After rumors earlier this year about a BlackBerry Bluetooth watch, now CrackBerry have managed to acquire some renders of what’s tipped to be the wrist-worn peripheral itself. Believed to be called the inPulse, the watch won’t be made by or for RIM and won’t carry the BlackBerry logo, but it will be designed especially to work with the messaging-friendly smartphones.
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When Blackberry first unveiled its touchscreen only Storm it was hard to get away from the ads and commercials showing the new device off. Once the reviews came out and people realized that the Storm was one of the worst Blackberry devices ever, those who purchased were left with a handset that wasn't up to the typical Blackberry standards.
It’s beginning to get a little ridiculous now: after Walt Mossberg reviews the BlackBerry Storm 2 ahead of any official confirmation by RIM themselves that the device actually exists, now Vodafone UK have announced that they’ll be the first network to offer the second-generation touchscreen smartphone. Available to preorder from today, and with deliveries set to begin on October 26th, the Vodafone Blackberry Storm 2 9520 is priced from free with a new plan costing £35/mo ($56) upwards.
We’ll let you into a secret: embargoes are the janky, frustrating glue that keeps the tech business rolling, and it doesn’t take much to bring everything crashing down. Someone has obviously been fiddling with Walt Mossberg’s clocks, as the AllThingsD writer and generally bearded-lovely has pushed out his review of not only the Motorola CLIQ – you can read our opinion on that phone here – but of the BlackBerry Storm 2.
The review comes on the heels of Verizon’s CEO scooping RIM to their own Storm 2 announcement, as we discovered yesterday. There’s no way of knowing exactly whether Mossberg had special dispensation to publish early – it wouldn’t be the first time he’s had privileged access ahead of everyone else – but since we’re still hungry for Storm 2 details we’ll forgive him anyway.
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If the previews, demos and leaks weren't enough to convince you that RIM have a BlackBerry Storm 2 on the way, how about outright confirmation from Lowell C. McAdam, CEO of Verizon. The exec has revealed that he's been carrying the Storm 2 for the past few weeks, including giving impromptu demonstrations of the second-gen touchscreen smartphone at Verizon stores.
If you’re a player in the cellphone space then the J.D. Power Wireless Satisfaction Survey is your equivalent of the Miss World contest, and it looks like once again it’s Apple wearing the smartphone crown. The iPhone took first place in the smartphone study, both in the consumer and business segments, and neatly keeping RIM’s BlackBerry range in second place.
If there’s one thing we’re not going to tire of any time soon, it’s leaked in-the-wild shots of RIM’s upcoming uber-BlackBerry, the 9700 (aka Onyx). Spotted this time by DailyMobile.se, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 isn’t offering up any new secrets this time around, but it’s certainly looking slick with its full QWERTY keyboard, bright display and optical trackpad.
Adobe have upgraded their Flash offensive, with the news this week that the next version – Flash 10.1 – will run across not only desktop but mobile and smartphone platforms. Taking advantage of the Open Screen Project (OSP), the new version will arrive as a Windows Mobile and webOS beta before the year is out, while early in 2010 we’ll get Android and Symbian versions. Finally, while there’s no release date for 10.1 yet given, RIM have signed up to the OSP meaning BlackBerry devices will also get Flash support.
After the cut, GPU acceleration for Flash 10.1
Just how many pre-production BlackBerry Storm 2 9550 handsets are there out there, waiting to be previewed ahead of the touchscreen handset’s release? We don’t know the answer to that, but phoneArena obviously have one since they’ve just pushed out a preview of their own. In it, they praise the Storm 2 for its much improved keyboard, but scold it for its dodgy stability, poor camera performance and “gimmicky” SurePress.
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Remotely controlling your TiVo from a BlackBerry has been possible for a while now - thanks to the mobile web interface - but now there's a specific app that aims to make it even easier. TiVo for BlackBerry Smartphones is available free from the App World, and has browse, search and scheduling functionality, together with "Daily Picks" and "Most Popular" categories.
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