Latest industry buzz is that Blackberry’s CEO Thorsten Heins announced that BB Messenger soon be coming to Android and iOS too. So now you don’t have to buy a Blackberry just for BB messenger communication between your company co-workers.

Blackberry CEO

It seems even RIM is giving up on its own OS and paying way for iOS and Android. Blackberry is indeed a nice OS but they kept their ecosystem closed (just like iOS do these days) and gradually it leads to the fall of it. This move is obviously to keep BB Messenger alive from being killed because of the fall of BB OS.

I really wish BB will wake up like phoenix and give a run against iOS and Android in near future.

As usual it takes time for Sri Lankan market to get the gadgets. But this time Telco providers such as Dialog and Etisalat were taking pre-orders for the SIV phone. It was priced around 109,000 Rupees (LKR).

Today I saw the following tweet from Etisalat saying the “Wait is over!”

Aaand the wait is over, Samsung #GalaxyS4 will be available at Etisalat from tomorrow! #SriLanka twitter.com/EtisalatSL/sta…

— Etisalat Sri Lanka (@EtisalatSL) May 7, 2013

Those who pre-ordered the devices can get it from their store it seems. Welcome SIV to Sri Lanka.

Now Dialog is venturing into insurance sector too. They already had covers for mobiles, but now their new insurance covers accidents. You can pay as low as 1 rupee per day to get one million as cover in return. I’m not an analyst on insurance stuff, I leave the discussion to experts to discuss whether it’s a great offer or not.

All in all, I think Dialog is doing great and innovating from several ends to stay put up on the PIONEER and LEADER role. Good job done.

I went ahead and checked it on my mobile and found that it’s not something we can be excited about for Smart phone users. Those who are on mid range phones, this is an awesome stuff. The Gmail UI itself looks very ugly and not the HTML5 stuff we are talking about on Gmail.

Check out this video for simple explanation

Make sure to check out the FAQ from Dialog itself.

Now the hot news in industry is that, Samsung is preparing for a new device in their flagship S series. Yes, Samsung will release SIV on coming March 14.

SIV – Samsung invite

You can see more pics of the invite sent to popular media groups and press.

We know lately Etisalat giving good run for gadgets with their promos and all. Today I got to know that Etisalat is taking pre-orders for iPhone 5.

You can pre-order your device here and you will be entitled for 10% discount.

Still no news about iPhone 5 release from other providers such as Dialog and Mobitel. Let’s wait and see.

UPDATE

@mayooresan Seems like previous Dialog attempt. Apple site doesn’t show anything related to Sri Lanka

— Rukshan Kothwala (@Kothwala) September 24, 2012

As Ruckshan said in Twiter. There are no official update from Apple in their site. So it must be another desperate attempt by Etisalat to bring down iPhones unofficially.

Finally Apple officially confirms the iPhone 5 launch date. They have invited the members of the press for the launch event which is to be held on September 12th.

Now it is rumored that only iPhone 5 will be launched on this occasion and iPad mini (it will be 7 inches mini tablet to battle Samsung and Android tablets) will be launched in October.

Keep the fingers crossed, let’s hope Apple and Tim Cook will have enough surprises for us.

iPhone 5 Concept Design

Verizon Wireless has blacked out vacation requests for the period covering September 21 to September 30. Normally they do it during busy days. Normally these kind of blacked out holidays occurs during Christmas season or Black Friday. But end of September?? So the best speculation is that iPhone 5 will be released somewhere during end of September.

If things are going fine as expected for Apple, it is said that they’d sell 250 Million devices around the world.

You can read more at Techcruch

Later with the introduction of ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich), Google launched another mobile phone named Google Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The phone is powered by Google pure Android OS and was having an awesome design. Once again it was hyped that this phone will pick up on sales and might over take some of the Samsung’s phones.

Galaxy Nexus

The sales figures remained gray till now. Now the Samsung reveals the sales figures due to the case filled in Court against the Galaxy Nexus.

Samsung says

Samsung reported specifically that $250 million worth of Galaxy Nexus devices were sold in its first two quarters on the market. Quinn relayed, “This is a product that, at most, captured 0.5 percent of the market.

So once again Google phone is not a commercial success though it has had more sales compare to old models. 0.5 percent of market share again is a big number but very small if you compare it with Samsung’s flagship phones such as SII, SIII.

I’m sure Google achieved what they want to do with the Nexus devices. It was just to show the potential of the Android OS.

Once I logged in my first impression about the UI is not very good. But we all remember how Twitter and Facebook looked so primitive in those good old days. So I guess it’s fair to give some time to come up with more powerful, expressive, catchy and responsive design for the site.

So what it is going to offer something that is not available in Twitter and Facebook?? Well it promises to give something special, that is, you can own the part of the site you use. Incredible rite? You don’t’ have to ass kiss Facebook’s Zukerberk or Twitter’s CEO. When you become a power user you’ll own more of Zurker.

AS I said earlier you can use my invite link to get an exclusive invitation and start to use Zurker. Meanwhile make sure to read Osai Chella’s guide to Zurker. It’s comprehensive and easy to understand. I’m sure it will get you started with the awesome platform within few minutes.

If you are already on Zurker, please add me as your friend.