Recent BlackBerry News
BlackBerry Curve to launch on Rogers Wireless soon…
Looks like Canada’s Rogers Wireless is about to get their hands on the BlackBerry Curve real soon. Photos taken over at BlackBerryCool show Rogers branding already on the newly announced BlackBerry 8300 “Curve”. In case you haven’t read about the Curve yet its the Pearl’s bigger brother offering newly enhanced multimedia features and full QWERTY keyboard design.Launch details haven’t been announced by either RIM or Rogers as of yet but we do expect it real soon.
Introducing the BlackBerry Curve (8300) officially
RIM has officially announced the BlackBerry Curve (8300) this morning. The BlackBerry Curve is their smallest and lightest device to date. It comes packed with a 2 megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth (A2DP), a newly designed media player, a 3.5mm headphones jack and high resolution 320×240 colour display.
Key Features:
- Quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900)
- 2 megapixel camera with 5x digital zoom and flash1
- Flickr account picture uploading
- New media player with Roxio Photosuite® 9 LE
- 111g in weight / 107mm x 60 mm x 15.5 mm
- 64MB Flash memory, microSD memory card slo
The BlackBerry Curve will be available on AT&T starting this Spring. We should see it appear on other networks soon. Read more for the full press release. BlackBerryCurve.com is now live as well.
Telus Mobility announces BlackBerry 8830 World Edition
Now both Bell and Telus in Canada have announced the BlackBerry 8830 World Edition. According to a file sent to us from a employee of Telus they have officially spread the word on the new 8830.
From Telus announcement:
Whats new?
• International roaming on GSM/GPRS (900/1800 MHz)
• Trackball navigation
• Improved battery life
• Voice-activated dialling
• Removable micro SD memory
Details from the release don’t give us an exact release date however its expected to be priced at $499 with three year contract. They say watch this summer for the release. Stay tuned for a official press release from Telus today.
Navizon’s “GPS” system for BlackBerries
Just because everyone can’t have the new GPS-equipped 8800 series yet. Navizon has released a new GPS software for any BlackBerry that doesn’t use satellites to track your location it uses your cellular tower.
“The release of Navizon for Blackberry devices is a very important development for our community of users”, said Cyril Houri, Founder and CEO of Mexens Technology. “By supporting this new platform, Navizon is now accessible to a vast majority of smartphone and PDA owners, making Location-Based services on wireless handhelds a reality even for users who don’t have a GPS-enabled phoned”.
The software is available for only $24.99 USD, visit Navizon.com from your handheld device to get a free 15 day trial.
Via CrackBerry.com
More information arises about BlackBerry 8300
Well Boy Genius is always good for the inside news. This time he has confirmed that the rumored BlackBerry 8300 (shown above) will fact be marketed as “BlackBerry Curve”. RIM is trying to aim the Curve at a consumer and business type market. RIM has registered both BlackBerry8300.com and BlackBerryCurve.com however the sites aren’t directed anywheres yet.It’s expected the BlackBerry Curve will be launched at WES (Wireless Enterprise Symposium) 2007, which starts May 8th in Orlando.
HTC Hermes BlackBerry Connect
AT&T 8525 users got great news from HTC (the phones actual manufacture) yesterday. HTC announced a new firmware upgrade is available for the device adding several new features including BlackBerry Connect. Other features activated on the HTC Hermes aka AT&T (Cingular) 8525 is PTT (Push-To-Talk).
Information on BlackBerry Connect. To get the software upgrade click here.
Via BlackBerryCool
RIM patents new “image-stitching” technology for images
Looks like RIM has got a new patent for a image grouping technology which we may see on future BlackBerries. Russell Shaw over at ZDNet pointed it out on his blog. RIM calls this technology “image-stitching for mobile electronic devices”. Basically in short it merges several images on a webpage into one single image causing less data to be used.
From RIM’s filing a description of how it works:
A device and method for modifying content for use on a mobile electronic device. The content includes (i) a plurality of content image files each including graphics information for generating an associated image and (ii) computer instructions including references to the plurality of image files for causing the associated images to be displayed on a display screen.
A plurality of image files are selected from the content that can be combined together to form a single image file that will have a smaller file size than the sum of the file sizes of the selected image files. The selected image files are combined into a single merged image file. The computer instructions are amended to accommodate the merged image file.
For more information on this patent visit Russell’s Blog
MySpaceIM gets added to IM+
Just as Facebook starts to dominate the millions of MySpace users, Shape Services creator of IM+ have announced support for MySpace instant messenger.IM+ now officially supports nine different platforms including MSN, ICQ, AIM, iChat, Yahoo!, Jabber, ICQ, Google Talk and MySpaceIM. Check out IM+ for a free trial or purchase for only $49.95 USD.
Tip: Six easy steps to preventing Gmail sent items in your inbox
If you like me and you use Gmail as your mail email account you can set it up on your BlackBerry. HOWEVER when you do set it up it gets highly annoying because everytime you send an email it comes back to you as a new message. Well a moderator by the name of Pizzle over at BlackBerryForums.com has posted how to setup a filter to stop the annoying sent mail returning to you.
The six easy steps:
- Login to your BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) you can find the links on the sidebar —>
- Find your gmail account and click on filters
- Enter the filter name “no sent mail gmail”
- Select the “from” field from the drop down menu
- Under contains enter your @gmail.com email address, then simply select “do not forward messages to handheld”.
- Click save and your done!
Read the full post over at BlackBerryForums.com for picture instructions.
at&t’s BlackBerry 8800 vs. 8830 comparison sheet
Boy Genius has posted on his site an internal document from at&t comparing both the GSM BlackBerry 8800 and it’s CDMA cousin the 8830 (soon to offered by Verizon and Sprint). This sheet compares the two side by side and also very openly admits that AT&T will in fact be seeing a 8820 with Wi-Fi in Q3 of 2007.
So whats the big differences you ask? The BlackBerry 8800 will feature a more powerful processor 312MHz processor where as the 8830 will have a 225 MHz processor, They claim the 8830 doesn’t have GPS in it however we believe it will, The 8800 will have PTT (push to talk) and the 8830 won’t, other than that talk and stand by time (seems the 8800 wins, yet again). However the 8830 does provide much faster data with EV-DO. Click on the picture to see the full table.
