RIM will start selling the BlackBerry Torch 9800 for $199.99 on August 12th through AT&T with a 2 year contract. The phone is also being sold at Best Buy, RadioShack, and Wal-Mart. The Torch has a 3.2″ 360×480 touchscreen, 4.4×2.4×0.57″ dimensions, 5.68 oz. weight, optical trackpad, 4GB flash memory, and 4GB MicroSD card included. There is also a 5 megapixel camera with flash. It can record 640×480 video and it comes with the BlackBerry 6 operating system. The phone also has Bluetooth and 802.11b/g/n WiFi. The full press release is below:

This past weekend, a jailbreak was created for the iPhone 4. This allowed FaceTime calls to be made through the 3G network. I have no plans to jailbreak my iPhone because there is a major risk of your iPhone getting bricked if you do so. 9to5Mac decided to do a test to see how much data is consumed when using FaceTime over the 3G network. They did a 5 minute FaceTime call with lots of movement. It turns out that about 14.7MB was consumed — or 3MB per minute. [9to5Mac]

The entrepreneur dynamic duo Janus Friis with Niklas Zennström has officially launched the Rdio service to the public. You may remember Janus and Niklas as the two who started KaZaa, Skype, and Joost. Up until today, you needed an invitation to use the service. The music streaming service starts at a cost of $4.99 per month. However the service is currently open to users in the U.S. and Canada.

A Foxconn Technology Group factory is being constructed at the Henan Province in China. The Taiwanese company is moving its operations closer to inland China. The factory cost about $100 million to build and it is owned by Futaihua Precision Electronics (Zhengzhou) Co. Ltd. This factory will be used to mostly build the Apple iPhone.

Ustream has provided the Ultimate Fighting Championship with the IP addresses of users that is broadcasting the pay-per-view events on their streaming video website. Zuffa LLC, the UFC parent company sent a subpoena to Ustream and Justin.tv.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has announced that the Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 suite is arriving this October.  What is noticeable about the announcement is that the costs of the software suite are particularly low.  The cost of the software suite is 20-50% lower according to PCWorld.  Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 costs about $119 per single license.  The family pack costs $149.  The 2008 Home and Student Edition was $149.

There is no denying that the Android smartphone market is growing at a rapid pace.  Mobile analysis company Canalys released a report about how Nokia is retaining the smart phone leadership position and how the Android platform is growing.