more headaches down the road. It’s unacceptable to me that I was forced to pay $35 for AT&T to take back a faulty product, because I look at it like I just paid $35 to leave the store a satisfied customer. I am the consumer. I am not here to satisfy myself. While I was satisfied that I was given a bill credit, I was not satisfied with AT&T’s charging me to take back a faulty product that may or may not be fixed in a few days, weeks, or months. Why was I being held accountable?

Shouldn’t the failings and reliability of a product fall on their shoulders and not mine?

Just when we thought the tech landscape couldn’t possibly give us anything more outlandish than tweeting refrigerators, Google has gone ahead and proved us all wrong. Today, the company announced its brand new Chromebook Pixel; it’s a Chromebook with an insanely high resolution touchscreen display, and an insanely high price point of $1,300. For those of you who might be unfamiliar with Google’s Chrome OS, the computing experience is basically limited to Google’s Chrome browser experience and it allows you to pick and choose from the thousands of extensions in the Chrome Web Store to enhance your experience. There are extensions for games, photo editing applications, and really anything else you could do with a normal computer, but everything runs and functions as an application in the web.

The device features a 12.85-inch 3:2 aspect ratio display that claims to offer 18% more vertical pixel space than a 16:9 aspect ratio machine would. Google is touting the Pixel’s resolution at 2,560 x 1,700 pixels (a PPI of 239) and claiming it’s the highest, most dense and most beautiful display available on any portable computer today. Without even seeing the device in person, we might be inclined to agree, because that’s a pretty damn sharp resolution. The display is touch-enabled, just incase you get the urge to reach out and touch the screen in front of you, but we can’t see why that’s necessary in a laptop computing experience – especially one that’s based solely in a web browser.

The machine is powered by a dual-core 1.8Ghz Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and customers will be able to choose from two storage options of 32GB and 64GB of flash memory. In case you burn through your early storage, Google is allotting customers who purchase its newest Chromebook 1TB of Google Drive — Google’s Cloud Storage option — storage space for three years. The 32GB machine is Google’s WiFi only option, while the 64GB machine ships with an integrated Verizon 4G LTE radio. Google says customers will be able to choose from daily 4G data plans or add their Chromebook to an existing Verizon Wireless Share Everything plan for just $10/mo. The 4G LTE enabled Pixel will run a whopping $1,499 and won’t be available until April. The device also features a standard array of Bluetooth and WiFi a/b/g/n connectivity, three microphones for terrific noise cancellation (one microphone is hidden under the keyboard), an HD camera for video chats and Google+ Hangouts, two USB ports, mini display port, microphone/headphone jack, SD card reader, and a 59Wh battery that Google claims will offer you five whole hours of usage.

Starting today, anyone interested in purchasing the Chromebook Pixel can order one through the Google Play Store online for $1,299 or pick one up at their local Best Buy retailer starting tomorrow morning.

Really, though, who in their right mind would spend $1,299 on a web browser?

Image Credit: Engadget

Last October, the Library Of Congress made a decision to remove cellular phone unlocking from the list of exceptions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The decision was turned into a law in January and on January 23rd an official petition asking the President to reverse the decision was submitted through the White House’s official petition website. In order to garner a response from President Obama, a petition must accrue at least 100,000 signatures from citizens of the United States. At the time of this publication, the petition has amassed 102,600 signatures, which means the President and White House must issue an official response.

The petition, which needed to reach its goal of 100,000 signatures by February 23rd, calls for President Obama to pressure the Library of Congress to change its mind on their decision to make cellular phone unlocking illegal. The petition also calls for the President to draft a bill that would permanently legalize the unlocking of cellular phones in the United States. Of course, this is just a petition, and doesn’t necessarily mean the President must act on its wishes, but he must at least respond.

Unlocking cell phones breaks the carrier restrictions imposed on today’s cellular phones. Many consumers unlock their phones in order to use them with different carriers at home or abroad. Carriers in the United States charge entirely too much for international data and talk roaming, so many consumers opt to purchase a temporary SIM card to stick into their phone to use on their vacations or business trips. Carriers will sometimes unlock phones if the situation warrants it and the customer has fulfilled their two-year agreement with the hardware they originally purchased, and those situations are still legal under the DMCA. The recent law makes it illegal for customers to circumvent the carriers and unlock their devices via a third-party, which is often a service found online for an affordable cost.

Since the end of the Consumer Electronics Show last month, I think we’ve dealt with multiple rumors that claim each major company in the mobile space is trying its hand at making a smartwatch to compete with the likes of the Pebble smartwatch and a few other models that have since hit the market. When I first toyed around with the Pebble watch, I’ll admit that I was pretty impressed. I don’t know if I was just astonished that I actually saw something new at CES or if I was genuinely impressed by the idea. But the more I thought about it, the more the idea began to bore me.

Sure, we’ve all had our moments where we want to have all of the cool gadgets that Inspector Gadget had, but how useful would those gadgets be in real life? In order to get the utmost functionality out of smartwatches in their current form, the devices require a constant connection to your smartphone via Bluetooth. I don’t need to tell you what a heavy drain on battery life that is to get the point across that this is just a bad idea. Our biggest complaint with almost every modern smartphone is battery life. Most devices have a hard time making it through an entire day without any other connectivity. Imagine leaving Bluetooth active all day while it’s transmitting data. Batteries will be dead by lunch time.

Devices like the Pebble will show you the latest notifications to pulse through your smartphone. For instance, the Pebble will show you new SMS notifications, emails, call alerts, and will let you control your smartphone’s music playback options; all on a beautiful ~1.5-inch display. I don’t know about you, but the less real estate I have to read my messages, the more annoyed I become. Sure, the convenience of having your emails and text messages on your wrist are great, but in the time it would take me to scroll through a half-page email, I could pull out my phone, read the message, and reply. The smartwatch doesn’t seem to provide much utility in the way of productivity.

There have been rumors that, of course, Apple has a rather large team of engineers working on an Apple-themed smartwatch, but I don’t think even Apple can make the smartwatch a necessity in every day life. My opinions may be a little bit dampened, because I don’t wear a watch on a daily basis, but thinking back to the days when I was a kid and wore a watch almost daily, I don’t think I ever dreamt about it doing anything more than telling the time. There is plenty of room for the smartwatch to grow, but I don’t know that anyone who isn’t a super nerd will welcome the idea of a $200+ investment on their wrist. Let’s not even begin to think of what would happen if smartwatches shipped with integrated cellular radios and required a data plan…oh boy, I’m done.

I appreciate the effort that companies are putting into products that are new, and possibly revolutionary, but right now, I’m not seeing the purpose of the smartwatch. That could change.

So, my beloved readers, how do you feel about this? Is a smartwatch something you’re excited for? Would you invest in one? Let us know in the comments below. We love feedback.

After letting it be known that from this day forward, Research In Motion would be known simply as “BlackBerry,” CEO Thorsten Heins and Co. finally unveiled what we’ve been waiting for since last year: two brand new BlackBerry devices running the company’s latest iteration of its mobile operating system, BlackBerry 10. The BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 are the first of six BlackBerry 10 devices that BlackBerry will release this year, according to sources familiar with the company’s operation.

BlackBerry spent most of today’s presentation talking about and demonstrating the Z10 device and didn’t give the physical QWERTY-keyboard-packing Q10 much stage time. According to Heins, the Q10 won’t be available until “sometime in the April timeframe.” The tale of the Z10 is different, however. That device will be available tomorrow starting in select countries around the world, February 5th in Canada, and sometime in March for the United States. All four major US carriers have announced plans to offer the BlackBerry Z10 LTE-enabled smartphone, and Verizon Wireless says they’ll offer it in an exclusive white color — along with its standard black partner — for $199.99. Look for your carrier to do the same, minus the white color scheme.

I’ve had a good amount of time to get our paws dirty with BlackBerry 10 goodness and I think it’s a good time to compose a quick hands-on thing, so here it goes.

BlackBerry 10 is new and it’s refreshing. It’s been incredibly fun to work with a brand new mobile operating system in a world where I constantly complain about being bored with the offerings of other companies. BlackBerry 10 has its issues, but we should point out that those issues are few and far between and easily fixable. There’s a lot to like about BlackBerry 10, but there’s also some things to dislike.

For starters, BlackBerry has found a way to reinvent the smartphone’s navigation. BlackBerry 10′s navigational command center is almost exclusively found at the bottom of the device’s screen. Swipe up when the phone is off, and the phone turns on, revealing your BB10 homescreen. Swipe up from any application to get back to your home screen. Swipe up and to the right to “Peek” into your BlackBerry Hub, where you can see all of your messages and notifications that are waiting for you. BlackBerry 10′s navigation, while a little tricky to get used to, is easily my favorite feature of BlackBerry 10. Some hate it, but I think it’s intuitive and simple to use once you get past the initial learning curve. It adds a feeling of exclusivity to BlackBerry 10, and although it’s a minor perk, it’s an exclusivity that BlackBerry needs right now.

Next up, the application situation. BlackBerry have acknowledged that there’s an application problem and that’s why they’re putting so much support behind their existing developers for BlackBerry 10 in an effort to draw in more developers with popular applications on other platforms. At launch, BlackBerry World will feature 70,000 — though, today, BlackBerry said 100,000 — applications. The problem with these applications is just that they aren’t very good. Some are apps that are running through an old Android Gingerbread emulator and some just aren’t up to par with comparable apps on iOS and Android. There are a ton of big name app developers who have committed to driving their applications to BlackBerry 10, so the jury is still out on whether this is actually a real problem, but for the moment, it’s a little worrisome. The app has become such an integral part of how we use our smartphones, and even though a lot of companies and financial institutions are driving people to use their mobile web apps, there’s something to be said for the ease of accessibility that a native app can offer.

In toying around with the OS for the last few hours, we’ve noticed that it’s really snappy and responsive, even after getting applications loaded up with personal data and the like. From the looks of things, it looks like BlackBerry 10 was built to be what the BlackBerry is all about: communication. And that’s a good thing.

We’re going to have continuing BlackBerry 10 coverage. Keep your browsers pointed here.