Despite the more recent releases of the Curve 8500 series and the Curve 3G, RIM has never really offered up a true successor to the venerable Curve 8900 — a device some would argue remains the prettiest that Waterloo has ever manufactured. Indeed, with the QVGA display and meager cam on the 3G, there’s a pretty magnificent gap between it and the business-class Bold 9700 / 9780… so we’re pretty excited to see a new model called the Curve 8980 get FCC approval. Oh, and what’s more, the filing’s now got access to a user’s manual and external shots where you can definitely picture this as being a proper optical pad-equipped follow-on to the 8900 of old, complete with a 3.2 megapixel Read the rest of this entry »

Rest easy, folks: we know it’s pointy at the bottom, but we’ve been assured this isn’t the BlackBerry 7100′s true successor. Instead, the so-called Empathy is the bizarre outcome of a RIM-sponsored design project at the Art Center College of Design that touts its ability to detect the emotions of its user and his or her contacts. It’s not exactly clear how it’d do that, but one crucial element is the biometric feedback ring that communicates your frustration at the phone’s inability to properly sync IMAP accounts in real time. All of this anger and joy is displayed on a social map — colored rings indicate your contacts’ previous and current emotional states — which is presented on a full Read the rest of this entry »

Today at Research In Motion’s annual BlackBerry Developer Conference, CEO Mike Lazaridis announced the company’s new tablet — the PlayBook. The tablet will utilize an OS created by the recently acquired QNX (just as we’d heard previous to the announcement) called the BlackBerry Tablet OS which will offer full OpenGL and POSIX support alongside web standards such as HTML5 (which is all tied into RIM’s new WebWorks SDK). Lazaridis was joined on stage by the company’s founder, Dan Dodge, who said that “QNX is going to enable things that you have never seen before,” and added that the PlayBook would be “an incredible gaming platform for publishers and the players.” RIM also touted the PlayBook’s ability to handle Flash content via Flash 10.1, as well as Adobe AIR apps. The new slate — which Lazaridis Read the rest of this entry »

RIM has official announced the BlackBerry 6 operating system which debuts on the new BlackBerry Torch phone.

BlackBerry 6 features “a redesigned interface that seamlessly works with a touch screen and trackpad, expanded messaging capabilities that simplify managing social media and RSS feeds, an advanced multimedia experience that rivals the best in the industry, a convenient new Universal Search tool, and a new and efficient WebKit-based browser that renders web pages quickly and beautifully for a great browsing experience.”
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It’s certainly not the first time we’ve seen this here BlackBerry (with “this here” meaning “Curve 9300″), but it’s the first time we’ve seen it outfitted in carrier clothing. Notice that T-Mobile logo at the bottom? That’s the clearest indication yet that this particular ‘Berry will soon be headed to T-Mob, but given that it’s unlikely to support an upgrade to BlackBerry OS 6, your off-the-chart excitement level may indeed be unwarranted. At any rate, we’re also hearing that Rogers in Canada will Read the rest of this entry »

Take this one with a grain of salt, but it’s looking like our old friend the BlackBerry Bold 9700 is getting a wee bit of an update. Yesterday evening, CrackBerry discovered a RIM document that describes a QWERTY-packing, OS 6-rocking “BlackBerry 9780″ destined for a GSM carrier near you… and less than 24 hours later, handset sleuth Salomondrin claims to have the first picture of the device. While we quite honestly can’t tell the difference, the man who outed the Curve 2 says Read the rest of this entry »

Yeah, we know that the Prez was once seen rocking a Verizon-branded BlackBerry 8830, but just bend your mind a bit and bear with us. Shortly after lighting up Wall Street with an exceedingly excellent quarterly earnings report, AT&T has announced an Encrypted Mobile Voice service that’ll hit later in the year. Assuming Obama actually does own an AT&T-branded ‘Berry, he’ll soon be able to enjoy what AT&T calls “the first mobile-to-mobile voice encryption solution using two-factor authentication offered by a US operator.” Said service is expected to provide a higher level of security for calls across the AT&T wireless network, and naturally, it’ll be shopped to government agencies, law enforcement organizations, Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve just been sent a mother lode of shots of RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry 9800 — a phone whose market name is still unknown — but whether it’s called the Bold, the Torch, or something else altogether, we think we’re looking at near-final hardware here. The software is identified as version 0.9, but you can clearly tell from the UI that it’s running BlackBerry 6 with an ever-so-slightly refined look and subtle 3D elements missing from prior releases. This particular phone is AT&T-branded, and it starts up with a carrier logo screen that proudly proclaims the 9800 a world phone — sure enough, the About screen shows support for WCDMA bands I, II, V, and VI, which means you’ll be able to use the phone for 3G Read the rest of this entry »

BlackBerry lovers, are you sitting at home on a Friday night itching for the latest device scoop? Or out but glued to your screen checking news sites in between BBM relays? Looks like TechnoBuffalo (with a little help from Negri Electronics) has you covered: hands-on time with the Curve 9300. This prototype 8500 replacement has T-Mobile UK bands and is actually working (although with OS 5 at the moment). Compared with its predecessor, the keyboard is apparently improved, the Read the rest of this entry »

First it was the rozzers, now British bin men are getting BlackBerrys as part of their job equipment pack. Biffa, a private garbage collection firm responsible for cleaning up 25 local authorities around the UK, has agreed a £1.7 million ($2.44 million) deal with Vodafone for the provision of some 1,500 BlackBerry handsets along with dongles and 3G data cards. This somewhat curious capital investment has been made in order to allow drivers to download maps, collect data from Read the rest of this entry »