After a long wait, RIM is finally launching its BlackBerry PlayBook across Canada tomorrow, and can be found at all the usual suspects, as well as less tech oriented retailers such as Sears. The latter went so far as to put out a press release suggesting that they would be the best way to buy RIMs 7 inch tablet running the new QNX based OS, offering a “15 day no hassle” return policy.
Read MoreThe latest US numbers from Canalys show that Android has now surpassed Nokia as the best selling smartphone OS in the world. Though it started off slow, Android grew from 8.7% of the market in Q4 2009 to a massive 32.9% in Q4 2010. The big drop was for Nokia, which plummeted from 44.4% to 30.6% in the same timespan. All other smartphones saw a drop as well, with Apple’s iOS dropping less than a percent, while RIM dropped almost 6%. Since Windows Phone 7 launched in the middle of…
Read MoreRogers today held their TabLife event, which invited a series of speakers to discuss the future of tablet computing in both the consumer and enterprise markets, obviously from a Rogers perspective. David Neale, Vice President of Special Projects at Research In Motion was on hand to demo the new Blackberry PlayBook and field some questions from the attendees. This short video shows the 7 inch PlayBook in action. While not yet optimized for dual core processing it nevertheless managed to show off it’s multitasking features rather well. While playing a…
Read MoreResearch In Motion’s developer event’ is still underway, but they’ve kicked it off with a bang, or so co-founder Mike Lazaridis is hoping. The PlayBook is RIM’s push into the tablet space, sporting a 7 inch display, a 1GHz dual core Cortex A9 CPU and sport a ‘flash-loving’, ‘app-rocking’ platform designed by QNX, called the BlackBerry Tablet OS. When the PlayBook was still expected to be called the BlackPad, it was rumoured that one of the big differentiators for the device would be it’s pairing capabilities. Sure enough, the preview…
Read MoreTelus and Bell have joined the Blackberry Torch party and also announced that they will be releasing the Blackberry 9800 Torch on September 24th. No official price has been announced by Telus, and Bell has said it will be $199 on a 3-year contract. I think it’s safe to predict the Telus price to be the same. The 24th is a big day for Canadian RIM fans. However, it remains to be seen if RIM and the carriers can generate the same level of excitement for the Torch as the…
Read MoreThe Blackberry Torch, which represents a new large screen form factor and updated operating system, is coming to Rogers on September 24th, with pricing starting at $199.99. When the Blackberry Torch was first revealed running the new Blackberry OS 6, it seemed like a step forward for the Waterloo company. The Torch has a slide out portrait keyboard, much like the Palm Pre, and its name comes from RIM’s acquisition of Torch Mobile, a Blackberry developer that was working on a Webkit based browser for the operating system. RIM also…
Read MoreThe last in the trio of Motorola Android phones running their custom UI, MOTOBLUR, launched in Canada on Tuesday, with the release of the Motorola QUENCH on Rogers. The two other phones in the Motoblur line-up are the DEXT on Bell, and the BACKFLIP on Telus. The QUENCH is available now for $49.99 ($424.99 outright) on a three-year voice and data plan. It is a touch-screen only device, and has a 3.1” 320×480 screen, 5.0 MP camera, and uses Android OS 1.5, with the MOTOBLUR UI. To make up for…
Read MoreThis week Research in Motion (RIM), is holding their annual WES event, in sunny Orlando, instead of Waterloo Ontario. On Tuesday they announced their new Blackberry OS 6, which we posted a video of a few posts below. OS 6 is coming later this year, and is RIM’s attempt to catch up to Android, iPhone and Windows Phone 7. Also announced were 2 new handsets, the new Bold 9650, a refresh of last years CDMA Tour, with the optical track-pad, and more RAM (in preparation for OS 6). More interestingly…
Read MoreThere’s a fair amount of news coming out from the RIM camp these days, but the one thing that is probably the most important is how they’ve refreshed their OS with Blackberry 6, and the above video gives you some ideas. It’s fresh, funky and oh so modern, that’s because it features every electronics manufacturer’s favourite musical act Black Eyed Peas. At least the song isn’t the grammatically questionable “I Gotta Feeling”. Seriously though, Blackberry 6 does have some interesting new elements to it, including a much better Webkit-based browser,…
Read MoreIntroduction The enormous success of the iPhone, since its release in 2007, sent a lot of phone competitors back to their drawing boards to create a competitor that included one of the iPhones primary features, a large touch screen. Though none of them would admit to trying to create an iPhone killer, the media quickly dubbed them as such. Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian creators of the ‘Crackberry’ had already made major in-roads into the consumer smartphone market with their Curve and Pearl entry level phones, but the meteoric…
Read MoreAlex and Doug take a in-depth look at 3 of the newest smartphones available on the new Telus HSPA network. We talk about the HTC Hero, which we reviewed at the beginning of the year, the Blackberry Storm 2, which we will be posting a full review of shortly, and the Blackberry Bold 9700.
Read MoreWindows Mobile and Qtopia users who were enjoying the Iris Browser might as well not bookmark the Torch Mobile site anymore. The Toronto-based makers of Iris have been bought up by Research In Motion. According to the Torch Mobile blog… Torch Mobile is excited to announce that our company has been acquired by Research In Motion (RIM), one of the most renowned mobile technology companies in the world. Our team of developers will join RIM’s global organization and will now be focused on utilizing our WebKit-based mobile browser expertise to…
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