Author Archive: James Richardson

BlackBerry Curve 9300 news

We have seen leaked photos of the BlackBerry Curve 9300 over the past month or so but nothing has been made official from RIM yet about the first 3G Curve.  A very reliable source has been in touch with us to let us know that an expected announcement will be made around the 8th/9th of August. Not long to wait but I think this one will be slightly over shadowed by the 9800 Slider.

Price wise, I am led to believe that this Curve will be a fair bit more expensive than the current Curve 8520 that we in the UK can get sim free for under £200 and as little as £148 on PAYG.

It will certainly be interesting to see if the UK carriers can offer the 9300 for as little as £20 per month on a contract like they can currently with the 8520.

BlackBerry 6 home screen evolution

I just found the below interview over on the official BlackBerry blog. If you are interested in BlackBerry 6 this one is worth a read.

As you may have already seen in the sneak peek video, the Home Screen in BlackBerry® 6 has undergone a makeover. To get the inside scoop on some of these changes, I reached out to Joey Benedek, Director of UX Research at Research In Motion® (RIM). Check out the interview below.

First, can you tell us a bit about what you and your group do at RIM?

I am a Director in the User Experience (UX) group, and I run the UX Research team. The UX organization is responsible for understanding user needs and desires and translating those into interface designs. We then work with the various software development teams to iterate those designs – with end-user feedback as our guide – prior to releasing to market. Bottom line, our team is responsible for defining the on-device experience that our customers interact with and making sure those experiences are not only usable but also desirable.

BlackBerry Press Event

RIM and AT&T have announced a press event to be held on August 3rd in the USA. Although RIM are not saying what this is all about it can only be one thing, the announcement of the BlackBerry 9800 Slider. Yippee!

The leaked photos we have seen have shown the 9800 to be AT&T branded so if my prediction is wrong I will eat my hat.

I’m just hoping it will not be long until we see an announcement here in the UK. We will keep you up to date when we know for sure what is going down.

Posted by: James

No more Vodafone 360 H2

With the launch of Vodafone’s 2nd 360 device (the H2) imminent they have today decided to pull the plug on the device as from now! So if you wanted an H2 I am sorry to say you will be disappointed. Frankly I am not surprised. With the broad range of excellent operating systems out there at the moment Vodafone had to pull something quite special out of the bag with there own branded handsets but they didn’t. I only used the H1 briefly and that was enough for me!

This is what Vodafone have to say:

New Displays to be integrated into HTC Desire and Nexus One

HTC Corporation, a global designer of smartphones, today introduced Super LCD display (SLCD) technology into a variety of HTC phones including the HTC Desire and global Nexus One later this summer. The SLCD display offers an exceptional natural balanced colour, clear contrast, broad viewing angles and improved power efficiency.

“HTC is experiencing high-demand for many of our phones, specifically our phones with 3.7 inch displays.  The new SLCD display technology enables us to ramp up our production capabilities quickly to meet the high-demand,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation.  “The SLCD displays provide consumers with a comparable visual experience to HTC’s current 3.7 inch displays with some additional benefits including battery performance.”
SLCD is the latest generation of LCD technology that offers improved performance from earlier LCD panels including approximately five times better power management.  SLCDs also offer an enhanced viewing experience with wider viewing angles that are enabled by Sony’s new VSPEC IIIT technology.

I wonder if we will see this new technology on the HTC Vision? That will be 3.7 inch so I believe.

Also, I thought production of the Nexus One had ceased. Did I dream that?

Posted by: James

Another BlackBerry 6 video

The folks at RIM have released a second official video demonstrating BlackBerry 6. Once again the demo is taking place on a touch screen device and it looks super.

What we need now is a demo of BlackBerry 6 running on a non touch screen device. I know the 9800 slider will more than likely be the first device released with 6 but with so many millions of us using Bolds and Curves we need to see what the future holds for us.

Enjoy the video below and keep them coming RIM.

A new BlackBerry Bold

Salomondrin.net has done it again. They have shown us a new BlackBerry Bold, this one is allegedly the 9780!

Specs are sketchy but it is believed to have 512mb of flash memory.

Clearly running BlackBerry 6 this is good news and possibly bad. The good news is that RIM are also focusing on non touch screen devices as well as the touch screen ones we have already heard about.

The bad news is that is it possible that the current Bold 9700 will not be upgradable to BlackBerry 6? If this is the case I will be very disappointed.

Lets hope we get to see this new Bold on video soon.

Posted by: James

UberTwitter Update

If you are are BlackBerry user and also use Twitter than you will more than likely be aware of UberTwitter as it is, in my opinion, the best BlackBerry Twitter app available.

The good news is UberTwitter have just released a new version if their beta which includes different coloured themes, something we have not seen before, and a slightly different user interface style. If you fancy giving it a try just click here from your BlackBerry browser and download for free.

I’m loving the new green logo UberTwitter!

Posted by: James