Tag Archives | RIM BlackBerry

Help Us Pick the Hottest Smartphones

Posted by Robin Raskin on October 28, 2010 at 10:05 am

Seriously, folks–these days, you can barely move your contact list to your new phone before coveting the next one.

I queried a few of our Last Gadget Standing judges and they’ve got no shortage of opinion on which phones should be in the running for the award we’ll hand out at CES next January.

Some voiced concern about the Nokia N8 being an oddity.  Yeah, well, it’s an oddity with a 12 MP camera (with Zeiss lens) and HD video recording.  Those video watchers amongst us will be intrigued by the form factor; those who are dubious about Symbian less so.

Continue Reading →

17 comments

Blackberry Style Brings Back the Flip Phone

Posted by Jared Newman on October 18, 2010 at 2:07 pm

I doubt that anyone expects the clamshell phone to make a comeback, but that’s not stopping the Blackberry Style 9670, a flip phone that’s coming to Sprint on October 31.

The Style has a 624 MHz processor, 5 megapixel camera, microSD storage, GPS, Wi-Fi, and the Blackberry 6 operating system. It costs $100 with a two-year contract, after a $100 mail-in rebate. Coverage, which requires a data plan, starts at $70 per month.

Is it wrong that I’m totally fascinated by this product? Sprint and Research in Motion justify the Style’s existence by claiming that 100 million people currently use flip phones. They don’t say how many of those people would want a clamshell with smartphone guts. Usually, flip phones are dirt-cheap, and don’t require data plans. That’s the allure.

Which is not to say that a flip smartphone (a fartphone?) has no appeal. Have you ever tried to emphatically hang up an iPhone? You can’t. Ever tried to answer a call on a touch screen phone without looking at it? Good luck. With the flip phone, you flick it open with your thumb and forefinger to answer the call. You snap it closed with gusto. It’s wonderful.

But $100 wonderful? I don’t know.

13 comments

BlackBerry Torch: The Initial Verdicts

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 4, 2010 at 11:15 pm

The first real reviews of RIM’s BlackBerry Torch are in. They make for an interesting contrast, because in many ways the point-by-point conclusions are similar–but there’s no consensus about whether the glass is half full or half empty.

As usual, the last paragraphs of the reviews are concise summaries of the bottom lines in question…

Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal isn’t a raving fan, but he’s pretty upbeat:

Overall, the Torch and the BlackBerry 6 operating system are good products that improve the BlackBerry experience considerably and bring the device closer to its newer rivals.

Joshua Topolsky of Engadget is disappointed:

The Torch seems sluggish, underpowered, and dated from a hardware design standpoint, and BlackBerry 6, despite its new features and polish, still feels woefully behind the curve. To call the Torch the “best BlackBerry ever” wouldn’t be an understatement, but unfortunately for RIM and the faithful, their best isn’t nearly good enough.

Matt Buchanan of Gizmodo is even less impressed:

Maybe RIM’s too big, too entrenched to build the kind of phone that’ll make people want a BlackBerry again. But they could’ve at least given the damn thing a better screen.

But Sascha Segan of PCMag.com says the phone has its place:

The state of the art in Android and Apple phones has vaulted into super-high-res screens, 4G radios, tens of thousands of apps, and glorious 3D games. The BlackBerry Torch doesn’t live in that world: it’s for people who live on e-mail, IM, Facebook and Twitter, for whom typing updates and messages is their number-one priority. For them, the Torch will be a shining light.

Nobody thinks the phone is transcendent–but come to think of it, I’m not sure if there’s ever been a smartphone based on a venerable existing platform that’s been greeted as a great leap forward. At least I can’t think of a Windows Mobile, Symbian, or Palm OS one that changed everything…

4 comments

Smartphone Sales: New Stats, and a Recap

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 4, 2010 at 10:43 am

Yet another research report shows booming sales of Android smartphones: NPD, which covers the retail market, says that 33 percent of smartphones sold in the US in the second quarter ran Google’s operating system. RIM’s BlackBerries fell to second place, at 28 percent, and Apple’s iPhones had 22 percent of the market.

NPD’s analysis covers only phones, so there are millions of Apple iOS devices–iPod Touches and iPads–that aren’t part of the tally. Except for a few niche products such as Archos’s tablets and the Nook, Android is still a phone OS, not a general-purpose one; that will change in the months to come as Android tablets (and products such as Google TV) arrive.

Each company that does this sort of number-crunching uses its own methodology, and sales patterns for the rest of the world differ wildly from those for the US. So it’s not surprising that different companies are releasing varying rankings. After the jump, a quick visual recap of some recent stats.

Continue Reading →

6 comments

Gaming is Blackberry Torch's Missing Piece

Posted by Jared Newman on August 3, 2010 at 3:21 pm

Blackberry’s incoherent approach to video games never seemed like a problem before, but with Blackberry Torch and the new consumer focus of Blackberry 6, Research in Motion could soon find itself behind in the one area it overlooked.

The new trend in mobile gaming, and games in general, is social glue — the idea that a random smattering of games in an app store is no longer enough. People want to be involved in their games on another level, whether it’s the persistent beckoning of Farmville or the overarching achievement system of Xbox Live.

That glue is starting to ooze into mobile gaming. Apple sees the importance and is building Game Center, a layer of achievements, friends lists, matchmaking and leaderboards that developers can append to their games. When Microsoft launches Windows Phone 7 later this year, games will fall under the banner of Xbox Live, presumably with the same social features as its console counterpart. Google’s plans are a little murkier, but some kind of social gaming service is expected, and I’d be surprised if Android wasn’t involved.

Video games are not a trivial part of the smartphone experience. The number of smartphone owners who played games at least once a month increased 60 percent from February 2009 to February 2010, according to comScore. Games are the second-largest category in Blackberry App World, behind themes, and Compete says 54 percent of Blackberry owners have at least one game on their devices. Admittedly, that pales in comparison to iPhone owners, 51 percent of whom have five or more games installed, but maybe Apple’s extensive games catalog is one reason so many Blackberry owners are looking to jump ship.

Gaming will become a more important part of owning a smartphone, and social glue will be the factor that draws people to a platform and keeps them coming back. With Blackberry Torch and Blackberry 6 OS, RIM was so busy playing catch-up on key features, such as the browser and universal search, that it failed to see what the other major smartphone makers are working on next.

6 comments

RIM and AT&T: The Love Affair Blossoms

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 3, 2010 at 2:20 pm

It’s tempting to interpret every move AT&T makes in terms of its relationship with Apple, its status as the exclusive iPhone carrier in the US, and the implications of that exclusivity ending, as it will someday. It’s also dangerous to think that way, because the tea leaves are all too hard to read. Still, one fascinating sidelight of this morning’s BlackBerry Torch launch was the degree to which it was a lovefest between RIM and AT&T.

The first person on stage at this BlackBerry unveiling–the one who got to brandish a Torch in public for the first time–wasn’t a RIM honcho. It was AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph De La Vega. And RIM and AT&T executives handed off between each other for the entire presentation, spending nearly as much time praising each other as they did bragging about the new handset.

Continue Reading →

4 comments

BlackBerry Torch First Impressions: Fresh But Familiar, Indeed

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 3, 2010 at 12:43 pm

“The toughest thing about success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success.” Irving Berlin supposedly said that, and the quote was on my mind this morning as I attended RIM’s BlackBerry Torch launch in New York.

When Palm and Microsoft were faced with the challenge of fast-forwarding into the iPhone era, they had a perverse advantage: Their current products were so obviously part of smartphones’ past that it would have been riskier to stick with them than to start fresh. Hence Palm’s WebOS (a technical success even though it hasn’t yet shipped in a successful product) and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 (which, whatever it turns out to be, is anything but a Windows Mobile retread).

For RIM, the challenge is indeed tougher. BlackBerry phones are still selling well; their traditional strengths, such as serious e-mail and well-done physical keyboards remain strengths; they’re part of how the world does business. And yet it’s clear that BlackBerry faces a potentially existential threat from iPhone and Android, both of which are slickier, sexier, Webbier, and more modern than any RIM device to date.

Continue Reading →

7 comments