Worth Reading?
So the BlackBerry 8820 is soon to be released on AT&T and someone that is supposedly and insider has outed the notion that the integrated GPS in the 8820 may be crippled by a monthly service fee in order to keep iPhone sales up. I personally think this is ludicrous.
There are several reasons for buying an iPhone, the music capabilities the highly innovative touchscreen, the simple fashion statement it makes. What I cannot come up with is one reason where the iPhone and any BlackBerry would ever compete for customers. Sure the BlackBerry has a lot of great features, features that maximize it’s usefulness for its intended audience, but I cannot think of one that would cause someone to walk into an AT&T store with the intention of purchasing and iPhone and suddenly be swayed to buy a BlackBerry.
I guess the deal is that AT&T is going to tie the GPS in the 8820 to TeleNav and charge customers $9.99/month to use it. Now I don’t know if this means what some have been implicating, who knows, maybe the BlackBerry doesn’t come with software to utilize the GPS technology inside it and the $9.99 fee is really only a charge from TeleNav and AT&T providing that software. Regardless, if AT&T is pulling such hijinks just to push sales of a $600 iPhone then I suspect a large number of their customers to be moving over to Sprint, not only to they have better data network coverage, but they are working on a WiMax network.
AT&T crippling GPS in BlackBerry 8820? [via boygeniusreport]
Why not? Verizon and Sprint cripple it on the 8830.
Cellphone Carriers suck.
Oh, and RIM says the autonomous GPS works with blackberry maps with the 8830, I’d assume the 8820 is no different.