AT&T has added the BlackBerry Curve 8520 to their line of smartphones just in time for the holiday season. The phone will be selling for $99.99 after a $100 mail in rebate in the next few days. The mail-in rebate is not a check, but it acts as a $100 AT&T promotion card. The specs of the 8520 include 512 MHz processor, 256MB flash memory, and a 2 megapixel camera.
Research In Motion is working on a way to download apps from BlackBerry App World through carrier billing services rather than PayPal. This would be an especially useful feature for those who prefer not to have a PayPal account.
RIM CEO Jim Balsillies announced the upcoming bill carrier changes at the BlackBerry Developer Conference. This will also make it easier for spontaneous purchases.
Soon a BlackBerry Theme Studio will be launched. This will make the user interface more customizable and there will also be a new advertising service for developers to integrate ads into apps.
Tomorrow T-Mobile is selling the BlackBerry Bold 9700 for $199.99. This is great news for T-Mo since it is their first 3G BlackBerry phone that they are selling. The specs of the phone include a 480×360 display and a 3.2 megapixel camera.
Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) has made the BlackBerry Bold 9700 announcement official. The 9700 previously had the codename Onyx. The Bold 9700 has a 3.2 megapixel camera and will have the BlackBerry OS 5.0 preinstalled. Instead of using a trackball the Bold 9700 will be using an optical trackpad. The Bold 9700 will ship in two different network options. The first is 900/1700/2100 and the second is the 800/850/1900/2100MHz 3G option. RIM said that “carriers around the world” would be selling the device. AT&T said they will be selling the device for $199 after mail in rebate and T-Mobile said that their version will support voice calling over WiFi.
Vodafone will be selling the BlackBerry Storm2 phone on October 26 for pre-order. The phone will be free as long as you sign up for a monthly contract at £35+. The specs of the Storm2 includes a 3.25″ 360×480 pixel capacitive SurePress display, 802.11b/g WiFi, 256MB flash memory, 2100MHz UMTS/HSPA data, 2GB memory, Bluetooth 2.1, and a battery that supports 6 hours of 3G talk-time. The phone will be powered by the BlackBerry OS 5 operating system. On October 15 the phone will be available in Ireland, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, France, Italy, South Africa, and the U.K.
Dictionary.com has launched a new application on BlackBerry App World. This application resembles the Dictionary.com application that has already been launched on the iTunes App Store. The iPhone/iPod Touch Dictionary.com application is also free and has hit about 3 million downloads.
The BlackBerry version of the app has a list of about 500,000 words, synonyms, definitions, audio pronunciations, and spelling suggestions. The Word of the Day feature in Spanish and English is built-in to the BlackBerry app too. One of the distinguishing features of the BlackBerry version is that synonyms and definitions can be accessed from the Dictionary.com app while reading or writing e-mails.
According to Dictionary.com President Doug Leeds, the company also plans to launch APIs for developers to integrate the application into their own services. The application will be integrated in several e-books too. The Dictionary.com application on BlackBerry App World is free and will be launching in the near future (if not already).
InterActiveCorp’s Ask.com bought out Dictionary.com as part of the Lexico acquisition in July 2008. Dictionary.com is the sister website of Thesaurus.com and Reference.com too.
Rumor has it that T-Mobile and AT&T will both be selling the BlackBerry Bold 2 on October 21. The BlackBerry Bold 2 is also known as the Onyx and the model number 9700. This BlackBerry uses a touch-pad interface. Other specs include high-gloss black finish, leather grain detail on the back, 3G web browsing, WiFi calling capable, visual voicemail, corporate/personal e-mail options. The phone comes preloaded with BlackBerry App World, TeleNav GPS, and the Amazon MP3 store.
If your BlackBerry has a WiFi collection, your current telecomm provider is T-Mobile, and you work for a major corporation then you may soon have the ability to make phone calls over your WiFi connection. That means when you talk to people at the office and walk around the building, as long as you have a WiFi connection you won’t have any dropped calls. And then when you leave the office building, the phone will automatically pick up the T-Mobile network connection so calls won’t be dropped. Of course this type of service won’t be free, there will be a monthly charge on top of normal services offered.
Research In Motion Limited (USA) (NASDAQ:RIMM) had a positive summer. The company shipped about 8.3 million smartphones between June and August. Last summer the company shipped 7.8 million during the same period.
Of the 8.3 million smartphones that were shipped, 3.8 million were new accounts. Another reason why the company shipped a large number of smartphones is because Verizon even had 2-for-1 sales. Despite the increase in smartphone shipments, the net income fell. Net income for the summer was $475.6 million while last year they made $495.5 million. Revenues were up though.
Poynt is a BlackBerry application that has similar functionality as the Yelp iPhone application. The application on the BlackBerry can detect restaurants near-by and report the reviews of the place. The BlackBerry application can also detect the location of the user and report what restaurants are the closest and draw out a map on how to get there.
Although the application is currently only on the BlackBerry, the iPhone version is on the way. The company recently reported that they have hit one million downloads on BlackBerry App World. The iPhone version of the application will be available towards the tail end of the year.
T-Mobile has sent out a press photo of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 (with the codename Onyx). This will be T-Mobile’s first 3G-enabled BlackBerry mobile phone on their network. The phone will is expected to be available by this November. The phone will have UMA support and WiFi. There will also be corporate e-mail built in and visual voicemail. The 9700 will also have TeleNav GPS Navigator and the Amazon MP3 store pre-installed. List of other specs are listed below:
- A new trackpad
- UMTS/HSDPA
- Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
- 480×360 resolution screen
- WiFi (802.11g)
- OS 5.0
- QWERTY keyboard
- 3.2 megapixel AF camera
- Bluetooth
Above is a leaked screenshot of Facebook 1.7 for the BlackBerry. The application is expected to be available for an update sometime this month. Some of the changes that will be available in the new version includes faster page loading, news feed filtering (status updates, links, photos, etc.), and a new view profile feature. More details when the app is released.
The guys at Crackberry have mocked up what could potentially be what the BlackBerry Essex looks like. The Essex is expected to look like the Tour with WiFi and a trackpad that resembles the Curve 8520.
For those of you out there that tether your computer using your BlackBerry, Research In Motion wants to make it easier. The new BlackBerry Desktop Manager software has a tethering feature. The pre-released version of the Desktop Manager is available in English and other languages. Tethering works as long as you have a data plan.
Research In Motion, the company behind all of the BlackBerry devices has acquired Torch Mobile.
Torch Mobile is best known for designing applications based on WebKit. Torch plans to apply their knowledge with WebKit on Research In Motion’s mobile devices.
WebKit is web rendering software that is used on Google Android, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Palm WebOS, etc. BlackBerry devices are good at e-mail, but lack a solid browser. However rumor has it that Research In Motion wants to get Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight running on their browsers.
