The long-rumored BlackBerry Torch just went live on ATT's site offering the opportunity to sign up for a notification when you can buy the thing. Major features include a 5 megapixel cam with flash, full QWERTY on a portrait slide, 802.11n support, and BlackBerry 6 with an all-new browsing experience and a host of other features that should help position RIM within earshot of its less-stodgy rivals. You've also got 4GB of storage onboard paired with a 4GB microSD card in the box, 512MB each of ROM and RAM, a quadband 3G radio that'll travel well around the globe, a 480 x 360 touchscreen display (same resolution as the Bold 9700) measuring 3.2 inches, the typical optical trackpad down below, and an interesting new Media Sync feature that'll let you sync your media library right over WiFi something various third parties have tried over the years, but has rarely been offered as an out-of-the-box capability. Follow the break for RIM's introductory videos.
Introducing the biggest leap yet in BlackBerry evolution the Torch.
- World premier BlackBerry in slider form factor with touch screen plus QWERTY keyboard and optical trackpad
- BlackBerry 6 OS with all-new browser featuring tabbed browsing for access to multiple web pages at the same time and pinch-to-zoom capability
- First BlackBerry with next-generation messaging including group messaging for up to 10 people and locations
- Social networking feed application for one view of all your favorite sites such as Facebook®, Twitter™ and MySpace®
- Integrated search from home screen
- 5 MP camera with flash, autofocus, and environment settings
- Latest Wi-Fi "N" network support (Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n) for home, office, and on the nation’s fastest Wi-Fi network with more than 20,000 AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spots nationwide
It may not be the EX112 / EX115 they seem to be getting down in Brazil, but the Motorola Grasp isn't far off, proving that Motorola's still committed to delivering non-Android phones in market segments where... well, Android might kinda be overkill. The CDMA / EV-DO phone is capable of operating both on 800 / 1900MHz and on AWS bands, meaning we wouldn't be surprised to see it land on regionals likeMetroPCS where AWS has started to play a prominent role. It's got a 1.3 megapixel cam, 3.5mm headphone jack, AGPS, stereo Bluetooth, microSD expansion to 8GB, and -- something Moto has been playing up since the Renew -- an eco-friendly design with a completely recyclable shell when you've finished texting on that QWERTY keypad for the last time. Look for it to launch this quarter.
After the news came out that the United Arab Emirates was to ban Blackberry use in the country some may have wondered whether this would affect visitors and tourists or just nationals. Well wonder no more, the ban will indeed apply to everyone, tourists included. To be specific the ban focuses on Blackberry data services, not calls, so you should still be able to use voice calls, but of course the whole point of a Blackberry is email and other data services. It's an odd move for a country that depends so much on international commerce and with business travellers jetting in and out it won't be long before the ban starts to grate on those travellers. Of course a deal might be reached at some point, but until/unless it does it looks like you won't be checking your email in the UAE.
Nielsen have released their numbers for the American mobile market and the picture isn't looking too rosy for RIM, maker of the popular Blackberry series of smartphones. RIM commands around 23% of smartphone sales to new smartphone customers according to RIM, but crucially it's customer loyalty that has taken a very hard hit over in RIM's camp. Some 42% of Blackberry owners say they plan on renewing their handset with another Blackberry. To give that figure some context the corresponding figure for Android users is 71% and for the iPhone it's a very safe 89%. So where are all those Blackberry deserters going? Well 29% say they will opt for an iPhone and 21% say they will plump for Android. Looking at those abandoning Android and the iPhone only 3% and 2% respectively say they will choose a Blackberry. If RIM doesn't want to see its market share drain away fast they'd better hope Blackberry OS6 and the spate of new handsets running it reverse the rot.
Windows Phone 7 has generally been received warmly from the few interactions with it that have been made public. Not everyone has taken to it though and that camp have another thing to add to their list of reasons for thinking Win Phone 7 will be a bit of a damp squib. It seems that HTML emails are playing as nicely on Win Phone 7 as they did on the old Windows Mobile paltform. That is to say not very nicely at all. The sticking point comes with images, which Win Phone 7 apparently doesn't download automatically. Sure you can select to download them yourself, but it is a bit annoying to have to do it every time, especially given that both Android and iOS allow automatic image downloads in HTML emails. It's all allegedly to do with security so this doesn't look like something that is going to change before the official launch later this year.
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