News and Rumors

Today RIM has officially announced that the Bold 9900 will be available via Vodacom in South Africa.The 9900 will be Vodacom's first OS 7 device to reach its customers.Vodacom offers services to over 43 million customers in South Africa.

The Bold 9900 is the first BlackBerry smartphone to offer built in support for NFC ( Near Field Communications),which allows it to pair with NFC-enabled accessories, and read SmartPoster tags. The Bold 9900 comes equipped with a 1.2 GHz processor, a 24-bit high resolution touch screen, and the ability to record HD video.


What do you think of the Bold 9900? Let us know in the forums.

With the Toronto International Film Festival starting tommorow, it's great to see that they've launched an app that is compatible with BlackBerry OS 7 devices & the BlackBerry PlayBook!

This app gives you access to film descriptions, schedule information as well as maps and special features on Festival picks and the exclusive Mavericks Programme.

TELUS started pushing a new app to their BlackBerry OS 7 devices today. Telus App House is a telus-branded app that will provide you with direct download links to many of their partner apps or app specifically designed for the carrier.


This should start coming pre-loaded on BlackBerry 7 devices (BlackBerry 9810, 9900, 9860, 9360) soon, but will be coming to BlackBerry OS 5/6 & many other mobile platforms later this year.

UberSocial received an update today that brings direct support for the BlackBerry OS7 devices.

The many updates/tweaks/changes included in v1.250 are:

Its not to anyone’s surprise that RIM's stock this year has been less than stellar. Rumors of the company selling its self to another tech giant have been circulating for quite some time now. In addition, key personnel have left the company to pursue other endeavors. The results of all this are that shareholders are becoming more restless as they continue to see their shares fall.

Now shareholders are beginning to become more vocal about their investments with BlackBerry maker RIM. In a letter to the board, Vic Albioni head of Jaguar Financial, an investor in RIM, expressed his frustrations with the company, and added some pretty bold suggestions.

Jaguar Financial holds about 5% of RIM, and is getting tired of the of RIM's lack of performance, and strategic delaysSome of these fundamental changes proposed by Jaguar Financial was the urge for RIM to sell, and the consideration of selling of some of their patents. These are some pretty bold statements, and it seems to be what many consider to be the route that RIM should go. Is this really true considering that RIM actually had reported a good financial report last quarter? Only time will tell. However the more important question seems to be. Does this kind of frustration represent the vast majority of RIM shareholders?

The news hasn’t been all negative for RIM this year. Let's not forget that they recently had a successful launch of their new line of OS 7 devices. The PlayBook, despite its critics, is actually one of the highest grade tablets on the market today. The future of RIM looks very promising. RIM is currently working on a new line of QNX based phones that show promise of setting the standards for mobile devices to come. RIM has also embraced Android integration within these QNX based devices, which shows they understand the importance of consumer wants.

What are your thoughts on the current issue? Share with us in the forums.

Good news for BlackBerry users in France. Bouygues Telecom announced they will be carrying the BlackBerry Torch 9860 and Bold 9900.The new devices are to hit the online store early this month.

The BlackBerry Torch 9860 will start at 99€*

The BlackBerry Bold 9900 will start at 199€*

Will you be purchasing one of these phones from Bouygues? Let us know in the forums!

We have all been there, patiently waiting for that OS update from our carrier. With RIM's Java-based OS carriers have had to test, and retest the OS to allow for network compatibility. These long delays caused by carrier testing have always been a contributer to the slow roll out of updates from RIM.
This has all changed with the implementation of RIM's QNX based OS. QNX allows RIM to separate certain parts of code that often times the carrier would have to test. This separation, and elimination of carrier testing allows for faster OTA updates. This type of update can already be seen in how the BlackBerry PlayBook updates itself. A user is alerted that there is a update for the device, and they simply click on install.
This type of quick updating is absolutely crucial with new devices, as bugs are found all the time shortly after a new release. We have seen affects of quick OTA updates within the PlayBook, as many of those updates have quickly resolved issues, and enhanced the user experience.

What do you think of the new approach to updating? Let us know in the forums.

And another one bites the dust. More troubles arise as RIM loses yet another key team member. Alex Ivanovic lead product manager for BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365 has officially left the team. Alex spearheaded integrating BES with Office 365. According to reports Alex apepars to be quite happy with his new job working for nulayer, a company that specialized in developing apps for iPhones and iPads. As more and more personnel continue to part ways with RIM it leaves us wondering whats really going on inside RIM.

What are your thoughts on the frequent departure of RIM personnel? Let us know in the forums.

RIM is making several people smile today. They've announced that BlackBerry App World is now available in Albania, Armenia, Benin, Algeria, Belize, Burkina, Ghana, Bosnia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Morocco, Serbia, Tunisia and Zambia.

If you're in one of these country, we are happy to see you be able to join in on all this App World goodness!

It seems that BBM Music is slowly being prepared for mass market launch, as it has been spotted in App World today. The app is still Beta Zone-only & requires a keycode, but it's quite simple to download now.

With a Period End Date of late September, maybe we are merely weeks away from launch?

It was only yesterday that T-Mobile launched its release of the BlackBerry Bold 9900. Today the mobile carrier has official sold out of these devices.The BlackBerry Bold is one of RIMs most successful phone series, and this new release is an excellent addition. The 9900 is is T-Mobiles first 4G enabled BlackBerry.

Foursquare For BlackBerry received an updated today.

Version 3.2.1 brings: