News and Rumors

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With 'Go BBM' BlackBerry Plan from Vodafone, prepaid subscribers can avail of BBM services at Rs. 5 per day, and postpaid subscribers for Rs 129 per month.

Additionally, as a part of the introductory offer, subscribers who purchase a BlackBerry Curve 8520 or BlackBerry Curve 9300 smartphone till February 2012 will be able to avail of a one-year unlimited access to BBM from date of purchase.

Send ACT BBM129 to 111 or visit your nearest Vodafone centre to activate this plan today.

By now every theme developer knows the frustration of not being able to build themes for OS 7 devices. Although RIM has mentioned the reason for the delay in releasing theme builder 7, it has not kept people from creating their own through workarounds and hacks. There have been a few OS 7 themes that have come out recently that are clean and simple, but the pressure to create more robust and complete themes is mounting.

It seems as though RIM has listened to the cries of consumers who want to add a fresh touch to their OS 7 device, and has released some instructions on how to use Theme Studio 6 to build themes for BlackBerry 7 devices.

CIA World Factbook 2012 Features:

CIA World Factbook is compatible with all devices running OS 4.2 or higher. Including all BlackBerry OS 7 devices: Bold 9900, 9930; Torch 9810, 9850, 9860; Curve 9350, 9360, 9370.

A new v10.1 for IM+ has brought a flurry of new features and fixes to the app. For those of you who love this multi-messaging app, get updated, and be sure to know how it works for you! See changelog below.

New features include:
- Arabic localization
- "Disable Beep" option
- Optimization of app launch
- Scrolling history bugfix
- Configurable Inbox integration
- UI improvements
- Some additional bug fixes and performance improvements

The first image of the BlackBerry London, RIM's first BlackBerry 10 phone, has surfaced. This is a far cry from the earlier leaked photos that we saw last year. However, it does give us some real hope that the BlackBerry 10 devices are almost within reach. RIM has been giving us hints about this device for quite some time now, and if you look at the picture closely it may remind you of something else.

If you're thinking BlackBerry PlayBook then you're on the right track. Late last year when Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis was asked what the QNX-based phone would look like, he then held up a PlayBook, and said, "like this." The look is fresh, and steps away from RIM's traditional style devices that many have become use to. It is actually similar in nature to a Samsung or HTC device. It looks like it's out with the old and in with the new in the design department for this device.

We have been seeing quite a few BBM connected apps over the past few months, and many have been wondering when we would see some native apps like RIM's Facebook and Twitter become BBM connected. Well, it looks as though we may be seeing this feature pretty soon.

So if you were wondering when you would see these apps integrated within your BBM, wonder no more, because RIM is working on it. The days of boring status updates on BBM may be over.

Today RIM announced the availability BlackBerry® Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365. This new service allows organizations to expand their Microsoft mail services to the cloud and manage their BlackBerry deployments in the cloud.

One of the nice things about this service is that customers that are already subscribed to the Office 365 suite or standalone Exchange Online and works with BlackBerry smartphones on business or consumer data plans. The service is actually very robust and offers a comparable features that a typical BES server would have.

Having it cloud based makes it an affordable alternative for many organizations. In addition RIM's partnership with software giant Microsoft helps alleviate some of the nasty licensing that many organizations have to go through. Here is a brief statement taken from RIM's official press release:

Hello BBOS members and guests, it's time for our Recap for the week of 1/22 - 1/28, 2012. The links below are the "in a nutshell" of what happened in everything BlackBerry last week. Leave us a comment on what you thought was the most memorable moment of the BlackBerry Weekly Recap!

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• Download TrafficAlert - Vancouver Beta via App World
• Download TrafficAlert - Toronto Edition via App World
• Discuss TrafficAlert in our Forums

• Download BlackBerry DevCon Europe 2012 Mobile Guide via App World
• Discuss BlackBerry DevCon Europe 2012 Mobile Guide in our Forums

The BlackBerry PlayBook 3G tablet has been rumored for quite some time now, and we were beginning to wonder is it was even going to happen. A new slide taken from what appears to be an internal RIM document gives us some nice information regarding the PlayBook 3G+ model.

If you notice the OS section of the description has not been defined. However, it is probably safe to assume that it will ship with a slightly modified version of OS 2.0 to help manage the 3G connections. Interestingly HSPA+ is also deemed by some carriers as 4G, so it will be interesting to see how that fits in.

The release date for this device is uncertain as the leaked roadmap appears to show the device being release the Q1 of 2013. Others say we could see some time in the latter part of this year. As for pricing that is anyone's guess but a good estimate would be anywhere between $300 and $400.

A quick summary of the specifications are as follows:

• 7 inch LCD screen with 1024x600 WSVGA resolution
• 1.5 Ghz dual core processor
• 1GB RAM
• 32GB flash memory
• Records in full 1080p HD Video; H.264, MPEG4, WMV, HDMI output
• 3.0MP front facing camera and 5.0 back facing camera
• 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR

There is not much of a difference between this one and the one that we currently have now, but it's still early yet and we may see some other changes.

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