Well, its about time we saw some of the fruits of Blackberry’s acquisition of Torch Mobile, a fellow Canadian-based startup focused on mobile browsing.
Torch Mobile was famous first for bringing us Iris, the world’s first Windows Mobile browser to be based on the same open WebKit rendering engine that Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari are based on.
As we mentioned previously, Torch stopped updating its beta for Iris and disappeared one day, shortly after news was released of their purchase by RIM.
Blackberry’s current browser is long overdue for an upgrade… One of the more frequent complaints by Blackberry users is that it is the only “Smartphone” that doesn’t have a modern desktop browser. That is, web pages resemble the same simple rendering experience found on low end feature phones, as opposed to the desktop-experience styled browsers found on other handsets by Apple, Google, etc.
Therefore, acquiring a mobile web browsing startup like Torch Mobile was a smart, if not predictable move.
Well, here we are… about a half year later, and RIM is showing off their first desktop-style native browser (opera mini doesn’t count!). There is no mention of Torch Mobile, however they do say that it is webkit-based, which is a pretty good indication that we’re looking at Iris for Blackberry.
Check out the video below to see it in action. When this will be available is not yet known, however just knowing you’re getting a good browser should give any Blackberry fan the warm and fuzzies.
IDC, a Market Research firm, has issued their regular report on the top selling smartphones. The period in question is the 3rd Quarter of 2009 and no-one should be surprised to hear that the iPhone is on it twice. There’s one Android phone on it, the MyTouch3G, but that debuted in the 3rd quarter, as I recall, so not such a shock. The Hero, Moment, Driod etc are all 4th quarter devices, so we’ll have to wait and see.
The Pre made a surprising showing, moving from 8th most popular in Q2 to 6th in Q3. A good sign, but as noted, a lot of new phones came out in Q4, so don’t be surprised to see it get knocked off the list entirely.
A bigger surprise is number five, the Blackberry Storm. That’s right, no II. It’s interesting that with all the vitrol heaped on this device online, it still outsold the Pre, MyTouch, and came up right behind the iPhone3G.
Not surprising is the lack of WindowsMobile devices, as all the new stuff came out in Q4. The rest of the list is utterly dominated by Blackberries, both old and new.
We’ll be keeping an eye out for that 4th Quarter report to see if the Driod really was a gamechanger….
It’s official: Verizon’s first Android phone, the Motorola Droid, will be out November 6th. Costing a “mere” $199 on contract, this is also the first Android 2.0 device to hit the streets, and features a bunch of interesting features. We’re talking 16GB storage (Which is allegedly on a removable bundled card – interesting, no?), a 5 MP camera with dual LED flash, Visual voicemail, a slide out landscape Qwerty keyboard (that looks a heck of a lot more usable than the Moment or Cliq), Google Maps with turn-by-turn navigation (Beta, but still wow), and a bunch of other features.
Even without the ads, it should be pretty clear to anyone that this is aimed right at the iPhone demographic. It’ll be interesting to see how they do head-to-head. One should note that Verizon’s last attempt to market an iPhone alternative was the much maligned Storm. Targeting a business-oriented device at the iPhone crowd didn’t work so well. Indeed, it seems Storm is a bit of an embarrassment to Verizon, at least enough to bury today’s announcement of the new, improved Storm2 (available as of today for just $179) beneath a deluge of Droid news. Here’s hoping the Droid does better for them.
One things for sure, the smartphone segment of the market just keeps heating up.
Here are some interesting things from DigitalLook, but not exactly interesting enough to be their own article (no offense to the vendors, who were all awesome)
Note that I do have photos, but I seems to be mangling the photo functions of the blog, so I will be holding off on adding them. (more…)
As we mentioned previously, Obama’s desire to retain his Blackberry has caused a bit of a security concern.
This is mostly due to the fact that Blackberry devices rely on using RIM’s own server and software, which limits how much control the NSA has over the information.
C|Net had pointed out that there are some interesting mobile devices, such as the Spectera Edge, running their own software (on a Windows Mobile platform, interestingly enough) and are NSA approved.
Most of the Inter-Web (ourselves included) speculated that this would most likely be the President’s mobile email companion of choice. However, according to Robert Gibbs, President Obama is indeed keeping his RIM Blackberry, but will be limited to personal communication only on it.
I suppose if it is not sensitive information relating to the government, the President can do whatever he wants. However, as an international public figure, I’m sure there will be many potential hackers who will find his personal life just as interesting. We already saw that Verizon employees were caught snooping on the not-yet-elected Presidential Candidate at the time.
Personally, I agree more with Randy Siegel, an MS Enterprise Mobile Strategist (who works on federal government projects), who expresses concern over this decision:
“We wouldn’t want the casual musings … of the most important person in the world being intercepted by others”, even if considered trivial.
C|Net has an interesting article about the President-Elect’s desire to hold on to his Blackberry, even after the inauguration. It does a good job of presenting all the cons (basically, a security nightmare). You can see some more detailed specs here.
Specs (and insanely high price) aside, the idea of a connected President is a very cool one, regardless of politics.
RIM is known as the choice in devices for the suit-wearing demographic.
Sure, other devices offer the same features (if not more), but there’s something about specifically having that large brick-shaped Blackberry on your belt that screams “I’m a professional!”.
But the problem is that a Blackberry still looks like a Blackberry.
That is to say, people love the classic BB design (which hasn’t changed much), but some consider Blackberrys, dare I say it, BORING when it comes to form factor.
That’s why RIM decided its time to think outside the box for a change- but where to go from here?
With the multimedia-oriented folks already jumping ship for the button-less iPhone, the high-end geeks already drooling over flip out keyboards on Windows Mobile and Symbian handsets, and the younger messaging crowd going for the celebrity endorsed SideKick and similar devices, where was RIM to go to find a relatively un-tapped new design for their signature messaging devices?
The answer was to go backwards, so to speak. The flip-phone is one of the most classic designs in cellular voice technology, and still remains one of the most popular design choices in mid-range phones.
The concept is simple – flip phones are popular because they are convenient. A small device when not being used opens up to a larger device for keys and screen size. Therefore, RIM decided to cram their latest Blackberry device into a flip phone shell with their 8220 “KickStart” handset.
Crackberry.com has an exclusive first look video that can be found here.
Now, I would just like to point out that there have been smartphones crammed into flip-phone bodies before (Such as the Windows Mobile powered HTC Star Trek or Motorola MPX200, or the Palm OS powered Samsung i500 , etc), however the design never caught on and was considered somewhat of a failure.
I prefer not to call the Blackberry a Smartphone, however what makes RIM think that this design will succeed when real platform OSs failed before it?
After watching the crackberry.com video, I think the answer is that RIM actually thought this one out more. The OS actually takes all the things that make the Blackberry great and integrates it into the flip design (such as scrolling through messages to read on the outer screen, etc).
With all the Blackberry fans out there, this one could actually take off and hopefully seed a whole new generation of flip-styled smarter devices. That, in my opinion, would be fantastic!
A rant by Mordy Gilden.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably used Google Maps on your desktop browser for something at least once in your life. Google Maps is arguably the most popular mapping and directions plotting service there is, effectively stealing that crown from MapQuest ages ago.
So, its no surprise that the most popular server-based mapping and routing application on mobile phones is Google Maps Mobile (GMM). GMM offers a few features that don’t exist on the desktop based version, including support for GPS location if your phone has it, or localized search based on tower-triangulation (if your phone does not have or give you access to a GPS chip). It will even locate the addresses of contacts from your phonebook on some handsets.
Now, Google has announced voice recognition technology, based on the same technology as GOOG-411. Currently being tested on certain Blackberry handsets, the concept here is that your phone will record the voice clip, send it to Google’s servers who will decipher it, and send back the relevant information to your handset. Pretty nifty stuff, in fact nifty enough that many bloggers including Engadget, MobileCrunch, Boy Genius Report, and many others have rushed in to share this ground-breaking information with the rest of the Mobile World.
In fact, to quote the BGR:
“For the most recent feature addition, Google has decided to implement a bit of voice recognition. Sweet!”
Now, here’s where I’m confused. Did everyone miss Microsoft’s announcement to do this almost a year ago with Windows Live Search?
Windows Live has been offering this service for many of its compatible handsets, which include a wide range of devices including Blackberrys.
I currently use it on my Windows Mobile device so much that I now consider the feature to be indispensable (especially when on the road).
So, this begs the question: How come nobody talks about this stuff until Google does it?!
I see this as a great move on GMM’s part, and I share the enthusiasm as the aforementioned bloggers. However, my feelings towards it are not “Sweet!”, but rather “Finally! What took you guys so long?“. You don’t normally see Microsoft beating Google to the punch at these sort of things.
I have to admit, Google Maps seems to have fallen behind on features- Windows Live offers real time turn-by-turn routing on GPS enabled devices which GMM still does not do, not to mention some cute features like finding the cheapest gas, movie times and more based on your current location. Google still doesn’t do all of that.
Basically, Google Maps broke new grounds and set standards for desktop map utilities, but as far as mobile apps go, Windows Live far exceeds them in features and usability… once again, not something you’d expect from Microsoft. But there it is.
I am at least consoled by the fact that many of the loyal Engadget readers commented that they’ve already been doing this with Windows Live over the past year. Still, it makes me wonder how many people are only interested in a concept if Google is behind it… let’s see how well Android plays out against Linux Mobile.
So this is from an old article but I came across this article using StumbleUpon and thought I would post about it.
Ok, here it is. More and more people around the world are asking to be buried with their cell phones. Its not just an Urban Myth, The trend, which began in South Africa, has now spread to a number of countries, including Ireland, Australia, Ghana, and the US.
The main reason why people are getting buried with their phones, at least in Cape Town, is because people feared being buried alive after seeming to be dead. So just in case you wake up in the dark inside your coffin six feet under, you can call for help. They even include extra batteries.
Imagine getting that call.
In the olden days they use to put a whole in the ground in which they lowered a rope tied to a bell. If you where buried alive you just needed to pull the rope to ring the bell and alert the grave digger to dig you out.
In countries where there are more sophisticated ways of telling if you are dead or not (and where burial is proceeded by an autopsy) the reason for being buried with your cell phone is a little bit more Egyptian Pharaoh wanna-be-ish.
According Martin Raymond, director of international trend-spotting think-tank, The Future Laboratory “people wanted to be buried with the totems that they felt represented their lifestyle,” One guy was even buried with his cell-phone, blackberry and laptop. ”
Imagine if your cell-phone interrupted your own funeral.
In Slovakia thats actually part of the funeral where it is not unusual, that while a priest performs the funeral rites, ring tones will echo around the church from within a casket.
In Ghana and Chad its about the belief that you will be able to take it with you in the afterlife.
People are even getting cremated with their phones (aren’t there laws about disposing cell phones that way?). Probably since funeral parlors started noticing the phenomenon when the phones would explode after being exposed to so much heat.
Thats O.K though. Funeral parlours will now arrange for the phone to be put into the box with the ashes following the cremation.
Why people don’t just switch to a Treo650 and us Chatter for Blackberry like push2phone email is beyond me but since a majority of my readers are probably Blackberry users I feel it is important to tell you that RIM has unveiled a totally legit and legal workaround to keep your BlackBerry functional after and if they are forced to close shop.
The work around will prevent a shutdown of the services. “RIM’s workaround provides a contingency for our customers and partners and a counterbalance to NTP’s threats,” said RIM co-chief executive Jim Balsillie.
RIM said it has filed applications for a patent for its workaround, part of a software update called BlackBerry Multi-Mode Edition.
The company said it will soon begin shipping handsets with the software update in a dormant mode. It will make the update available at www.blackberry.com/workaround at a later, but as yet unspecified, date.
RIM said the changes would require software updates, but the new system will deliver the same functions and performance.
It said a legal opinion from a patent law and workaround expert said its designs do not infringe on any of the NTP patent claims remaining in the lawsuit.
As we mentioned previously, Obama’s desire to 
RIM is known as the choice in devices for the suit-wearing demographic.
