The Android forums have been discussing this for quite some time. Not sure if it's still possible but one thing that has been working is to call AT&T while your SIM is in a feature phone and requests to have data capabilities blocked. Once they block data to the SIM swap it into your smart phone and talk/text away. They can still see your IMEI so there is a chance they will turn data back on but I haven't seen any indication this is happening.

YMMV

Your argument is irrelevant. If you want to connect to an enterprise network you are granting permission for them to control your experience. That's why BlackBerry developed BB Balance With Balance you get 2 phones in 1. Why should they have this control? Because people in general can't be trusted to always think of the company first. Multiply that fact by a few thousand and the potential for a security breach grows exponentially. It's not that they want to destroy the company (but some actually do) but they don't always understand that what they are doing may negatively impact the company.

You just told me the only thing you use the phones for is email and messaging and you don't even allow attachments. That tells me you don't know what a BES is or does.

REALLY GOOD TOOLS TO INTEGRATE WITH BUSINESS

Everything you mention except remote wipe are for the end user. When people talk about tools to integrate with business they are usually referring to enterprise infrastructure integration tools. The problem is...The end user usually outnumbers the enterprise admin 200 to 1 so you have 200 people all going "It does what I need it to do" and 1 guy desperately trying to get anybody to listen to him about the inadequacies of the overall system. For enterprise the phone is but one piece to a very large whole. BlackBerry designed an enterprise system whereas Apple and Google designed a consumer oriented ecosystem. The former allows for fine granular control from the infrastructure to be pushed outward. The latter allows the end user to get stuff from iTunes/GooglePlay. From the very first BB phone connected to a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) the infrastructure group was able to mandate policies on the device. There are third party policy tools to manage iOS devices in the enterprise but they are not as mature or feature rich as BES. Of course the new BES 10 actually has built in support for iOS/Android devices now which could aid in enterprise adoption of these platforms but BlackBerry will be making money off of each device with a seat license. But BB 10 upgrades can use existing licenses. BlackBerry wins either way.

Horse Puckey!

People buy iPads because they want to runs apps. They don't even know what iOS is. The only reason they know what Android is (and by know I mean know the name Android is associated with non Apple tablets/phones that run apps that are like the apps that run on the iPad) is because Google put the name of the OS out in front.

Right before Christmas my mom calls me asking how to do something on her iPad. After trying to walk her through the steps to do what she had requested and getting nowhere fast I asked her what her iPad looked like. She said "Oh I don't know it is just a rectangle screen Samsung iPad." 0_o
She had gotten the Samsung Galaxy Tab from AT&T

No...they don't. They really don't. Neither OS was designed with enterprise deployment in mind. The new BYOD model is exactly like herding cats. A quick glance at this chart shows just how much is left untouched.

IBM's Endpoint Manager which wants to be the BES for Apple devices is a royal PITA to use and certainly not as seamless as a BB BES solution. I am praying we ditch it for BES 10 now that it is out and allows BB, Android or iOS devices to be managed. I have been saying it since the first iOS devices started showing up...All it will take to get the entire company back on BlackBerry is for sensitive data to get leaked by one of these devices and it cost us money. Everyone will be mad because they have to give up their precious while the PR and Security teams do damage control.

So what you meant to say was you dislike Apples tactics? If that's the case then we agree. Their products are not bad.

There is a reason nerds have to create solutions.

Or you can go to the Play store on your PC and see all the listings. The infobar to the left will tell you whether the devices you currently have registered are compatible or not.

I didn't mean to imply they wouldn't unlock your device for international travel but if you look at the iPhone 5 for AT&T (Model A1428) you see it is only compatible with Bell, Rogers, and Telus but the world phone version (Model A1429) covers all non-North American LTE carriers. Apple didn't need to produce a separate phone for N.A. but they did. So if you take your iPhone abroad your LTE won't work. Now imagine we've moved to VoLTE...how do you make a call? I'm sure we'll have legacy voice for a long time to come but I can't help thinking about these things.

It's Grand POOBAH!

I've been running BlueStacks on my laptop for over a year now. And with their port to ARM Windows RT devices should be able to use it as well.

Since when does “We are looking at all opportunities -- RIM and many others,” automatically translate into "We are taking over RIM"? Seeing how countries are treating ZTE and Huawei in the network space Lenovo would be crazy to buy RIM (Everyone knows RIM has a global network infrastructure right?). It does however make a lot of sense to partner with them to offer devices outside of RIM's current core.

The only thing I can think of is they broke the ThinkPad long term support model. With the advent of the 6x series you could no longer expect the port replicator/dock or accessories you purchased with your R60/T60 to work with the subsequent R6x/T6x models. For a consumer this is not a big deal but for corporations that buy hundreds to thousands of units a year this is huge. It's akin to Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat, or Canonical removing key features of their LTS policies. We got burned because our hardware refresh happened right when the R60 came out so we standardized on that model and when they dropped it for the R61 six months later we found the Configure To Order (CTO) we had specced was no longer compatible with our docking configuration. I worked with their support engineers (IBM was still engineering them at the time) and they finally decided it was simply incompatible despite being standards compliant.

Don't bet on it.
There is already segmentation in what bands get used in different countries and of course The US carriers are deploying FDD LTE while the rest of the world leans more to TDD LTE. ClearWire being a notable exception. AT&T likes being able to charge you global roaming fees so they go out of their way to make sure you can't just hop on a European competitors network when you are in town. Here are a few good articles on just the iPhone 5 models.

I'm sure the French will continue to call themselves French no matter what the outcome of this is.