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BlackBerry Curve 8980 shows up in FCC

admin — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 16:11:26 +0000

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 cam with flash and — if we had to guess — a high-res display adopted either from the 9780 or the 8900. No word on a release, but here’s the kicker: as far as we can tell from the filing, it’s EDGE-only just like the device it replaces, which is pretty inexcusable for a device that’d presumably be released in 2011. Add 3G, though, and they’ve got a desperately-needed new model to slot in underneath the Bold.

BlackBerry Empathy Design Concept

admin — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 15:20:02 +0000

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

touchscreen that can become transparent when the phone’s not in use. Prefer the Bold to the Storm, do you? Turn the phone around, and boom, you’ve got one of the scariest looking portrait QWERTY keyboards the world has ever seen. We don’t really anticipate seeing this chiseled slab of bleeding-heart technology in RIM’s lineup any time soon… but we can definitely see the benefit to knowing when your BBM contacts are ready to put a fist through a wall. Follow the break for video.

Motorola’s Oasis headset announced: for $80

admin — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:23:12 +0000

If you don’t actually want to be able to feel that you’ve got a Bluetooth earbud hanging off the side of your head, you might want to take a look at the Motorola Oasis, a new boom-style headset announced today. Though it lacks the HX1′s so-called “stealth mode” that uses bone conduction to practically eliminate every sound other than your voice, the Oasis is still rated for 12mph of wind resistance and uses dual mics to cancel spurious noise. It’ll be available starting October 3 (as an AT&T store exclusive initially) for $79.99, positioning it toward the upper end of the Bluetooth midrange.

We’ve got to admit, this is probably the most comfortable, easy-to-wear Bluetooth headset we’ve used to date. The over-the-ear design guarantees that it’s not going to dislodge or tilt out of your ear at a weird angle (something we’re accustomed to with in-ear units, particularly those that don’t have hoops), and the parts that make contact with your skin are coated in a nice soft-touch material. Moto says that it has a “database of over 500 ears” (not a phrase you hear every day) that it used to help design the Oasis for maximum comfort, and for all intents and purposes, the effort seems to have paid off.

It features voice prompts to assist with pairing and to convey battery information — the same voice and style found on other recent Motorolas — and although it lacks A2DP support, we suspect that very few mono headset users care about that. In addition to volume keys on the rear and a call button atop the short chrome boom, the Oasis has a dedicated mute button in the upper back corner and a micro-USB port protected by a rubber flap toward the bottom. Both the boom and earbud rotate independently, for storage and also to support either left or right ear use. All told, it seems these guys put some serious thought into the Oasis’ design — so if you think you could see yourself in a boom-style Bluetooth headset, you’ll want to check it out.

Amazon bringing Kindle app to BlackBerry PlayBook

admin — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:16:41 +0000

One of the great original fears when Amazon built the Kindle was that they were after some iTunes / iPod-style walled garden ecosystem. And while, sure, Kindle is a walled garden ecosystem, those walls sure are extensive! Amazon just announced that it will be supporting the new BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, in addition to the BlackBerry mobile app they’ve already got. There aren’t any specific details about this app, but Amazon is all about the consistent user experience, with features like WhisperSync keeping your copy of Neal Stephenson perfectly synced across a myriad of devices, so there’s nothing much to say we suppose. We are sure, however, that page turns will be blazing with that dual core processor.

RIM announces WebWorks

admin — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:14:11 +0000

RIM’s BlackBerry Developer Conference is going down this week in San Francisco, and as you might expect from a developer-focused event, there are a handful of newsy items that’ll affect the development community first and consumers down the road. Here’s a roundup of what’s what:

* WebWorks development platform. From what we’ve heard of this so far, it’s basically a quick way for web devs to get into the BlackBerry app game by offering a tightly-integrated platform for HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript code with hooks to native BlackBerry OS functions and a packager for turning them into “real” BlackBerry apps.
* BlackBerry Messenger Social Platform. RIM’s historically held BBM very, very close to the chest, but it’s starting to open up a tad with this particular announce. Don’t look for BBM on other platforms (yes, we know that’s what some of you were hoping to hear), but third-party app developers will now be able to tap into the system for sending and receiving messages, files, user profiles, and invitations. Interestingly, the company is pitching it as a platform for multiplayer gaming, using BBM as a conduit to move information between devices in real time.
* BlackBerry Advertising Service. Google bought AdMob and Apple bought Quattro, but RIM’s taking a more democratic approach to its advertising platform, allowing both “simple” and “rich media” ads to be served from a handful of providers “with only three lines of code.” It’ll be a 60 / 40 revenue split between devs and RIM.
* BlackBerry Payment Service SDK. This one’s launching in beta this week, bringing third-party in-app payments over credit card, PayPal, and carrier billing (available on AT&T right now, more carriers by the end of the year). It’ll be out of beta before 2010′s out.

Nothing on the so-called BlackPad so far, but at any rate, seems like this roundup is great news for anyone looking to slide some content into App World over the next few months.

PlayBook — the BlackBerry tablet

admin — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:07:00 +0000

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 described as “the first professional tablet” — will sport a 7-inch, 1024 x 600, capacitive multitouch display, a Cortex A9-based, dual-core 1GHz CPU (the company calls it the “fastest tablet ever”), 1GB of RAM, and a 3 megapixel front-facing camera along with a 5 megapixel rear lens (and yes, there will be video conferencing). There was no mention of onboard storage capacity during the keynote, though the devices we just spied in our eyes-on post are labeled 16GB and 32GB on their back panels. The PlayBook will be capable of 1080p HD video, and comes equipped with an HDMI port as well as a microUSB jack, 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi, and Bluetooth 2.1. The device clocks in at a svelte 5.1- by 7.6-inches, is only 0.4-inches thick, and weighs just 400g (or about 0.9 pounds).

In terms of interface, the OS looks like a mashup of webOS and the BlackBerry OS, even allowing for multitasking via what amounts to a “card” view. Interestingly, RIM and QNX boasted of the PlayBook’s multimedia and gaming functions, but Mike Lazaridis also described the tablet as “an amplified view of what’s already on your BlackBerry.” That’s due largely in part to a function of the tablet which allows you to siphon data off of your BlackBerry handset via Bluetooth tethering and display it on your PlayBook (a la the ill-fated Palm Foleo). While the PlayBook doesn’t seem to rely on phone content alone, the press release from the company says that users can “use their tablet and smartphone interchangeably without worrying about syncing or duplicating data.” RIM didn’t hand out any solid launch dates beyond “early 2011,” and of course, there was no mention of retail price. We’ve got a slew of content after the break, including the PlayBook spec rundown, the company’s press release, and a full video of the device (and UI) in action — so take a look!

7-inch LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
1 GHz dual-core processor
1 GB RAM
Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
HDMI video output
Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, Java
Ultra thin and portable:
Measures 5.1″x7.6″x0.4″ (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)
RIM intends to also offer 3G and 4G models in the future.

PRESS RELEASE

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA–(Marketwire – 09/27/10) – BlackBerry DEVCON 2010 -

Editors Note: There is a video and two photos available with this Press Release.

Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ:RIMM – News)(TSX:RIM – News) today redefined the possibilities for mobile computing with the unveiling of its new professional-grade BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet and BlackBerry® Tablet OS.

Perfect for either large organizations or an “army of one”, the BlackBerry PlayBook is designed to give users what they want, including uncompromised web browsing, true multitasking and high performance multimedia, while also providing advanced security features, out-of-the-box enterprise support and a breakthrough development platform for IT departments and developers. The incredibly powerful and innovative BlackBerry PlayBook is truly a game-changing product in the growing tablet marketplace.

“RIM set out to engineer the best professional-grade tablet in the industry with cutting-edge hardware features and one of the world’s most robust and flexible operating systems,” said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion. “The BlackBerry PlayBook solidly hits the mark with industry leading power, true multitasking, uncompromised web browsing and high performance multimedia.”

The Tablet You’ll Want to Take Everywhere

This beautifully designed and incredibly powerful tablet is ultra portable, ultra thin and super convenient for both work and play. Measuring less than half an inch thick and weighing less than a pound, the BlackBerry PlayBook features a vivid 7″ high resolution display that looks and feels great in your hand. With such a unique mix of utility, performance and portability, you’ll want to take it everywhere.

The New Benchmark in Tablet Performance

At its heart, the BlackBerry PlayBook is a multitasking powerhouse. Its groundbreaking performance is jointly fueled by a 1 GHz dual-core processor and the new BlackBerry Tablet OS which supports true symmetric multiprocessing. Together, the abundant processing power and highly sophisticated OS enable the BlackBerry PlayBook to provide users with true multitasking and a highly-responsive and fluid touch screen experience for apps and content services.

Uncompromised Web Browsing

With support for Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1, Adobe® Mobile AIR® and HTML-5, the BlackBerry PlayBook provides customers with an uncompromised, high-fidelity web experience and offers them the ability to enjoy all of the sites, games and media on the web. For more than a decade, the mobile industry has worked to bridge the gap between the “real web” and mobile devices through various apps and technologies and, in fact, a significant number of mobile apps today still simply serve as a proxy for web content that already exists on the web. The BlackBerry PlayBook closes that gap and brings the real, full web experience to mobile users while also opening new and more exciting opportunities for developers and content publishers.

High Performance Multimedia

The BlackBerry PlayBook features premium multimedia features to support high-quality mobile experiences. It includes dual HD cameras for video capture and video conferencing that can both record HD video at the same time, and an HDMI-out port for presenting one’s creations on external displays. The BlackBerry PlayBook also offers rich stereo sound and a media player that rivals the best in the industry.

BlackBerry Integration

For those BlackBerry PlayBook users who carry a BlackBerry smartphone(i), it will also be possible to pair their tablet and smartphone using a secure Bluetooth® connection. This means they can opt to use the larger tablet display to seamlessly and securely view any of the email, BBM™, calendar, tasks, documents and other content that resides on (or is accessible through) their smartphone. They can also use their tablet and smartphone interchangeably without worrying about syncing or duplicating data. This secure integration of BlackBerry tablets and smartphones is a particularly useful feature for those business users who want to leave their laptop behind.

Enterprise Ready

Thanks to the seamless and secure Bluetooth pairing experience and the highly secure underlying OS architecture, the BlackBerry PlayBook is enterprise ready and compatible (out-of-the-box) with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server. When connected over Bluetooth, the smartphone content is viewable on the tablet, but the content actually remains stored on the BlackBerry smartphone and is only temporarily cached on the tablet (and subject to IT policy controls). With this approach to information security, IT departments can deploy the BlackBerry PlayBook to employees out-of-the-box without worrying about all the security and manageability issues that arise when corporate data is stored on yet another device.

QNX Neutrino Reliability

The BlackBerry Tablet OS is built upon the QNX® Neutrino® microkernel architecture, one of the most reliable, secure and robust operating system architectures in the world. Neutrino has been field hardened for years and is being used to support mission-critical applications in everything from planes, trains and automobiles to medical equipment and the largest core routers that run the Internet. The new BlackBerry Tablet OS leverages and builds upon the many proven strengths of this QNX Neutrino architecture to support a professional grade tablet experience and to redefine the possibilities for mobile computing.

An OS Built for Developers

The Neutrino based microkernel architecture in the BlackBerry Tablet OS delivers exceptional performance, high scalability, Common Criteria EAL 4+ security, and support for industry standard tools that are already familiar to hundreds of thousands of developers. The OS is fully POSIX compliant enabling easy portability of C-based code, supports Open GL for 2D and 3D graphics intensive applications like gaming, and will run applications built in Adobe Mobile AIR as well as the new BlackBerry® WebWorks™ app platform announced today (which will allow apps to be written to run on BlackBerry PlayBook tablets as well as BlackBerry smartphones with BlackBerry® 6). The BlackBerry Tablet OS will also support Java enabling developers to easily bring their existing BlackBerry 6 Java applications to the BlackBerry Tablet OS environment.

Key features and specifications of the BlackBerry PlayBook include:

– 7″ LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch
and gesture support
– BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
– 1 GHz dual-core processor
– 1 GB RAM
– Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD
video recording
– Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
– Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
– HDMI video output
– Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n
– Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
– Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
– Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5,
Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL,
Java
– Ultra thin and portable:
– Measures 5.1″x7.6″x0.4″ (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
– Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)
– Additional features and specifications of the BlackBerry PlayBook will
be shared on or before the date this product is launched in retail
outlets.
– RIM intends to also offer 3G and 4G models in the future.

Availability

The BlackBerry PlayBook is expected to be available in retail outlets and other channels in the United States in early 2011 with rollouts in other international markets beginning in (calendar) Q2.

RIM will begin working with developers and select corporate customers next month to begin development and early testing efforts.

The BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK is planned for release in the coming weeks and developers can register for early access at www.blackberry.com/developers/tabletos.

For more information, visit www.blackberry.com/playbook.

RIM launches BlackBerry 6 platform

admin — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:38:50 +0000

It’s been teased since WES back in April — but with the launch of the Torch today, RIM had to come clean with all the details on its thoroughly refreshed BlackBerry 6 operating system, too. Besides the obvious name change from “BlackBerry OS” to simply “BlackBerry,” the software features countless updates, most notably new universal search functionality, social network aggregation, WiFi-powered media sync with your desktop music collection, and an all-new (and desperately needed) WebKit-based browser with support for HTML5. Thankfully, RIM has also committed to bringing BlackBerry 6 as an upgrade to at least a few recent models — the Bold 9700, Bold 9650, and Pearl 3G, to be specific — “subject to carrier certifications in the months ahead.” Follow the break for the full press release and video teaser.

RIM Announces BlackBerry 6 OS, BlackBerry Torch

admin — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:30:09 +0000

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.”

The new operating system launches on the BlackBerry Torch, a 3.2″ 360×480 capacitive touch screen device with slide out 35 key full QWERTY keyboard. The smartphone also features an optical trackpad, 624 Mhz processor with 512 MB Flash memory, 4GB built-in memory plug microSD/SDHD memory card slot, 5 MP camera with flash, 640×480 video recording, GPS, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.1.

For more information on BlackBerry 6, visit www.blackberry.com/6.

For more information about the BlackBerry Torch smartphone from AT&T, visit www.att.com/blackberrytorch.

RIM’s BlackBerry Curve 9300 spotted in T-Mobile

admin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 22:12:14 +0000

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 be snagging this at launch, but we’ll be passing along official details just as soon as we get them.

BlackBerry Bold 9780 leaks out with OS 6

admin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 22:09:48 +0000

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 this device’s chrome bezel is a tad darker than the original, and that it’ll have 512MB of flash memory when it hits the scene. Of course, this could just be an Bold 9700 with a hacked ROM or a theme of some sort, but we certainly hope not; pepper it up with CDMA, and you’ve got a shoe-in for the Curve 3.