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!
