Well, Big Red (aka Verizon) might finally be joining the ranks of those carriers with prepaid BlackBerry plans (please take this with a grain of salt.  It was proposed to come August 23 and we haven’t seen it yet).  From the look of the above document, you will still need to pay an extra $30, on top of your normal prepaid costs.  We are unsure of what devices will be offered, how much the devices will cost, and if this plan will even come into existence.

I personally love this idea.  I myself am I Verizon user and I stand behind them (even when maybe I shouldn’t).  This is truly a step in the right direction.  Bringing the BlackBerry to the public in more ways than one is exactly the kind of exposure that RIM needs.  If it does happen, will you be joining the ranks of prepaid customers in order to escape that vicious contract? Let us know in the comments below.

via: BerryReview

Earlier last week a leaked Verizon roadmap for 2010/2011 surfaced pointing to new BlackBerry devices being released in October, and even a tablet in November. Keep in mind that this roadmap has not been confirmed, but it does invoke interest. Among the devices to be released is the Storm 3 9570 with a  SurePress touchscreen, and running the latest BlackBerry 6 operating system. This contradicts rumors of the Storm 3 ditching SurePress and introducing its own unique operating system.On a brighter note, sources  report that RIM will be adding a mobile hotspot feature to the Storm 3 as well.  Not all bad, so far.

The roadmap goes on to state that RIM will also be introducing the BlackBerry Curve 3 9330 to Verizon customers. I see no real benefit that the Curve 3 offers over the 8530 other than BlackBerry 6. The specs are exactly the same on both devices. The chrome bezel is a nice touch though!

If this roadmap turns out to be spot on, it looks like this could be a big waste of time and money for RIM. I truley hope that this turns out to be fake,and RIM blows our minds come October. What are your feelings on the supposedly leaked roadmap for Verizon? Do you look forward to what RIM is palnning, or is this more of the same ol’, same ol’? Sound off below in the comments.

via BBLeaks

Good news for BlackBerry Bold  9650 owners wanting to know what OS 6 will look like on their device. Here are some pics of the OS running on an actual Bold 9650 from Verizon. We currently have read that the OS is not quite up to par and running a little slow on the handset, but with Verizons QA department I am sure when the official OS is released it will work just fine. No word yet on when the OS will be released but it shouldn’t be too long. Keep checking back with us and as soon as it drops we will let you know. In the mean time these are sure to get your mouth watering.

Have an opinion, question, or request? Sound off in the comments!

via: BlackBerryLeaks

As many of you have probably noticed, we’ve been pretty inactive for the past two days, and for that I offer our sincerest apologies. I won’t rehash details, but needless to say we experienced something of a “perfect storm” of non-work issues that left several of us indisposed. As a way of apologizing, here is a roundup of all the major news we missed!

- BlackBerry 6 Home Screen Evolution: The official BlackBerry blog, Inside BlackBerry, posted an excellent piece on the evolution of the Home Screen in BlackBerry 6. Our favorite excerpt:

If there was one thing you want our readers to know about the Home Screen redesign, what would it be?

I’d say that the redesign of the Home Screen in BlackBerry 6 is fresh, but familiar. When you look at it, it still looks like a BlackBerry Home Screen (for example, wallpaper selection continues to be a key attribute of the visual design), but it’s been updated – much like a home renovation still ‘feels’ like home, but is actually new.

With BlackBerry 6, we are introducing a host of new features in the design, evolving the look and feel and enabling the user to really customize the Home Screen. Overall, the visuals are cleaner and sleeker, and movement between and within the applications is more fluid, allowing users to navigate their BlackBerry smartphone in a much more intuitive and interactive way.

-Bold 9800 slider and BlackBerry 6 now supported in App World: This one doesn’t come as a huge shock, but this means developers can begin submitting BlackBerry 6 applications to the App World!

-Analyst claims 4G BlackBerry Triton coming to Verizon in December: For the time being, we’re going to be pretty skeptical on this one. Analysts have a tendency to be…inaccurate, and until we see some hard evidence for the devices existence we’re going to file this one away in the “Baseless Rumor” drawer. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see a 4G BlackBerry (Storm 3?) help launch Verizon’s LTE network, and it would certainly go a long way toward helping RIM regain some ground in the Android-dominated Verizon lineup; we just prefer more facts before espousing the epicness of vaporware.

-The Bold 9780, a refresh of a refresh: The most underwhelming device to come out of Waterloo since the Curve 9300…oh wait. Continuing a disturbingly bad habit, the 9780 is a token refresh of the 9700, itself a refinement of the Bold 9000. To say we’re disappointed would be a massive understatement. RIM is competing against the likes of the Droid X, Galaxy S, iPhone 4, Evo 4G, and soon to be Windows Phone 7 running on super-solid hardware. If they want to stay relevant, we need to see some radically different hardware (like the 9800) that makes us say “Wow, I really want that”.

-Photos of  Bold 9650 running BlackBerry 6: Thank goodness! Now we know at least one current BlackBerry device will see an official update to the BlackBerry 6 OS. With the Storm 2 and Bold 9700 all but written off for OS upgrades (at least official ones), we’re glad recent 9650 owners won’t be burned three months after buying their device. Of course this continues to highlight RIM’s need to upgrade the application memory to something in the gigabyte range.

-RIM purchases “BlackPad.com”: This is the best evidence yet for the existence of the fabled BlackBerry tablet. Awful name aside, we’re not very big fans of the tablet idea here at BBerryDog (or at least this editor isn’t). The BlackBerry OS has never exactly been known as a multimedia or creative powerhouse, which happens to be the primary function of most tablets to-date. We’re not entirely opposed to the concept, but we need to see a concept before we’ll think about believing.

-The case of the mysterious AT&T monoliths: There is a lot of speculation about what these mystery monoliths contain within their glowing bowels, and so far nobody has any real idea. Most speculation points to one of three options: the Bold 9800 (which would coincide with the upcoming AT&T and BlackBerry event), an unknown Android device, or a Windows Phone 7 device (if it turns out to be some silly messaging phone, we’re quitting AT&T). We’d love for it to be the Bold 9800, but given the number of leaks, we’re wondering if it might be a Windows Phone 7 propaganda tool.

That’s all we have for now! Again, we offer our sincere apologies for the news gap and we’ll be back in action next week at full strength. For now, let us know what you think of these news developments in the comments!

Remember when the Storm2 9550 and the Curve 8530 were released? It was not that long ago, was it? Yet Verizon seems to be giving those two an End of Life after not even a year. It would only seem logical to EOL these two if there were some replacements on the way. The Curve 9300 series should replace the 8530, and the Storm2 is getting a refresh for OS 6 (maybe this is the Odin refresh we read about?).
The exact details of the EOL notices are the following:

BlackBerry Curve 8530:
The Curve2 is end of life – Final Shipments August
Refer to the “Stock Check” tool in POS for on hand availability
Device will retire on 8/1, replacement coming in Q3/Q4

BlackBerry Storm2 (9550):
The Storm2 is end of life – Final Shipments August
Refer to the “Stock Check” tool in POS for on hand availability
Device will retire on 8/15, replacement coming in Q3/Q4

When I first read this I was speechles. Since the Storm2 hit the German market, I wanted to have one and now that I have one, it will be replaced? I was so excited when I heard that OS 6 is finally on its way to the users and now – looking at my “old” Storm2 – my excitement just hit the basement and is hiding far beyond zero. It’s cool to have an Odin Refresh, really, yet I don’t want to spend so much money, just so I can have a Storm2 “refresh” that is capable of running OS 6.

Do you think it’s worth it? Feel free to express your thoughts in the comments.

via: BlackBerryCool

I will first preface this with the fact that I still love my BlackBerry.  As an upcoming college student, I have found the organizational tools found stock on BlackBerry invaluable.  But here is a caveat for anyone who has considered the 8530.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up at 8:00.  Upon rolling out of bed and reaching for my phone, I found that it was too hot to hold, and that there was no charge in it, even though it had spent the night on the charger.  I used one finger to maneuver the trackpad to my battery application, and opened it up to find that my battery was approximately 145 degrees fahrenheit.  Needless to say, this scared me quite a bit.

After about 25 minutes of fretting, I decided a battery pull was in order.  After pulling the battery and reinserting, I found that it immediately began to heat up all over again.  I plugged into my computer to see if I could reboot the OS (what I assumed was the problem) with no luck, as the battery died in the middle of the upload.  Now my BlackBerry wasn’t just hot, it was also bricked.

I will have to give big props to the ladies and gentlemen over at the Verizon Store, as they hooked me up quickly and were able to get a new phone shipped to me in two days.  The woman who helped me (her name was Shenna) said this is a recurring problem with the Curve 8530 if it was bought before January.  The post holiday season 8530’s seem to be fine, but the first batch had something awry.

Have you had any issues with your 8530 self-destructing?; be sure to let us know in the comments!

This rumor, while it may not be true, is quite saddening. You may recall a few weeks back when we reported a rumor going around saying which devices were slated to get BlackBerry 6 or not. One of the devices listed was the 9550 Storm2. Now the rumor mill is churning out stories that the Storm2 won’t get BlackBerry 6. I knew something didn’t match up when they said the device minimum requirements would be 512MB internal storage and the Storm2’s internal is 256MB. Either way, I’m still sad. I’ve been trying to get my hands on a Storm2 so I can have some of that sweet, sweet BlackBerry 6 on my Verizon line when it drops. Looks like I’ll have to come up with another plan. So, with that being said, who has a Storm2 and was hoping you had the device that was going to slide by with the exception to the 512MB rule?

via: BBLeaks

So far this year, Verizon has managed to leak almost every high-end phone that they’re putting out.  It seems that a Curve 3 and Storm 3 are slated for the holiday season, as well as the mysterious BlackBerry tablet.  Please take all of these with a grain of salt, as these are only rumors!

As far as the Curve 3 goes, I can only hope it is not a 9300, which is an 8530 knock-off.  The Storm 3 specs have been leaked like crazy, so we’re all up-to-date on that.  The tablet is the thing that grabs my interest most.  If this tablet is going to compete with the iPad, RIM is going to have to pull out their biggest guns and go all out.  If the browser remains slow and the UI isn’t changed to bring users beyond business users, the tablet could go straight down the drain.  Hopefully, RIM will implement their wonderful WebKit Browser in the tablet, which would give it a huge upper-hand. Please give us your thoughts on any of the rumors listed above.

via: Engadget

Finally! It seems there appeared a picture with some more hot details about Storm 3 today. As entitled on the picture what we’ll be seeing is a “refreshed” version of the Storm 2 running BlackBerry 6 (not a completely new OS as some sources said). As already seen with the slider we’ll get double RAM (512 MB), a 5 megapixel camera and 802.11n WiFi. Hopefully on BlackBerry 6 and specifically on this phone we’ll get to see the new awesome WebKit browser. Also mentioned on the “Odin Refresh” training slide is a 3G mobile hotspot functionality.

As mentioned on Engadget the Storm 3 may be running on Verizon, and the bottom of the slide lookes like and “___ember” month. Looks like the Storm 3 may hit the stores earlier than we – or at least I – expected.

Although I have to say I’m kind of disappointed because I got so excited when I heard the specs from last time (there’s no OS of its own and there’s no 1GB RAM), though, the training slide doesn’t mention the CPU at all. No word about the SurePress yet. Are you excited to hear more? I am!

Give us your thoughts and all your excitement in the comments and our forums!

via: Engadget

Remember when we first got all excited about some leaked Storm 3 specs? Well, there seems to be even more excitement on the way. Salomondrin got his hands on some specs that are still rumors, yet exciting as ever!

Here are some Storm 3 specs and info that I’ve heard so far repeatedly from my sources:

1. Its being tested by a very limited team (preventing leaks).
2. The phone’s shell is still the Storm 2′s shell with different guts though (To make it hard to identify if the phone is lost or photographed).
3. It does have a 1ghz processor.
4. 8 GB internal memory.
5. 512MB flash memory was what they saw first, but apparently they are now playing with these test phones and have over 1GB of flash memory.
6. It won’t run on OS 6.0. Its gonna be running on an OS of its own. <– Really exciting
7. The phone does have the ability to run widgets and you can personalize it A LOT.
8. 5 MP camera still on it as off now, but like we saw on the 9670, this can change.
9. The screen will be something new we haven’t seen yet (new input mechanism) ,but it won’t work like the Storm 2. Yes, it will have SURE-PRESS, but I’m not sure how they are archiving it this time.
10. Its gonna be Verizon’s 1st or 2nd LTE phone. They aren’t sure if the Android phone will be first or the Storm at this point.

I’m especially excited about the OS it will be running and the screen it will have. Since I’m in Germany and there’s no big news about LTE here, I’m not that impressed but I’m pretty sure you might be. The other leaked specs like the 1ghz processor, the internal memory, and the flash memory seem to be confirmed though we don’t have any waterproof information yet. The hardware sounds amazing, and I hope RIM does their best to create matching software that still features everything we love about BlackBerry.

What do you think? Does this sound like the touchscreen BlackBerry you always wanted?
Give us your thoughts in the comments and our forums! Feel free to tell us what you wish for Storm 3 to have!

Editors Note: The specs sound solid, but call us skeptical when it comes to the OS situation. While it’s certainly possible that RIM has been working on a secret OS deep inside Waterloo, we’re not sure if we buy into it. Sal is typically very reliable with his information, so we’re willing to give him the benefit of the doubt; just don’t be shocked if the OS portion turns out to be false.

via: Salomondrin