What looked like a drizzle last night seems to be turning into a full on downpour. The folks over at BlackBerry Leaks have gotten themselves even more facetime with that mysterious BlackBerry slider device — and it looks a lot better than we thought. Right now the theories are flying about just exactly what kind of phone this is, with BBL suggesting it might be the next phone in the Storm family, while Kevin over at CrackBerry has it on good authority that this new handset will be Read the rest of this entry »

We managed to track down the guys from Canada’s Allerta and got to spend some time with a couple dummy models of the soon-to-be-released inPulse smartwatch for BlackBerry. Design-wise, it’s very attractive, with a brushed metal body and a leather band. As a bonus to early orderers, the first 1,000 sold will be custom-milled on a CNC router — ironically, it’ll actually be more cost-effective for them to do it that way while they build up production volume. In terms of functionality, it will Read the rest of this entry »

For a company with the most starched, buttoned-up roots of any major wireless manufacturer, RIM’s venture out of its enterprise comfort zone to the consumer space went amazingly smoothly thanks to the introduction of the original Pearl, a phone that’s still sold in a variety of colors, configurations, and carriers to this day. At some point, though, it became clear that the industry was moving toward touch — a space RIM had never dabbled in — and the trend gave birth to the Storm, a product that had obviously been rushed to market with countless software bugs and a dodgy SurePress concept that caused more problems than it solved. With prototypes floating around in the wild mere months after its predecessor’s release, RIM’s Read the rest of this entry »

What is it with BlackBerries and seemingly premature reviews? After the Onyx got manhandled ahead of schedule, it’s the turn of its close relative, the trackpad-equipped 9700, which has been annointed as successor to the Bold. Boy Genius Report spared few superlatives in their examination of the hardware, which praises the 9700 as “the most gorgeous BlackBerry on the planet” and involves a size and feel comparison against the Tour. Their conclusion was that the new handset draws all the Read the rest of this entry »

The First ‘No Compromise’ BlackBerry Smartphone…

Pre-release review time! Rumors of the BlackBerry device model with the codename “Onyx” have been floating around for a while now and were proven legit when the first photos of it surfaced here at CrackBerry back on May 10th. After going hands-on with the Onyx, I think it’s safe to say THIS IS the traditional (no touchscreen) BlackBerry smartphone so many of us have been waiting for. It always seems that every new BlackBerry smartphone makes a compromise somewhere on its specifications and feature sheet – be it the Bold’s camera, or the Curve 8900’s lack of 3G, or the Tour 9630’s lack of WiFi, or the Storm’s lack of memory and snappy OS.

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