Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to the BlackBerry Porsche P’9981 — the ugliest BlackBerry I’ve seen in years.
Unveiled at RIM and Porsche Design’s Dubai event, the new BlackBerry Porsche is clad in equal parts stainless steel and leather. While the device’s shell has gotten quite the facelift, the internals aren’t a far cry from the standard: it sports a 1GHz processor, a 5-megapixel camera with 720p HD video, and an NFC chip. → Read More
Sorry RIM, but it looks like the promise of free apps and tech support weren’t enough to assuage the masses. According to the Financial Post, RIM is preparing to deal with a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of Canadian users affected by the company’s widespread service outage. → Read More
RIM may be pinning their hopes on BBX, but that doesn’t mean they’re done churning out classic BlackBerrys. Case in point: the revamped Bold 9790 has been revealed in a new set of photos that doesn’t look like someone took them during an earthquake.
→ Read More
BBM Music has been keeping a low profile since it was announced last August, but a recently leaked image indicates that it may soon see the light of day. Crackberry got their hands on what appears to be a Best Buy Canada circular that touts both the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and RIM’s strangely social music service. → Read More
According to a recent statement from RIM, business customers who aren’t completely satisfied with their BlackBerrys must be working with outdated hardware. Their answer to these customers’ woes? Just get a new BlackBerry.
My response? Make them want one. → Read More
Poor RIM. They just can’t catch a break. Just two days after the official unveiling of their new BBX platform (the company’s last bullet, so to speak), they’re already having legal papers thrown in their face.
As it turns out, the BBX name (while rather fitting, given that it’s a merger of BlackBerryOS and QNX) wasn’t free for the taking. BASIS International, a software development company out of New Mexico, claims the trademark is theirs and that they’re willing to fight for it.
→ Read More
Here’s a noodle-scratcher to start your day off: Stuff Middle East is reporting that RIM and Porsche Design are teaming up for an event next Thursday that promises to show off an “exclusive collaboration” between the two companies. Could the rumored Porsche-styled BlackBerry finally see the light of day? → Read More
Mike Lazaridis, the belegaured co-head of RIM, took the stage at DevCon Americas to announce some strong numbers. First, RIM has just announced 1 billion App World downloads, which amounts to about 5 million downloads per day. The service is on pace to hit 2 billion this year. Mike went on to proudly state that on average, a BlackBerry app is downloaded 43% more than its iOS or Android counterpart. Part of this success is thanks to the smaller library amount but also because the BlackBerry App World is now available in 130 counties and supports 26 currencies with carrier billing in 10 countries. → Read More
It hasn’t been an easy year for RIM. The Playbook came out half-baked, their handset line has taken a pummeling from its ambitious competitors, the businesses and governments of the world are alternately hassling and blaming them, and as if that wasn’t enough, they just had a catastrophic global network failure and their olive branch is unlikely to fend off lawsuits. Did someone at RIM HQ break a mirror back in 2008?
The doomsayers (like us) are plentiful, saying that it’s all over, pointing to shrinking market share, incompetent management, and general inertia. But the game’s not up yet and their complacence would make sense, looking back in a few years, if it turns out they had one more bullet in the chamber. Did they fire six last-ditch efforts to reinvigorate the company, or only five? They don’t seem to know themselves. Well, they’re about to pull the trigger and find out. → Read More
Now that RIM’s global network is out of the woods, carriers are having to deal with the public relations nightmare that the outage has caused.
Given the sheer number of vocal BlackBerry users gumming up Twitter with calls for compensation, we (and all of their customers) are left wondering how RIM is going to handle this. → Read More
In a press conference held today RIM co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie confirmed that BlackBerry service has been restored worldwide, and users will be receiving all of their delayed emails and messages shortly.
Other than that the press conference was light on answers, mostly because it seems RIM’s upper brass don’t have any yet. In fairness, they’ve had a lot on their plate during the past few days. Lazaridis was reportedly overseeing the response team himself, and only managed to tear himself away from the goings-on early this morning. → Read More
There’s no escape. The Blackberry service outage is now impacting users on almost every planet, CNN reports. Tatooine and Coruscant appear to not have been affected yet, but users all over Geonosis, Naboo and Yavin were reportedly hit hard. Our thoughts are with their inhabitants.
(Via @dccrowley and @mpoppel, but probably first noted by @brundle_fly) → Read More
RIM held a quick press conference call today to address the ongoing outages which started in Europe but have spread to the rest of the world, including the US. The message was straightforward: a “core switch failure” in their European unit (though they did not give the exact location) that failed to turn over to one of the backup systems. The total failure resulted in a backlog of messages that they are chewing through at this moment. → Read More
Oh boy. As if yesterday’s BIS outage wasn’t bad enough for RIM, it looks like whatever solution they managed to cook up isn’t quite doing the trick. Reports of yet another outage have begun to make the rounds, and users in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East are once again unable to browse the web, send emails, or fire off BBM messages.
→ Read More
RIM seems to be learning very quickly that when it rains, it pours. Word of a BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) outage quickly began making the rounds this morning, leaving (once) loyal customers in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East without email and web access.
This is the second outage RIM has dealt with in as many months: their popular BBM service went down this past September, shortly after the company released their disappointing quarterly financials. → Read More
RIM’s stock took a bit of a tumble after the release of their underwhelming Q2 earnings report last week, and it looks as though it won’t stop dropping anytime soon. Before the market closed for the day, RIM share prices continued to inch downward until it reached (at time of writing) $21.52: RIM’s lowest in five years. → Read More
BlackBerry’s Enterprise Server has long been a mainstay of the corporate world, but considering the costs involved, many small businesses haven’t been able to justify the cost. Enter the BlackBerry Management Center, a cloud service meant for exactly those small businesses who want some of the power of BES without the corresponding price tag. → Read More
Last week, a leaked Sprint flyer indicated a $249 price-point for the BlackBerry Bold 9930. Though Sprint’s iteration likely won’t land for another week or so (August 21), Verizon is ready to release its BlackBerry Bold flagship to the world, starting today.
Just like at Sprint, the handset will cost $249 with a two-year agreement.
→ Read More
The recently revealed BlackBerry Curve 9360 is proving to be a surprising bit of hardware. Not only did it (thankfully) get rid of the chintzy chrome-ish highlights of its last iteration, IntoMobile reports that it also packs a a more competitive hardware configuration (hello NFC!) and a little feature hidden in the settings that doesn’t seem to have popped up on any other OS 7 device recently: mobile hotspot.
While the 9360 (affectionately referred to as the “Apollo”) is a significant upgrade for the budget-conscious BlackBerry owner, this development adds a bit of confusion to the mobile hotspot question.
→ Read More
Nothing says “We’re really excited about these new products!” like announcing them at two in the morning.
With fanfare that only insomniacs and folks getting ready for bed in Australia will hear, AT&T has just announced the next three BlackBerry devices set to hit their shelves: the Torch 4G 9810 (a follow-up to last summer’s Torch), Bold 4G 9900, and Torch 4G 9680 (an AT&T-branded, touchscreen-only followup to the device-formerly-known-as-Storm). → Read More
