Back in January, before we introduced BlackBerry 10 to the world, I wrote a blog post about Five Reasons to Tune in for BlackBerry 10. I had been writing so much about BlackBerry 10 that I wanted to show you that I wasn’t alone, and that tech bloggers and media were already posting positive BlackBerry 10 reviews. Well, it’s time for an update. Now that more tech bloggers and media have a BlackBerry 10 device in their hands, I wanted to recap some of their great feedback on our new device and updated OS.

Here are some snippets from the tech blogosphere on BlackBerry 10 features:

1. “There’s no question here that BlackBerry knows just how important app selection is the future of its company, and as such, has been working overtime to make developers a key focus, with a hundred or so members of its evangelist team.” – Engadget.com

2. “I spend much of my time on my smartphone and tablet devices writing emails, IMs and texts, which means as accurate as I try to be when I’m typing, I probably make more mistakes than I would like to admit. The keyboard on the BlackBerry Z10 is one of the major highlights of the device as the more I typed with the keyboard, the better it was at predicting text that I was in the process of writing.” – Ubergizmo.com

3. “I am really excited by the message hub in (BlackBerry) 10, I think there are some serious innovations there that any power smartphone user would find really beneficial.” – Blogs.CIO.com

4. “BlackBerry, the company formerly known as Research in Motion, has made [a] reinvention, resurrecting the …BlackBerry platform in its new BlackBerry 10 OS and the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone that runs it. Now shipping in the United States, the BlackBerry Z10 is a good smartphone, one worthy of consideration for both personal and business use.” – Reviews.Techworld.com

5. “The BlackBerry Z10 is an otherworldly treat, a combination of blood, sweat and gears combined into a user-friendly smartphone that is fast, accessible and brimming with a heady catalyst of ideas. Here’s a BlackBerry you can finally be proud to own…This phone is more than specs, it evokes a feeling of joy.” – Gearburn.com

6. “The benefit of the [Time Shift Camera] is to eliminate group photos that are spoiled because one person blinked or had a goofy expression. Just zoom in on [someone’s] face, rewind a second to where his eyes are open and his tongue isn’t hanging out, and you have the perfect family photo. In my review of the Z10 , I found the feature, made possible by the phone’s dual-core processor and BlackBerry 10 software, to work as promised.” – Mashable.com

The reviews keep coming. Tell us what you think of the BlackBerry Z10 in the comments below.

We’re excited to announce the availability of BlackBerry® News for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet in the BlackBerry App World™ storefront! We’ve optimized the news reading experience to accommodate the larger screen size the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet provides, as well as leveraged all gesture support to help immerse you in your news.

With BlackBerry News, you can add any RSS feed from your favorite news sites, favorite blogs, or other popular sites with syndicated content, so all the news you’ve subscribed to comes to you in one place. This application is an extension of the BlackBerry News Feeds application currently available for BlackBerry smartphones.

This application is currently available in the US and Canada, and will be available in other countries later this year.

Accessing and reading feeds

BlackBerry News takes advantage of your BlackBerry® ID, so if you are a BlackBerry News Feeds user on the BlackBerry smartphone side, your subscription will be automatically brought over and synced up between both BlackBerry smartphone and BlackBerry tablet applications.

First-time users of BlackBerry News – specifically those using the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet – will notice curated news feeds in specific categories, where we’ve chosen multiple content providers to populate content. The curated feeds come in the following categories: Arts & Entertainment, Business, Health & Lifestyle, News Headlines, Science & the Environment, Technology, and Travel. These news feeds are exclusively available for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet version of the BlackBerry News app, and can be found in the “News Categories” section of the app if you’re looking for a way to subscribe to those feeds.

Clicking on a subscription then gets you to an abbreviated summary view of articles within that news feed, so you can quickly scan headlines, view images and a short description of the article to determine if you want to read more of the article. You can swipe to the left to get the next page of articles, and repeat the gesture to get to the last available article.

Once you find an article you want to read, just touch on the article and you’ll be presented with a full article view.

If you’re going to be in a place where network access is unavailable, the BlackBerry News application also provides offline access to your previously downloaded feed content, so you can still read downloaded articles while you’re out of range from a Wi-Fi® signal. Acquiring new content requires connection to a Wi-Fi signal.

Adding new news feeds

You can add your own subscriptions to RSS feeds by hitting the “News Library” button. Once in the News Library, you can either search for a specific feed that you’re looking to add, or you can browse through the content library to find some of the more popular and well-known feeds. As search is currently limited to feeds indexed in the content library of the application, it’s possible you may not be able to find the RSS feed you’re looking for. In those cases, you can input the URL of the site that has the news feed that you want to add, and the app will detect if the news feeds are available for you to subscribe to.

Your subscriptions will be synced up with your BlackBerry ID, so if you’re on the go without your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, you can always catch up on the news through your BlackBerry smartphone by using our BlackBerry News Feeds application available in BlackBerry App World.

Unsubscribing to news feeds and updating content

From the “My News” home screen in the BlackBerry News application, you can use the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet bezel drop-down gesture to pull up an options menu, where you’ll be able to update your content or edit and delete any subscriptions you don’t want anymore.

You can get the recently launched BlackBerry News application for your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in BlackBerry App World at the link below. We encourage you to post any feedback you have for us in the comments section below or the BlackBerry Support Forums, as your feedback is important to us.

Happy reading!

BlackBerry News for BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet in BlackBerry App World