In case you hadn’t already heard, BlackBerry launched its new BlackBerry Z10 back in February, finally making its new BlackBerry 10 platform available to the public. The device has gotten off to a surprisingly good start for the Canadian company, with more than one million units sold during its first three months of availability.

If you’re wondering what BB10 is like, and more importantly whether it’s a worthy contender to Android or iOS, then why not give it a try. You can now do so simply by visiting a URL in your browser — you don’t even have to leave the house.

The iPhone’s user interface is getting old and Apple isn’t innovating fast enough, according to Thorstein Heins, CEO of BlackBerry. Yes, the same BlackBerry which just released the BlackBerry Z10 (several months late) in a last ditch attempt to save the company from going under because of the iPhone.

Heins admits that Apple “did a fantastic job” with the iPhone and its iOS operating system, but he believes the company is now falling behind, giving Android and the new BlackBerry 10 OS a chance to beat it in many areas.

It’s official: the BlackBerry Z10, the first smartphone to ship with the new BlackBerry 10 operating system, and what many believe is the last chance for BlackBerry (formerly RIM) to save itself from complete irrelevance.

The early reviews of the Z10 aren’t bad, but aren’t great, pretty much agreeing that the smartphone is just good enough to buy BlackBerry some time. But how does it stack up, spec-for-spec, against the iPhone 5 and some of Android’s top phones? We’ve put together a chart for you to see for yourself.

The headline pretty much says it all: beleaguered smartphone maker Research In Motion has rebranded itself as BlackBerry, naming the company after it’s most popular product.

So now we have two fruit companies making smartphones: Apple and BlackBerry. And just like in the grocery aisle, one is going to sell by the droves, while the other will be largely rejected by shoppers at large until it collects mouldering funguses and is eventually thrown in the big dumpster behind the supermarket… I mean, gadget store.

You may have noticed that people are making a lot fuss about Research in Motion’s upcoming BlackBerry 10 devices. And so they should. BlackBerry fans have been waiting for these handsets for several years, and they have high hopes for them. Furthermore, the devices are likely to determine whether or not RIM can save itself amid increasing competition from the iPhone and Android-powered devices.

The first BB10 devices won’t get their official unveiling until later this month, but numerous handsets have already found their way out into the wild. In the video below, a leaked BlackBerry Z10 goes up against the iPhone 5 in a comparison against size and form factor, as well as features.

Back in May, shortly after Research in Motion’s BlackBerry 10 unveiling, iOS developer Mario Hros announced that he was working on bringing the operating system’s nifty predictive keyboard to our iOS devices with a tweak called Octopus Keyboard. It’s a little over a month late, but Octopus Keyboard is now available to download from Cydia.

Research in Motion showed off its BlackBerry 10 operating system earlier this month at its BlackBerry World event in Florida. While many have branded the release too little too late, it does have some features that actually look pretty nice.

One of those is its gesture-based predictive text keyboard, which allows you to swipe a single key to input common words. Thanks to one iOS developer, this feature will be available on jailbroken iPhones before it gets its official debut on a BlackBerry 10 handset.

In addition to promoting its unfinished BlackBerry 10 mobile OS at BlackBerry World in Florida, RIM also made an effort to hype the success of its current BlackBerry 7 OS in developing markets, including Nigeria and Indonesia.

It isn’t surprising to see RIM trying to prove that it’s still a competitor in the global marketplace by highlighting the platforms use in developing countries. During RIM’s latest financials call, the first one for its new CEO Thorsten Heins, the company acknowledged that markets in the developing world accounted for much of the company’s revenue.

At BlackBerry World this week, RIM began giving prototype BlackBerry 10 phones to developers. The prototype, known as BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha is an effort by RIM to drive developer interest in its upcoming BlackBerry 10 mobile operating system with the hopes of building an app catalog for the platform before it launches the first BlackBerry 10 phones later this year.

While that’s a laudable and important idea, the handsets RIM delivered are lacking critical features like the ability to make calls or connect to wireless networks. RIM even pointed out that the actual user interface for BlackBerry 10 isn’t even running on the Dev Alpha devices because the company hasn’t finalized what that interface will look like.

2012 hasn’t been shaping up to be a good year for RIM. The company has already lost some major enterprise customers, developers have publicly announced they’re shuttering BlackBerry support, and the new iPad sales beat the total number of BlackBerry PlayBook shipments three times over in one weekend.

The one bright moment, if you can call it that, came during the company’s recent quarterly financials call when RIM’s newly minted CEO Thorsten Heins told investors that his first action on the job was to seriously evaluate RIM’s business. After months of delusional pep talks, his very sober assessment was like a burst of lucid thinking. Unfortunately, the company’s executives seem to be covering that lucid moment with more of the delusional spin that’s become typical of RIM

The latest bout of RIM denying its situation involve comments by executives on the state of the BlackBerry in government.