First look at Nokia's Lumia 1020 with National Geographic's Stephen Alvarez

Text and photos by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Nokia's Lumia 1020 is the latest Windows Phone 8 flagship that improves on last year's Lumia 920 by slimming it down but also adding an improved 41 Megapixel sensor from the PureView 808. Nokia Canada showed off the new smartphone, features and accessories today with the help of National Geographic photographer Stephen Alvarez who took the Lumia 1020 on an amazing photoshoot in the American West.

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Reminder: Apple's next-generation iOS7 launches today for iPhone, iPod and iPad

In case you needed a reminder: today is the day that Apple's newest operation system, iOS7, becomes publicly available for mass consumption. No worries about plugging your device into iTunes and continually pressing refresh, the update will be pushed out OTA (over the air) by Apple directly and your device should notifiy you at some point today about the availability. If for some reason you're not a patient person, and can't wait to be notified automatically, you can always manually check for updates on your device in system settings. 

Good luck with your updates and, of course, make sure to backup your device prior to the change!

BBM for iOS and Android launching this Friday?

BlackBerry has been in the press a lot today and for all the right reasons. For one, they've finally announced the much-leaked BlackBerry Z30; though no official price points or release dates have been given. But, that's not the most important news to talk about at the water cooler: as per CrackBerry, we finally have a purported launch date for the cross-platform version of BBM.

This Friday September 20th, 2013 is apparently d-day - how casually convenient. This means, for all of you who have pre-ordered the new iPhone 5s, you can launch iOS7 and reload all those lost friends from BBM past. Below is the unofficial rollout schedule sent over to CB:

- Friday, Sept 20th, 7am EST: Android version published on Google Play
- Friday, Sept 20th, 7am EST: BBM.com goes live
- Friday, Sept 20th, 7am EST: CRM messages sent out to pre-registrants
- Friday, Sept 20th, 7am EST: Follow-up CRM message sent after App Store deployment
- Saturday, Sept 21st: BBM on iOS becomes available 12:01am EST in local time zones

Of course, until it actually happens, this could just be a sick joke. In fairness, it does align with BlackBerry's original 'before end of summer' promise..... Fall begins Friday at midnight.

Stay tuned.

BlackBerry Z30 has been officially announced

News from the wire this morning is that the BlackBerry Z30 has been officially announced after weeks of leaks from various sources. Packing a 5-inch super AMOLED screen, the biggest BlackBerry has ever produced, it also features the largest capacity battery at 2880 maH capable of 25 hours of use. The Z30 also features a 1.7GHz processor and quad core graphics.

"It's our biggest, largest, most advanced smartphone to date on the BlackBerry 10 platform,"said Vivec Bhardwaj, head of software portfolios at BlackBerry. 

With the Z30, BlackBerry is aiming at the increasingly popular larger handset market. It joins Samsung's Galaxy Note II, Sony's Xperia Z Ultra and HTC's ONE max which are all competing in the supersized smartphone market.

"Some of the latest features that come with that are features like theBlackBerry Priority Hub, so you're able to actually organize your messages now by intelligently recognizing who the most important people are, the most important conversations," said Bhardwaj in a statement to the CBC.

While no pricing and release date has been given for Canada, The Z30 will be available in stores in the U.K. and the Middle East starting next week. The Z30 joins the Z10, Q10 and Q5 as  2013's BlackBerry smartphone portfolio. 

Source: CBC