Why? Because BlackBerry has anyways been and always will be about a gradual EVOLUTION of things, not something revolutionary new. Yes there are occasional unique new features like push email, BBM, and SurePress/TruePRess, but in all that they never fundamentally changed the system.

Why? Because reguardless of it’s desire to reach out onto the consumer realm, it is first and foremost a business device and as such it needs to remain relatively familiar to their existing user base. A user of the 8830 can pick up a Tour 9630 and feel right at home and pick up on the changes without being fundamentally retrained.

This would not be the case if there was a new OS.

This may not be as “intuitive” as iPhone but that’s just how it is and at least RIM is less likely to get SUED by the overzealous Apple legal department.

RIM is not going to change who they are fundamentally. They will continue to make gradual changes in the OS and improve the things that they do not do as well. My prediction is that the biggest change in OS 6.0 will be the new browser and along with it an improved rendering engine in their HTML email. The other major thing I see them tackling, and this would mostly be behind the scenes, is improved synchronization with Google and various social networking services. WebOS and Android have really set a high bar here and RIM knows it.

Those of you who don’t like SurePress or TruePress, DEAL WITH IT, the RIM CEO has said they are here to stay. If you like a capacitive touch screen then get an iPhone or Android device.

Thank you!

For those who do not know, the Magnum us a hybrid of the Storm and Bold brunging the best BlackBerry physical keyboard together with a touch screen. Weather this would have SurePress/TruePress or a traditional capacitive touch screen is unknown. This has been rumored at and talked aboout for well over a year now, but these are the the first live pics brought to us by Cel Guri (AKA @cellguru on Twitter).

I would not get my hopes up too high though as it is very obvious that this is an OLD prototype device. It uses the Bold 9000 form factor and does not have a track ball OR track pad. It’s a vurtual certainty that when/if this device comes out it will have a more modern form factor similar to the 9550/9650/9700 devices.

I’m still hoping the final product looks like the Storm2 and has a slide out QWERTY keyboard similar to the Palm Pre does only with the Bold/Tour keyboard. We shall have to see though

• Via: BlackBerryOS.

The 8330 Curve is the lowest end BlackBerry device that will receive that 5.0 OS update due to the fact that it has 96 MB of RAM where it’s 8300, 8310, and 8320 siblings only have 64.

OS builds are device specific which means that this will work on any 8830 (not 8830n) that has an ESN instead of an IMEI, reguardless of carrier. I would not hold my breath for an upgrade from any other carrier though.  Sprint stopped carrying this so it’s unlikely we will ever see an official release for them and Verizon is notoriously slow for OS updates because they tend to be very picky, so I would not expect an upgrade from them any time soon if at all.

Anyone who installs this wont see a lot of change on the surface as it does not have any new themes with it and due to it’s size it majorly bogs the device down so you will probably want to remove any excess modules (help, root certificates, games, etc.) that you dont need and install a minimum of third party applications.

• Download it now from BlackBerry.com

Via: Berry Review.

I avoided the iPhone for a long time. In part out of principle (I’m not one to join the crowd), and AT&T crap network; but also because when I did try them in stores I just wasn’t that impressed.

The original iPhone felt solid but also underpowered. The 3G felt cheap to me compared to the original iPhone, this may have been the plastic back replacing the metal one; and it still felt slow to me compared to my BlackBerries. Both versions I had issues with the touch screen not working the way I wanted. It also felt ridiculous to me to spend extra money for a 3G phone (and more expensive data plan) while living in an area where AT&T did not have 3G (and still does not) and no solid ETA.

Last summer a few days after the 3G S launched I did as I had before and spent a few minutes playing with the new display model in the AT&T kiosk in the mall. The phone was noticeably faster than it’s predecessors (and the Storm). The it felt solid again (though I still missed the shiny back); and I finally got the touch screen to work for me. I still had issues with typing (offset to some degree by improved auto-correction).

What made me walk away (other than not having the funds at the time) was the way the AT&T rep casually bashed the Storm (“I hear it had problems”). I spent a few minutes “educating” her about the merits of the Storm running an uo to date OS, and how the iPhone was STILL (3 generations in) inferior to BlackBerries (i.e. lack of multitasking, crappy keyboard, etc.).

After reading some more about it I decided to add an iPhone 3GS to my tech arsenal. I knew I could never use it as an everyday device but it did have some compelling features and did work slick. So a couple weeks later I went back to the same kiosk, talked to another rep and bought myself a shiny 32GB 3G S (in white if you are wondering, they ran out of black).

For a while I was captivated by the thing and used it often. I have to admit that the phone has a nice presentation, and the app variety is completely awesome and they are all at your finter tips reado to download.  To date I’ve downloaded something like 600 apps (most of which are no longer on the device), free and low cost.Many of them are great, as long as you can get used to the idea of only doing one thing at a time and not always having your place saved when you exit an app to do something else. While the newer BlackBerry browsers have improved a lot over the last couple years, mobile Safari completely brows them away, along with third party browsers like Opera Mini and Bolt.

For a brief time I used the iPhone 3G S even more than my BlackBerries, but as time went on the limitations of the device got more and more frustrating. The most important to me are:

1. Multitasking. A smart phone MUST be able to run multiple apps at the same time and in the background — PERIOD — and the iPhone simply can not do this. Push notifications are not the same, not nearly as good not only because they are not uniformly implemented yet, but also because apps time extra time to reopen and not all apps save your place.
2. Notifications: Every single notification is a pop-up so if you get 3 emails in rapid succession while playing a game or surfing the web you get one for each one which must be dismissed. If you get a notification you DO want to do something with you loose your place in the app you are currently running. This whole system needs an overhaul.
3. Flick Scrolling — Don’t get me wrong the idea of being able to do this while reading a document or web page, your contacts, or your music or app collection is cool when you first try it. but after a while it gets really old and tiresome when you realize that this is the ONLY way to do this. It It is especially tiresome when you have a lot to scroll through.  I like the BlackBerry way of being abet to hit a key (say a G) and jump ahead to contacts or songs starting with a G. I like being able to hit T for Top an B for bottom to skip to the top or bottom of a web page, email, or other document.
4. Lack of Folders — I like being able to organize my apps into folders. Yes, you can organize them on various screens but that gets cumbersome when you get too many apps and you are limited to 160 app icons on your springboard (Apples name for the iPhone UI) I have 32GB of space (really 29GB) but if I install more than 160 apps they don’t show up in the UI — FAIL!. (Note: I am well awarer that you can get round this by jail-breaking, but some other time I will explain why I don’t believe in doing that.)
5. AT&T — As stated above I like in an area of the country where AT&T’s 3G service is not available. AT&T fanboys tell you that their EDGE is comparable in speed to EVDO; and it is, at least on paper; but I can tell you from experience this is most certainly NOT the case in real world conditions. The web and application downloads are noticeably slower than my Storm or Tour. To add insult to injury AT&T’s barely works in my bedroom. Now I live near the center of one of the largest cities in Minnesota and outside or in the front room of my house I get great reception on both my VZW and AT&T phones, but im my bedroom in order to use the internet on my iPhone 3G S I have to go through my Verizon Wireless MiFI! There allso sooms to be something about the phone where the signal strenght meter has little or nothing to do with how strong the signal really is. Additionally every time I have asked about 3G cervice here I get “it’s comong” and the last I heard it was coming by thanksgiving or the end of the year at the latest, but both dates are long past and still no 3G icon on my iPhone. FAIL!

After 6 months I can safely say I’m over the iPhone now and only use it for the browser and occasionally playing Solitaire or Battleship on my breaks at work. Baring some major improvements (i.e. true multitasking that does not slow the phone to crawl) I can’t see myself getting the next generation this summer — even if it IS on Verizon

SMART PHONES:

I’ll state this as simply as I can: The future belongs to Android and BlackBerry.

Period.

The two of them are clearly staging to “own” the competition (and yes I mean iPhone too  . . . .)

ANDROID:

Android will eventually reign supreme in the consumer realm. Why do I say this?  Android is an open source phone operating system created by Google. The fact that it is open source means that it is infinitely customizable and since it does not use a proprietary programming language developers will have an easy time writing apps for it.

Since it is not the closed system that iPhone is, the quality and quantity of apps will grow exponentially. It is only a year old and has already show tremendous growth (10,000 apps and growing!). As of this writing there are at least 7 different handsets on three different carriers running it and several more are slated for the first part of 2010. Each handset is unique in both hardware and software UI. The means more diversification and it will reach and appeal to the most people, much more so than apple who is still limited to one carrier in the US. While each manufacturer has created their own User Interface (UI) the underlying OS it more or less the same. The iPhone on the other hand is basically the same phone for everyone with slight hardware and software differences from year to year, but you basically have two choices when it comes to iPhone: Black or White; 16 GB or 32 GB.

The fact that it is backed by Google means that it is backed by a company that thrives on innovation. Some will argue that so is the iPhone, but the way that Apple runs their App Store clearly shows otherwise. Their restrictive approach to applications in the name of device stability/user friendliness is fundamentally flawed. If a submitted app does not meet their standards of approval or replaces a “core function” of the phone and does its function better than the core app does then they reject it. These judgments are based upon their own closed minded viewpoint: that they know what is best for users. This staggers innovation.

Apples claim to fame is the ease of use (easily duplicated on android with the multiple ui’s it allows) and the apps and they are rapidly gaining ground there too. Android will probably make an iPhone centric model next year, and when it does I see users defecting in droves.

BlackBerry

BlackBerry is an amazing platform with a bright future in both the business and consumer arenas, and a lot of people are going to scream at me for saying this but while BlackBerry will also increase their market share in the consumer realm its bread and butter is the business world and always will be.

BlackBerry’s greatest strength is that it is a functional device and something that is instantly recognizable as a BlackBerry smartphone, and someone familiar with BlackBerries can instantly pick one up  and start using it. This is done by gradual evolution rather than revolutionary change and is very friendly to businesses who do not have the money to retrain their staff every time they get a new smartphone. Someone can jump from the 8830 to the 9630 or even 9550 or 9700 with very little learning curve.

This is why the BB OS has remained more or less the same since 1999 with evolutionary changes rather than a revolutionary change.  They like to make gradual changes – not as gradual as apple though This method of gradual change, along with top notch security, is it’s greatest benefit to business users, but is also it’s biggest handicap in the consumer realm where users get tired of the same old thing and want something new every few months.  This is a big reason why themes sell so well, but themes can only appease users just so far.

May people argue that what RIM needs is a totally new touch specific OS for the Storm series, but this is unlikely though since any touch phone they do must be a BlackBerry smartphone first and foremost.

BlackBerry has dozens of device models on several dozen carriers worldwide and their portfolio is only growing. In the year 2010 I foresee them making some footholds in the prepaid market as well.

Nokia/Symbion:

Symbion is the number one smart phone operating system worldwide, and for good reason. But in the US it is a tiny niche market with only a few handsets on US carriers. Nokia/Symbion will remain popular overseas but will mostly continue to be a niche market in the coming years. As there is more and more serious competition their market share will continue to dwindle in the US and eventually worldwide. There is nothing WRONG with Symbion but If they don’t innovate and market more they are destined to fade into obscurity just as the old PalmOS has.

Windows Mobile:

The majority of people reading this are doing so from a Windows computer. We are all more than familiar with the issues that Microsoft Windows has and you would have to be living under a rock to not realize that Windows Mobile has the same issues. Even fans of Windows Mobile say that it takes getting used to (the crashes and lock ups I mean).

It completely blows the mind why anyone would want the same problems that their much more powerful PC’s have, on their smaller, less powerful mobile phones, but WinMo continues to give users just that and they continue to swallow it as the price of owning their phones. But it does not have to be!

Fans of Windows Mobile like it because it is easy for them to learn and because it is so customizable with hacks, but Android is also customizable and as it evolves most of the things you can hack into Windows Mobile you will be able to just do on Android.

Once upon a time WinMo became popular because it could sync email, contacts, and calendar with a Windows PC. Now pretty much every phone with PDA functionality can do that. The advantage is long since gone. They keep releasing new versions (6.5 was released in October 2009 on new devices, but the roll out for existing devices has been very slow) with few new features and no significant stability increases. The most recent info says that Windows Mobile 7 will not be released until the end of 2011, and if that is the case, no matter what Microsoft does with it, it will be too little too late.

Windows mobile will be all but dead in maybe 3 years. If Microsoft were smart they would ditch Windows Mobile completely and focus on the newer ZUNE platform. They claim that a Zune phone is not being developed but I think we all know that isn’t true, and even if it was they could easily port the OS that the new Zune HD units are running to a cel phone platform for other people’s hardware.

Apple iPhone:

iPhone is not a smart phone. The hallmark of a smartphone is not only PDA functionality bit the ability to multitask, and this is something that Apple has locked down hard. Rumors have promised multitasking in the next release for the last two years and for the last two years users have been disapointed. Apple claims that multitasking is not necessary with push notifications (come on!) and that it would just slow the phone down and decrease the user experience… well at least they were being honest there and it makes me wonder if they are running a much slower processor than they want us to believe. Most recent rumors are that iPhone 4.0 will allow you to run 3 apps at a time. Even if true, this is too little too late!

I’ve already explained this above, but Apple is killing iPhone with their restrictions and they have too large of egos to see and admit it. The next two generations of iPhone will be more of the same incremental upgrades and the 5th iPhone will be the last one that actually sells well.

WebOS

The Palm Pre debuted this summer with a lot of promise that unfortunately has not yet been realized.

Yes it is innovative, new, and fast. However, the software is fundamentally flawed in that it depends on the network connection to run the apps which are all “web apps”, similar to the first generation iPhone. It depends completely on Palm’s cloud services to run. T-Mobile Sidekick users saw what could happen when that happens and something goes wrong this past summer.  I’m not up on the specifics of WebOS yet but I sure hope you can at least back up your contacts to an SD or SIM card.

It’s biggest claim to fame is it’s ability to natively sync with iTunes, but since this is done with a hack (basically it fools iTunes into thinking it is an iPod) and Apple keeps breaking it  (every time iTunes upgrades you need to wait for Palm to upgrade their software to fix the hack again which takes longer and longer each time) this woefully unreliable. This isn’t very consumer friendly; nor is it innovative!

I’m not saying they need to write their own software to manage their music, they could easily contract with someone else to do it as BlackBerry and Motorola have for their smartphone offerings, or use the same method of sync as BlackBerry has, using an application that reads the iTunes XML files and uses that to import the files and play-lists.

In addition, it is only available on the junk Palm hardware (go to a Sprint store and try a Pre if you don’t believe me, shoddiest smart phone I have ever seen). And one dead end carrier. True the Pre and a second unit  called Pixie are expected to debut on Verizon within the first quarter of next year, but it will get lost in the jumble of new smart phones launched in the last quarter of this year. I’m sure it will help some but not enough.

WebOS may survive and flourish, but only if palm let’s them put it on other hardware. Palm is dead. So is Sprint (but I will get to that later). They just don’t know it yet.

Conclusion:

I know I’ve kind of shocked some of you with my comments so far (“How dare he criticize Apple and iPhone!”) but let me use an analogy to put this into terms that some of you may understand better. You’d have to live under a rock not to notice that there are three major video game consoles in the US: Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, and Microsoft XBOX 360.

Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s Nintendo was the undisputed king of the gaming market. There were other consoles and hand held units out there, but Nintendo had (arguably) the best games and definitely the largest catalog. Nintendo wanted to keep their quality high so they adopted the policy of only licensing a specific number of games from each manufacturer each year. Games also required their seal of approval (literally). The idea was that they only wanted the best games on their system, and because game makers wanted a piece of the Nintendo pie, they went along with it. They also wanted to focus on family friendly and kid games. They felt that this would get the broadest appear for them.

Then along came Sony PayStation. Sony had no such restrictions and their catalog grew by leaps and bounds. Game sales (or lack thereof) motivated game developers to design better games. If a game was written well many people bought it and they were able to keep the price up for a while before the next greatest game took its slot in the sames lineup and the older game got discounted. Poor games did not sell and were discounted sooner. Game developers were less willing to  invest R&D in poorly written games because they were not as profitable.

Then when Sony PlayStation 2 came out they maintained backward compatibility with PS1 (something Nintendo never did, since each console used different physical media)  when the new system came out, in addition to the catalog of launch titles it had a built in catalog of PS1 titles that worked on the new system and looked even better than they had on the PS1.

Microsoft joined the competition with a the X-Box, with a new online service and hard drive, and Nintendo released the Super Nintendo and N64, each of which used their own proprietary media.

Nintendo had staggered innovation while Sony had encouraged it, and it paid off BIG.

Jump forward a few years new contender Microsoft released their second generation X-Box, Sony released the third generation PlayStation, and Nintendo released the revolutionary new device the Nintendo Wii.

Sony added a built in hard drive, motion sensitive wireless controller, and blue ray drive, banking the future on hardware upgrades, but basically released an overpriced upgraded PS2 that was nothing revolutionary, and to top if off they broke compatibility with older PS1 (and many PS2) games (and later redesigns of the system broke it pretty much completely).

Microsoft was the first next gen system to release by nearly a year and paid the price for it by releasing a system that had many hardware issues that took them two years to resolve. The new system was available in 3 varieties to meet every market and budget.  The upgraded game consoles  had some significant hardware improvements and broke backward compatibility,  but their focus on online games which they linked the online service to their already successful Windows Live service which included mail, instant messenger, etc and concentrated on adding features to that such as down-loadable music, games, movies, etc. and making all games online capable, was their saving grace.

This paid off for them because they are now the number 2 console in sales rather than a distant third.

Nintendo, on the other hand, came up with something completely different. A game console that sold at a lower price but was completely motion sensitive and open to many different kinds of games.It was inexpensive to produce and sell, and had a broad range of appeal for everyone from little kids to senior citizens!

They also removed the limits on game quantities and shed the kid game persona that they had carried for a decade, morphing into more of a family centric persona which worked well with the system that was designed for all ages from kids to senior citizens, men, women, boys, girls. It didn’t matter. Wii had something for everyone. They also maintained backward compatibility to Game Cube games (the only other Nintendo console to use optical disc media) and created the “Wii Shop Chanel” where people could download (for a nominal fee) select titles from earlier Nintendo and other game consoles. In many ways the Nintendo Wii is inferior to the PS3 and XBOX360 but it outsells both consoles by more than 10:1

Within a year Nintendo had regained their former position of prominence in the industry and with Microsoft chugging away at their platform, Sony slipped from the number 1 to number 3 position.

Nintendo and Microsoft embraced innovation and are thriving. Sony stifled and is floundering.

Android is embracing innovation and diversity while Apple releases the same phone year after year with only minor upgrades and has a closed system where they control what apps you can have.

The Apple fanboys like to say that BlackBerries are all the same but RIM has 5 form factors now with lots of variation. Apple releases the same device every year (only cosmetic change was going from a silver back to a black or white one) with more memory and a couple ticks higher processor. Oh and 3gs finally added a video camera lol.

U.S. CARRIERS:

The next year or two will see AT&T loose iPhone exclusivity and once that happens customers will desert them like rats fleeing a sinking ship. The fanboys insist they will not make a cdma iPhone but they already have the one in China uses cdma200 the same technology as Verizon.  I do think it will be dual mode CDMA/LTE hybrid though. This dramatic loss of customers, because they have literally bet the network on the iPhone will cause them to drop to the #3 spot in the usa.

Verizon is the only other network which can handle the iPhone in any quantity and Apple is not stupid. Even if they don’t give VZW an exclusive on a CDMA /LTE model the bulk of those leaving AT&T will go to Verizon. Verizon will use the influx of cash to push the LTE roll out up and to buy Sprint and divest the nextel/iden part of it.

Then T-Mobile USA, an under recognized, but quality carrier will quietly continue to grow and when the time is right they will take advantage of their weakness and will buy AT&T  People say that will never happen but they said the same thing about Altel, and look what happened there? Remember, AT&T didn’t buy Cingular, it was the other way around and the latter just changed their name.

A lot of people will have a hard time believing that this will happen but let’s take a look at a little history shall we?  Once upon a time there were at least a dozen cel phone companies in the US. Mostly regional. Over time the larger ones bought out the smaller ones and now we are faced with two really big ones AT&T and Verizon, both of which consist of at least a half a dozen small carriers.

This is where the similarity ends, however, as how each has accomplished this varies dramatically. AT&T knit all of the smaller carriers into a patchwork quilt of cellular coverage across the nation. Parts of their network are GSM, TDMA, GRPS, HSPA, etc.  Verizon on the other hand concentrated on upgrading legacy equipment so that it was all the same. AT&T upgraded selective areas of their network to faster technologies while Verizon upgraded their entire network to EVDO Rev-A.

We’ve all seen the “there’s a map for that” commercials and they are accurate. AT&T may have a faster 3G network than Verizon, but only a small percentage of their towers are 3G, so even in areas where they have 3G coverage they don’t have the capacity and users are forced to drop down to lower technologies. Verizon on the other hand has an entire nationwide network that is all 3G. Every tower they own (well for the most part) is 3G and to top it all off they own some GSM towers from their various acquisitions which they lease to AT&T and other carriers.

CONCLUSIONS:

I know that some of you will have issues with some of my conclusions and predictions, but that is the nature of the blog-sphere. We will all have to just sit back and see what te new year holds. .. .

MYTH #1: It’s always best to completely wipe your BlackBerry with J_Cmdr or a similar tool before installing an OS update:

The supposed rationale for this is the idea that you need to clean off the junk that may be left by older OS builds when certain files are not overwritten by the update process.

FACT: The update process does this for you automatically. First it backs up your database. Then it does a backup of your third party apps. Next it WIPES THE PHONE. Then it installs the boot rom and does a fresh install of the new OS on the clean phone. Then it reboots the phone (this is the part that seems to take forever), and installs the third party apps from the backup. Finally it restores the database from backup and reboots the phone again.

FACT: Doing this manually when your Blackberry is perfectly healthy serves no useful purpose whatsoever, and in fact can cause problems for the less tech oriented users out there. The only times you need to wipe the phone are:

1. When you have been dealing with Hybrid OS builds (OS’s comprised of modules from several OS builds), either moving to or moving away from, since this does indeed sometimes confuse the app loader.

2. If you have bricked your phone to such a degree that when you try to install the new OS the boot loader does not respond or when the DM merely overwrites the modules but does not fix a corrupted boot rom. I’ve done at least a hundred OS updates and only had this happen 4 times, two of which were with a defective Tour I had to get replaced.

MYTH #2: You need to remove the old OS’s from your computer before installing an update.

I’ve heard different versions of this including that this is needed all the time and that this is needed when you install an unofficial/leaked OS and/or another carriers OS.

FACT: The ONLY time this is the case is if you are dealing with HYBRID OS’s. Before they were invented people were installing leaked OS’s all the time by merely removing/renaming the vendor.xml file (and DM 4.7 and later may require you to disconnect from the Internet). I’ve never done this and heave never had a problem. I had 8-9 different OS’s for my Storm on my computer when the official .148 came out and the only reason I removed them was to save space.

I’ll update this post as I come up with more of these,

My recent article about the past year of RIM innovation over the last year and a half took me down memory lane and has prompted me to take a look into the future as well.

RIM has certainly had an eventful past 18 months, and some would say that they deserve a break, and a lesser company would be tempted to do so, but fortunately for us BB fans that does not appear to be the case at all.

Perl 2

The original Perl, while very popular, is a very dated device and now considered EOL (end of life). I’ve personally seen more people with Perls than any other BlackBerry smartphone. Slowly but surely, fans of the original Perl have been defecting the land of SureType for QWERTY or SurePress/TruePress to get a faster device and more app memory (the original Perl isn’t even getting OS 5.0 for this reason). This year RIM introduced a Perl Flip or just Flip BlackBerry smartphone but for many fans of the Perl, this wasn’t the same nor good enough. Fortunately for them RIM has not decided to abandon the Perl line after all.

Images and videos of the Perl 2 have already leaked on the Internet. Basically it looks like the original Perl, but has more memory and WiFi. Hopefully it will have better build quality as well.

RIM has not even admitted it’s existence let alone have any carriers officially announced it, but my prediction is that this will launch on Verizon first in late Q1 or early 2Q 2010.

Tour2

Like the Perl 2, images of what are supposed to be the Tour 2 have also leaked, and a few industry insiders have gotten their hands on one. Basically this device (model 9650 and code named Aries) will have a trackpad and wifi along with more memory, but the same form factor as the original Tour.

Rumors of an accelerated release of this device have been rampant, driven by in large by the issues RIM has had with trackballs on the Tour 1, and frustration over the Tour 1’s lack of WiFi.

The images in question leaked very soon after the Tour launched, so soon in fact that it made me wonder if the images in question were really the Tour 2 or an alternate design for the Tour 1. However the appearance of more pictures and videos since then have made me believe that it really is the Tour2. The leaked images had Sprint branding on it, but as we all know that means nothing, and images with Verizon branding have since surfaced. Verizon and Sprint get all the same BB releases within days of each other with the exception of those that Verizon has an exclusive on or Sprint chooses not to carry.

Regardless, with RIM’s belief that BlackBerry devices only have a one year lifespan, along with the huge success of the first device, make it a virtual certainty that the Tour 2 will launch sometime in 2010, and will have the upgrades mentioned above. Many people who are holding out on purchasing the Tour are hoping for an earlier date, while most of those who already have it are hoping for a later one so they can at least use their “annual upgrades” and avoid paying full retail. My personal prediction is early Q3 2010, late Q2 at the earliest, but we shall see.

BlackBerry Magnum

Magnum (9900) is supposed to be a hybrid Bold type device with a touch screen. Will it have SurePress or will it have a capacitive touch screen like more traditional touch screen devices?  Will it have a screen as large as the Bold or Storm, or will it follow the 8900/9660/85xx form factor. Touch screen or trackpad? We can be relatively sure that it sill not have a trackball as that seems to be something that is being phased out.

Not much has been said about it in nearly a year which makes me wonder if it will be joining the ranks of devices that never see the light of day or that are released in a significantly different form than originally intended. Only time will tell but I am not holding my breath. If it does come out next year, I would guess it will be for the holiday season and hopefully will have CDMA and GSM variants.

Storm 3

The huge successes of the Storm 1 and 2 make a Storm 3 a virtual certainty. Yes some of you chuckle when I call the first Storm a success, but need I remind you that it sold over a million units in the CDMA variant on Verizon in the first 90 days alone. Worldwide the numbers are much higher. Whatever your thoughts about the original storm, you can’t argue with it’s sales success.

Unlike the Storm1, the Storm2 is a very solid device, so the release of a successor, while inevitable, is not nearly as urgent.  I’m going to go out on a limb hear and say that the Storm 3 will not launch until 2011 and will be RIM’s first LTE device. Other obvious upgrades are a more powerful processor, more app memory, and a more up to date OS.  I do not believe that it will eliminate SurePress or make it optional. SurePress is what makes the Storm unique, and RIM knows this. They wont be abandoning it — refining it, yes, but not abandoning it.

Bold 3

A lot of people are hoping that RIM will upgrade the Bold 9000 form factor with more memory and other goodies, but I don’t see this happening.

The Bold 2 (9700) uses a completely different form factor from the 9000 — the same as the Tour, but with GSM Bold innards.

If they were planning to upgrade the innards of the orogonal Bold form factor, I think the white Bolds we are starting to see now would have been that way, but he only change is the color with no other enhancements. I think the original Bold form factor is dead.

Will the Bold3 be an upgraded 9700, or a different form factor entirely? Could the Bold3 and Magnum end up being the same device? Will we even see a Bold3 next year? Only time will tell.

BlackBerry 8910

Recently rumors about a BlackBerry 8910 have surfaced. Traditionally BlackBerry models with the 10 on the end of them have been models with GPS but no WiFi, so this does not make sense initially since the 8900 Curve has both of these. What does make sense, however, is a model with the new Trackpad. Tour, which has the same type of troublesome trackball, is being upgraded to a model with a trackpad and it makes sense for them to do the same thing for the 8900, which, while a year old, is still a vital device, even though it does not have 3G. It is possible, but unlikely that the 8910 will have 3G as well because the model was initially aimed at carriers that did not have 3G (or at least a large 3G footprint). If indeed it does have 3G, my prediction would be for it to have TMobile 3G frequencies.

GSM Tour?

I’ve seem some people in the forums ask if there was going to be a GSM Tour, but all they have to do is look at the existing pictures and, they have already done so. It’s called the Bold 9700. It’s possible that they could come up with a 9620 or 9650 Tour with north american 3G GSM radios but somehow I doubt it. What would be the point? The Tour2 is already in the pipeline and that’s a world phone already so it has GSM innards already (though probably not north american 3G).  A GSM Tour is a possibility but I find it very unlikely.

Curve 3

The Curve series has been hugely successful for RIM, in fact the original Curve 83XX is still one of the best selling smartphones on the US 3 years after it’s GSM launch (2 on it’s CDMA), despite it’s limitations.

It’s my prediction that the Curve 3 have more or less the same form factor, will have a track pad and media buttons, along with a more powerful processor, more app memory and storage space, along with a 3.2 MP digital camera with flask and auto-focus. Basically the innards of the Bold/Tour in the Curve form factor. I’m also predicting a 2011 release date.

Side Slider Device

RIM has expanded it’s form factors significantly in the last two years and I see no reason for this to change. I’m also going out on a limb here and predicting that 2010 or 2011 will see a side slider type BlackBerry similar to the Motorola Droid and numerous other Windows Mobile and dumb phones.

Bottom Slider Device

Dispite the flimsy hardware, the Palm Pre design has been very popular. It’s long been my belief that this was the form factor that the Magnum would take. When collapsed it would look a lot like the Storm and Storm2 but would have a slide out QWERTY keybaord with the same size and configuration as the Tour/Bold9700. I also predict this also a 2011 release at the earliest.

OS 5.5

The last two year have had RIM release major OS upgrades and I see 2010 being no different. OS 5.5 will be an enhancement of the existing OS but not significantly different: It will have a WebKit web browser and integrated HTML email using the same rendering engine. It will have better support for MMS, BBM will be a standard part of the OS again. It will have native contact and calendar syncing with Google and exchange and no longer require BES or third party apps to accomplish this. You will be able to back up your contacts to BIS the same way you can with your BBM contacts now.

App Memory

With the launch of AppWorld it is now easier than ever to download and install apps, games, and themes into your BlackBerry smartphone. Unfortunately, even the stagiest BlackBerry supporter has to admit that app memory and storage space on all current BlackBerry models is woefully inadequate.

The Smartphone world is all about apps to expand and customize your phone and RIM clearly understands this, given the release of AppWorld.  In the next year I predict that RIM will continue to improve both the AppWorld client and it’s product offering.  I also see them adding more memory to their phones. I don’t see them doing an Apple and giving the phone double digit gigabytes of space, but I do see them expanding to at least one or maybe 2 GB of app storage in the next year, along with an increased amount of storage space for images, ring tones, wallpapers, and other files. I do believe that RIM will be adding the ability to installl apps on the memory card as well.

MERGERS?

It’s been suggested that RIM might get bought by both Microsoft and Samsung over the last year, citing stock prices and their market share slipping in recent years, but I don’t see it. Yes I can see something like that for Nokia/Symbion and Palm but RIM is still a strong company that continues to grow and innovate and I dont see them slowing down anytime soon.

Android, a fledgling upstart OS has come into it’s own, expanding the handset and carrier selection, as well as making the OS a lot more user friendly. Palm came out of obscurity with the new WebOS device operating system (too bad the hardware is so cheap, and they are on a dead end carrier). Apple iPhone finally got MMS and push notifications so they can at least pretend like they are multitasking.

And then there is RIM. Ah RIM, everyone’s favorite whipping boy it seems. RIM has had the most promising year of all, though critics are reluctant to admit it.

A year ago the two devices to have were the Bold 9000 on GSM carriers, and Storm 9530 on CDMA carriers.

Bold 9000:

RIM really hit a home run with the Bold 9000. It was marketed as the best BlackBerry to date and it was. For the first time GSM users had 3G (HSPA), GPS, AND WiFi in one device, topped with the most powerful processor, amazing keyboard, and gorgeous screen to date. Previously GSM users had a choice of no GPS or WiFi, WiFi but no GPS, or GPS but no WiFi; and 3G was not an option a it all on a GSM BlackBerry.

The Achilles’s Heel is that it only had 128MB of app memory — but one GB of storage space; what’s up with that? . More and more BlackBerry applications were being written and those that existed before were getting bigger so users filled up fast!

It’s large screen and keyboard were both it’s greatest benefits and curse. They were benefits because they were just plain gorgeous to look at and great to type on. They were a weakness because the large size made them awkward to carry as an everyday device for most people; but for those with large hands this was a Godsend.

After almost 6 months of delays and a rocky launch on Rogers in Canada the Bold became available to AT&T subscribers in the US in early November 22008 (followed shortly thereafter by numerous other carriers worldwide) and for all of the reasons mentioned above it was a huge success.

Curve 8900:

The success  of the Bold 9000 was short lived as RIM followed it up in Feb of 2009 with the launch of the BlackBerry Curve 8900 on T-Mobile. The 8900 had a slower processor, but had twice the application memory (256 instead of 512 MB) so users could install twice as many apps.  It was smaller than the gigantic Bold and  the software was solid from launch, whereas AT&T categorically refused to release RIM’s bug patch releases. The device was designed for and optimized for the older EDGE (2G) data network, and launched at a lower price point.

Those factors along with the fact that a large portion of the country does not have reliable 3G (or 3G at all) made many people — including yours truly — “upgrade” their Bold to the 8900 either with an unlocked T-Mobile model or to the AT&T version that launched in early summer.

Storm 9500/9530:

Verizon Wireless in the US launched a major media blitz about their own new BlackBerry smartphone, the Storm 9530, and the media was quick to dub it “the iPhone killer” — that is until they actually got to try live units.

Things didn’t go quite as smoothly for  CDMA fans as their GSM counterparts. Days before it’s expected launch a major security flaw (a rarity for a BlackBerry which is by design more secure than competing mobile OS’s) was discovered forcing RIM to bump the launch a week and release the phone with a much older build of the OS than originally intended.  The Storm was released on Verizon with OS 4.7.0.65 which was extremely buggy and borderline not usable depending on your needs and app usage.

Normally Verozon waits a month or 6 weeks to launch their first Maintenance Release (MR1), but two weeks after the launch date they released .75 which fixed the worst of the bugs but still made for a laggy and overall unsatisfactory user experience.  The .78 which launched on Telus and Bell Mobility in Canada was not much better. Daily (or twice daily or more in some cases) battery pulls became the norm for Storm users. Users removed unnecessary languages and modules, uninstalled apps that they tried but decided weren’t worth the memory that they took,  and more and more users began to install leaked OS builds in the hopes that they would fix the issues. When that didn’t work,  OS Hybrids (using modules from multiple OS builds) were created.

Verizon and RIM had intended to release two more OS updates in rapid succession in December and January to bring things to where they should be, but for whatever reason the builds they intended to release (rumor being .85 and .99) did not pass Verizon Technical Acceptance despite being better than .75 in almost every respect (we know this because several builds leaked onto the Internet and were widely used by the BlakBerry community). My personal feeling is that the broken stereo Bluetooth was what killed it (it worked in .75 but not in any of the leaks), but the exact reason was never made known.

Rather than release a build or succession of builds that fixed most of the problems Verizon waited until they got a build that was pretty much as good as they thought they could get and this it was May before we got an official update in the form of .148 which still wasn’t perfect but was still ages ahead of .75 and everything worked. Storm users didn’t really get a satisfacctory OS experience until the official OS 5.0 release, one week before the launch of the Storm2 in November.

This experience was mirrored by users of the Storm 9500 released by Vodaphone in various countries in Europe, with the exception that Vodaphone users are still waiting on their OS 5.0.

BlackBerry AppWorld:

BlackBerry fans have long sought a single place go purchase apps and download free ones from and RIM obliged this year with AppWorld their very own app store that debuted in April. At first the software was a memory hog and buggy, but like all RIM software new builds were released and the software improved (if only BB OS software worked that way). It’s still not as polished as the Apple equivalent (which is a year older) but it is getting there, but unfortunately app prices are a lot higher since RIM does not want $0.99 apps in AppWorld. The advantage is that unlike iPhone the App Store is not the only place to get apps (leaving Jailbreaking out of the conversation as that’s an entirely different article). Regardless BlackBerry users no longer need to scour the web on their own to find apps to install.

In November, RIM added themes to AppWorld, and while they did get their own categories, they quickly dominated the new and featured categories, making them all but worthless. Hopefully RIM will fix this ASAP.

BlackBerry 82xx: PerlFlip:

RIM released a new form factor this year, something that a lot of people didn’t expect: a flip phone. It debuted on CDMA carriers, but by the end of the year it was on GSM carriers as well. It had a SureType keyboard and Perl sized screen, along with WiFi. The CDMA version even came with 3G.

For all of the iPhone fanboys lauding that RIM releases the same device over and over again you can now buy a BlackBerry in 4 form factors

1.  QWERTY/QWERTZ
2. Candy Bar (Perl)
3. Touch Screen (Storm)
4. Flip

While the only cosmetic change that the iPhone has had since the first version is the change in back color from shiny silver to your choice of black or white.

BlackBerry Tour 9630

Calls for a CDMA Bold (9030 or something similar) were unheeded by RIM, who instead chose to upgrade the aged 88xx series phone adding features from the Storm (the radios and battery),  Bold 9000 (keyboard, only slightly smaller), and Curve8900 (battery, memory) into one super CDMA BlackBerry which for a time (arguable) dethroned the Bold as the king of all BlackBerries.

It didn’t have as powerful a processor or WiFi but those were the only significant disadvantages, and Boy Genius Report, who are vocal critics of RIM stated flat out “best BlackBerry keyboard EVER” in their review.

The Achilles Heel of the Tour was the trackball. It came with an identical trackball to the 8900 model Curve, but for whatever reason the Tour had a significant amount of units with bad trackballs. Software tricks like improving the sensitivity helped a little but there was clearly a hardware issue as well. This resulted in a very high return/exchange rate. Some rumors estemate it as being as high as 50% though I suspect that’s inflated, and once you get a good trackball the Tour is a very solid device.

BlackBerry Curve2

Late Summer and fall brought a new Curve BlackBerry (9320 GSM; 9330 CDMA). Many people had been disappointed that the Curve 8900 (sometimes mistakenly called the Curve 2) had lacked 3G, however the 8900 was not intended to be the successor of the popular 83xx series Curves (as demonstrated by a lack of a 8930 model number) but rather as a stopgap device for GSM carriers who did not have a large 3G footprint like T-Mobile. Instead RIM prepared the true Curve2 and made CDMA and GSM versions.

The Curve2 was small like the 83xx series, had a 2MP camera (as opposed to the 3.2 which is now standard) with no flash or auto focus. It did, however have 3G, and WiFi.  It also had two new features that no other BlackBerry devices have ever had. (1). Dedicated media buttons on the top and (2.) the trackball has been replaced by the track pad. It’s also rubberized on portions of the outside to make it more durable and resistant to scratches.

With it’s lower specs and price point, some have speculated that RIM intends to market this to prepaid carriers, and thus far there seems to be some truth to it. Regardless this is clearly an entry level BlackBerry device. That is not to say that a hardcore user might not like it because many do. One thing about the 83xx series that a lot of people that have migrated to more advanced devices is that way it feels in the hand and how “pocketable” it is. The Curve has both of these in spades!

OS 5.0

As has been RIM’s practice over the last couple years they upgraded their existing portfolio of models to a common OS version with new features. Last year it was OS 4.5. This year it is OS 5.0. The info that leaked indicated that 5.0 was supposed to be more stable, faster, and have a whole slew of new features including a better browser, tabbed browser, much enhanced BBM, improved HTML email, and threaded SMS.

For whatever reason the tabbed browser never made the cut and the browser itself while slightly improved over the 4.7 version still needs a lot of work before it cam compete with those offered on Windows Mobile, Android, and iPhone. For the time being third party browsers will have to fill in the gap for those unsatisfied with the built in browser, and RIM has promised a much improved WebKit browser by next summer.

The Curve2, Storm2, and Bold7000 all launched with OS 5.0 and as of this writing the Storm 9530 has received an official upgrade to OS 5.0, but it has thus far been the only device to get such an official update. Builds for all other major devices have also leaked so we know that the 8330, 8900, 9000, 9630 will all get the upgrade in time. Basically any BB with 96 MB of flash memory will get the upgrade when ready.

BlackBerry Messenger 5.0

The improved BBM was released but not as part of the OS 5.0. RIM instead chose to make it a standalone application like it originally was. I wont go too much into detail here but it now has a scalable bar code to make it easier to add your friends, messenger groups, and a slew of other minor enhancements.

BlackBerry Storm2

As early as last Winter, rumors began to circulate about a new Storm a model 9520 that would be a GSM model with WiFi and it was rumored to be intended for Rogers in Canada (and possibly AT&T at some point), but that never materialized. In the end we got two new Storms (9520 for GSM and 9550 for CDMA) in time for the holiday season. The new devices were released on more or less the same carriers as the first Storm model.

You can read my Storm2 reviews for more info but suffice it to say the Storm2 is hands down the phone Storm1 should have been and wasn’t (which is often the case with second generation handsets).  It launches with OS 5.0 and every hardware issue has been addressed and improved. Many still long for non press screen like most other touch screen phones but RIM has other ideas. I have not heard one person who has tried the Storm2 and thought that it was not ages ahead of the Storm1 in every respect. It is also the first ever CDMA BlackBerry with WiFi.

BlackBerry Bold 9700

With so many improvements in other models over the Bold 9000, the Bold series was in serious need of an upgrade, and RIM obliged with the  Bold 9700 in October/November released first on T-Mobile and Rogers and then on AT&T. It took the Tour form factor but kept the Bold 9000 innards and upgraded the application memory. The trackball was replaced with the more modern track pad that debuted in the 92xx series Curve.

Some mourned the loss of the larger form factor along with it’s keyboard and screen, but I think RIM made the right choice making it a much more attractive device to the masses. For those who like the larger size but wan a new BB, AT&T has released a Bold 9000 and 8900 in White, but alas they have the same specs as their predecessors so the changes are only cosmetic.

CONCLUSIONS:

With all of these improvements variations it blows me away that people say that RIM does not innovate. It’s pretty clear to me that RIM innovates more than all of their competition put together with the possible exception of Android, and I would argue that Android is playing catch up so they are kind of forced to do so.

So what’s in store for RIM in 2010? Watch for my forthcoming blog entry and find out!

The new upgrade is to 5.0.0.55 and is now available for download from BlackBerry.com . Expect to see it in AppWorld tomorrow.

This one is only for OS 4.7 and up like the last one and remember to back up your contacts before installing. Demand for this is going to be high so if you get errors on the download, try again later or wait for a mirror to show up in the forums or comments.

• OTA Download

Download It Now From BlackBerry.com