The Blackberry Bold 9700 & Blackberry 9000 Review

RIM Shows off WebKit Browser for Blackberry Bold 9700

Apparently, it’s coming and it’ll be here soon. I think that’s the one thing that’s been driving me and everyone else completely nuts over the Bold 9700 is the web browser. What a piece of junk it is if your forced to use it daily. Sluggish, slow, incompatible with basic CSS backgrounds leaving popular sites like sphinn.com completely unreadable at times.

However, Rim claims to be producing a WebKit browser (WebKit is the same technology that Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome is built on) that should speed up load times, increase compatability and overall navigation on the Blackberry Bold 9700 web browser quite significantly.

Video:

This should make a significant difference to The Blackberry’s overall acceptance in this mobile culture bringing in line with other competitors like the iPhone and Android. The WebKit browser promises to support things like AJAX, HTML5, CSS3, Javascript and other critical features to the complete web experience. There is strong rumors that Flash will be fully supported under Operating System 6.0 and the webkit browser as well, however I wouldn’t hold my breath just yet.

The Blackberry RIM Webkit Browser Download isn’t available yet, but when it is we’ll break that news to you ASAP! We believe this upgrade was part of the acquisition of Torch back in August 2009.

One thing RIM is doing that’s quite smart is not re-inventing the wheel on things. By buying Torch, they were able to get the webkit browser technology without starting from scratch, likewise with acquiring Viigo, they likely got the code for their social features newly designed into the Blackberry 6 Operating System.

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iPad and Blackberry Bold 9700 Play nice?

AP - Photo / Paul Sakuma

When the pictures like the one here started showing up after the iPad launch, i thought man.. I gotta blog about this! I mean but the silly thing is, people just don’t realize how crippled a device this really is. You see these expressions of sheer joy… Like a warrior of the old days finally nailing a deer with a hunting bow, modern man finds joy in forking over their money they feed their families with for toys.

This device is proven incapable of multi-tasking. I mean reading email, checking the web, while glancing at your twitter.. Or even listening to a song while working… All things a Sub $299 netbook can do…

My most recent purchase was a EeePC T91, and it’s truly something special to behold… But I won’t get into the joys of either… How does a Bold 9700 fit in with all this wizardry and devicery?

Well, let me say this much… With a Bold 9700 in your pocket whether you like the proprietary and limited hardware of the iPad or not, you can easily use cradlepoint to tether your blackberry to your iPad and get 3G on the non-3G model, and no doubt without an extra bill you have to pay each month.

So, you don’t like the operating system of the large iPad device but still like the features and functions, some kids have figured out how to hack OSX onto the iPad… Well, not REALLY… But still.. You can easily VPN using the right app into any machine… another mac, another Windows 7 machine and gain all those features wirelessly, even if your on the beach… So theoretically you could run anything you wanted remotely using that strategy.

But, the nice thing about a netbook vs an iPad is that you can have flash, you can run any old program you want and you can carry as many batteries as you want with you. You have a webcam for chatting and conferencing, you can get multi-touch and GPS and 3G internet.

The Bold 9700 won’t sync all it’s data with an iPad, but it would with a netbook of course… It remains to be seen and I truly believe that we’re going to find a generation that goes thru the fad of thinking these are incredibly cool and then finding they’re not using them as often as they thought they would….

I give the device 1 year, before you’ll see them going on craigslist for $200 and under.

Sonic D.

Recent Blackberry News

As I’m sure most of you can tell, I haven’t had the time I would like to have to write on here as often as I used to…

Here’s some interesting news you might want to know…

RIM Aquired Viigo (my favorite RSS blackberry reader)
What’s special about this program is that it can add rss feeds to read from the internet (on your desktop or laptop) and then walk down the street and read them remotely… add feeds without touching your blackbery… wonder why RIM bought the company and what they plan to do with it….’

Pocketberry showcases cops lights and sirens Bberry App
Sheah you can sure get into a lot of trouble with this one, dun even wanna go there….

Toy With Me launches blackberry 9700 vibrator app…
Don’t worry, the article is SFW (Safe for Work Viewing) but it’s just news right, interesting none-the-less.

Will the Bold 9700 Get stomped by the Tour 9650?

The big question on a ton of bloggers minds! I know it’s bugging me, fact is I wanted badly to know the answer and a few seconds ago it just hit me in the face like a ton of bricks!

No way!!!

What’s the Essex (Tour 2) 9650 device made of anyway? Apparently it’s really more of a mistake being repaired… The gyst was that due to timing they couldnt’ make the original Tour with a trackpad and Wifi just due to trying to quickly get the thing on the market… Now the Essex Tour 2 9650 does come with these features…

But what’s under the hood, you ask?

A Qualcomm 528Mhz Processor… Same as the original Tour.. Meaning that The Bold 9700 is still nearly 100Mhz faster than the Tour and Tour 2 models giving it more power and speed to run OS 5.0 applications.
It does have the same 3.1 megapixel camera as the Bold 2 (9700) and many other features are notably the same except of course size and asthetic design. The Essex has a bit more chrome going on than the Blackberry Bold 2 9700 packs.

The big question that will drive the dividing line between folks that keep the 9700 and those that don’t will probably be OpenGL support, and it’s still questionable whether this one will have the feature or not.

I think the Tour2 Will support OpenGL… It’s running the same CPU core as the Curve 8530 (which apparently should have OpenGL) and a very similar platform… Only time and new info will tell.

Blackberry Wireless Presenter Caught On Video

Thanks to Crackberry, the Blackberry Presenter was completely demoed at CES 2010 and on display for all to see. Seriously check it out, it’s actually a really neat video. The interesting thing is that each presenter has a unique ID so you could actually run several at once. Shows all the animations it’s capable of and more.

Amazon Kindle DX (Kindle 2) Worldwide Edition Now Available

I know, this is a blackberry blog! What am I? A Sellout?

No… Not exactly, but many of us are eagerly waiting for the Blackberry Kindle software to release, in the mean time this new device is quite interesting and a good sidekick to the Blackberry 9000 or 9700 really…

Consider this…

• Worldwide FREE Internet…
• 9.7 Inch E-ink Display
• 4 Days of battery life… wanna read on vacation? Go ahead!
• Larger display, easier on the eyes for reading ebooks than a Blackberry display.
• Kindle for Blackberry will be a tool that SYNCS with Kindle…

What’s neat about the Blackberry kindle coming out is that if you were on page 139 of a novel, but your on the road and didn’t bring your Kindle with you, you could keep reading where you left off! Pretty cool…

Anyway, I’m up here in the Great White North (Canada) and was waiting for the international device to finally come out, and here it is… check it out…

The Blackberry Presenter – Powerpoint Presentations

On Wednesday, January 6th 2010 – RIM released a new device that really changes the name of the game! A Wireless presentation device allowing you to do power point presentations with no laptop.

Given the native resolution of a Blackberry Bold 9000 or Bold 9700, this method of presenting would be best for text Power Points and non high resolution, non technical presentations only, but regardless it’s really cool. Makes you wonder if it would also work to play DIVX movies from your blackberry to  your TV Set.

Kind of disappointed this device didn’t come with HDMI though, that would make it truly a game changer and something totally useful in a mountain of situations.

Freeze mode is really neat. You can actually pause the powerpoint on the screen while browsing the presentation on your smartphone so you can digg thru and find what’s coming next then flow back all while the audience still sees the screen you were last on. Pretty awesome!

10 Meters of walk around space while still controlling the presentation, Impressive. I’m sure more news will surface and more strategy around  how it works as it slowly gets mentioned around the web.

Technical Details:

Video Formats:
NTSC/PAL

Power Connection:
USB

Video Formats:
VGA, S-VIDEO

Languages Supported:
English, French, Italian, German, Spanish

Display Resolutions:
640×480, 800×600, 1024×768

Bluetooth:
Version 2.o + EDR, Class 1.5

They might want to  add native Indian languages, as Blackberry devices are beginning to get a huge following in that country too.

-Richard

Early success of TheBoldReview

Its been nearly a month since the idea struck me to start a blog dedicated ONLY to blackberry bold devices, and since then – the site is already showing shocking success!

After reading Crackberry.com and blackberry cool everyday, its sometimes frustrating to have news that isn’t about your device… And I know there are other dedicated bold users like me out there…

Now within that seriously short period of time for a website, we’ve reached over 100 visitors a day!

Merry Christmas… And please… Comment on our posts and ignite the conversation!

RIM Profitable – Research In Motion Billions

Research In Motion filed it’s Q3 Report, showing just how popular and profitable they truly are. Based on the run of media and lack of devices they showed for the Bold 9700 when it first came out, it’s no surprise that they’re doing better than anyone could have imagined… In fact, reports of doing more sales than the iPhone on the Curve models… The curve in my opinion is really more of a college kid phone than a business tool – lacking WIFI and other handy on the road tools.

Interesting note, RIM sold their 75 millionth Blackberry, showing exactly what kind of strength this company really holds!

Revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2010 was $3.92 billion, up 11% from $3.53 billion in the previous quarter and up 41% from $2.78 billion in the same quarter of last year. The revenue breakdown for the quarter was approximately 82% for devices, 14% for service, 2% for software and 2% for other revenue.   During the quarter, RIM shipped approximately 10.1 million devices.

Fact is, we’re the proud owners of devices that are manufactured by a very healthy company with quite a strong future ahead of it!

Daniel J Deyette

Nimbuzz offering VOIP Skype to Blackberry Bolds?

That’s what it sounds like, and according to sites like TMCNet, that’s exactly what’s happening. It’s something we’ve all long waited for.. I would have even been happy just having skype chat on my Blackberry and Nimbuzz offers that too!

What’s Nimbuzz?! According to their website:
Nimbuzz Mobile lets you call, chat, message, and send files on the go, for free. It combines all your buddies from Skype, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, AIM, Google Talk and more. One login, one contact list, all accounts…

So in short yes, it’s about alot more than skype… This thing’s a swiss-army knife to the blackberry community. However, although it really helps keep you connected to all these different communities — I wonder if it can be too distracting…

Crackberry Blog claims that it cannot provide VOIP… and like me, they were disappointed in not seeing Twitter integrated into this package… I also would include linked in into that “wish list”.