We first saw a mock up of the BlackBerry London a couple months ago. London is the code-name for the first BlackBerry 10 smartphone, which is expected to launch later this year. Now curiosity of CrackBerry, a new image of BlackBerry London has leaked out, and it appears to be right from an internal presentation. As you can see the latest version of London looks like a BlackBerry PlayBook and phone all-in-one. Some are even saying it looks a lot like the Android powered Motorola Droid X. There wasn’t too many details to go along with the slide, but rumors are pointing to powerful 1.5GHz dual core processors, powered by TI (for HSPA/LTE) and Qualcomm (for CDMA). Sadly it looks like we’ve got quiet the wait ahead of us before the BlackBerry 10 smartphones launch. With any luck a live hands-on photo will arrive sooner than later… Stay tuned.

An eighteen year old from Essex was charged with using BBM to encourage others to take part in the riot. While one of the first, there’s also a Southampton man, aged 27, who was also charged for the same thing. What are the details?

In England, the BIS service is cheaper than texting and teenagers account for 37% of the market. The police already have the powers to access stored data and monitor social networks in real time under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. The eighteen year old and 27 year old were accused of intentionally encouraging or assisting in the commission of an offence under the Serious Crime Act 2007. BBM is a great social medium, and can be abused as well according to the events.

RIM had offered to help the police and investigations as much as they could. David Lammy the Labour MP of Tottenham, called for BBM to be shut down during the heat of the riots.

Whether RIM assisted with the investigation or the charged suspects had openly admitted to someone else isn’t known at this time, but BBM was part of the charge.

If RIM did assist the police with investigations and hand over the BBM records, how secure is that, and what about the freedom of speech? How do you feel about the incident? How do you feel about a social medium such as BBM being used to plan and encourage such random acts?

[via: The Telegraph]

Bold 9700 (left) and Bold Touch (right)

The BlackBerry Bold Touch (aka Dakota or Montana) has been rumored for a long time now. Then a few weeks ago, we started to hear about some new specs for the Bold Touch series. Now the folks at N4BB have come across the first live pics of the BlackBerry Bold Touch! It’s a slim device take brings the classic Bold 9000 form factor, into the more modern age with a trackpad and 3.8″ touchscreen. It’s also been rumored the Bold Touch will sport the upcoming BlackBerry OS 6.1, and feature a magnetometer, accelerometer, proximity sensor, NFC (near field communication), 512MB of RAM, and a 5.0 megapixel camera.

It’s also still unclear what processor this device will be running by the time it ships, but earlier rumors indicated RIM’s upcoming models would get a significant upgrade in processing power. All I can say is I love the look of the device so far, and I can’t wait to use this side-by-side with a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

While CDMA smartphones have pretty much died off here in Canada, in the United States its a different story. Both Verizon and Sprint still fully support their CDMA networks, and both will need new BlackBerry smartphones in the near future. Today RIM’s BlackBerry Roadmap for 2011 has leaked on included in the images is a ton of CDMA smartphones, including new code names like Montana, Monaco, Sedona, Malibu.

Our friends at CrackBerry have cleared up a lot of the device rumors and get some internal slides of the new devices…

• The BlackBerry Bold Touch: Code-named Dakota for GSM version, and Montana is the CDMA version
• The next generation Curve: Code-named Apollo for the GSM version, and Sedona is the CDMA version
• The new Curve Touch: Code-named Malibu, and is the new entry level CDMA touchscreen smartphone. There is no word on a GSM version yet.

I think we’re going to see that a lot of people don’t really have interest in CDMA smartphones, as companies like Verizon overlay their LTE network late this year, but until then some of these devices should have off peoples BlackBerry cravings. Normally with CDMA devices, the GSM versions launch quiet a few months before, so I guess we will have to wait and see if the same will happen with many of these.

What do you think of RIM’s 2011 CDMA lineup? Does anything there interest you?

Once again RIM has taken a few minutes to show off the BlackBerry PlayBook, and its awesome web browsing experience. The video that RIM posted today is about 3 minutes long, and shows the PlayBook’s browser handling VideoJS.com and the full Facebook website (flash and all) without any issues. The video evens demos flash games found in the Facebook game page. The PlayBook manages to handle the websites without even blinking. All I can say is the PlayBook just keeps looking better and better ever time I see it…

[via Inside BlackBerry]

It looks like RIM has heard the cries of many people such as myself, because today RIM unveiled BlackBerry News Feeds, a new easy to use app that brings all of your RSS feeds into one simple app. It finally appears that RIM’s purchase of Viigo has been brought into play. Sadly RIM has decided to not include support for Google reader as of now. Let’s hope that changes with future releases…

Starting today you can grab a copy of BlackBerry News Feeds for free from BlackBerry App World.

This is the first time I can recall RIM actually launching a free BlackBerry theme targeted around a holiday or season. RIM has just published the BlackBerry Exclusive Holiday Theme called Let It Snow Blue. It’s available for pretty much any BlackBerry with OS 4.5 or higher. This includes the new BlackBerry Torch. It’s a pretty nice theme! You can the theme completely free from BlackBerry App World.

via Al Sacco’s Twitter

Warning: The following photos will instantly make you want a PlayBook.

BGR managed to spot some (sort of) hands-on time with the new BlackBerry PlayBook, and although they weren’t allowed to physically touch it, they did managed to get some amazing shots of it. The pictures really show you how the BlackBerry PlayBook and the Tablet (QNX powered) OS looks and feels. As you can see from the picture above the PlayBook has a beautiful multimedia experience on the device, and the tablet itself is really quite small and compact. Check out some more of the pictures below or head over to BGR.com for all the pics.

UPDATED: Check out the BlackBerry PlayBook hands-on video by BGR by pressing read more.

UPDATED: BGR has also just posted up a high-res 1080p quality video of the PlayBook. It’s just under 10 minutes long, and gives you a great look at the PlayBook.. Enjoy!

I’m a little jealous right now! Someone from the CrackBerry team managed to spend a few minutes with the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook in New York City today. As you can see from the video its just more proof that the PlayBook is almost ready to go, and works very smooth. The video is just over a minute and half long and is a great watch for anyone dying to get their hands-on the PlayBook. Enjoy!

So what are your thoughts? Will you miss ICQ for BlackBerry?

[via BBRocks]