Blackberry Phones

Want to know how much you’ll be forking out if you plan to get the one of the next generation BlackBerry devices? Thanks to the folks at BGR who managed to get their hands on an upcoming Sprint flier, we now have the prices for the phones when they go on sale later this year.

The BlackBerry Bold 9930 will be priced at $249.99, while the BlackBerry Torch 9850 will be $149.99 – both with a 2-year contract on Sprint. While $150 for the Torch seems nice, paying an additional hundred for the Bold seems pretty steep, even though it is RIM’s flagship device after all. But a price drop in the coming months is speculated, so if you can afford to wait, it’s probably a good idea.

We are also given a release date for the new devices – August 21st will be the date to watch out for. Expect details from other carriers to arrive in the coming weeks. Anybody making these Blackberry phones a day one purchase when they launch on Sprint?

Following RIM’s first-quarter earnings release on Thursday, the company’s sixth-biggest investor confirmed that it is giving up on the Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry maker. “They are resting on their laurels,” said Stephen Jarislowsky, chairman of Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd., on Friday in an interview with Bloomberg. “Steve Jobs is a much better marketer than RIM,” Jarislowsky added. ”We are on the way out.

The stake has been reduced by more than 50% or even more.” As of the end of the first quarter, Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd. owned 10.2 million shares of RIM stock. Earlier on Friday, RBC Capital Markets said RIM still has some fight left in it. Sadly for RIM in this instance, it looks like not everyone agrees.

It looks like RIM’s website team jumped the gun a bit, as we have just caught the new BlackBerry Bold on RIM’s main BlackBerry site. It’s not like you haven’t seen the BlackBerry Bold before, though, as we not only broke news of the device but have also spent some one-on-one snuggle time with RIM’s flagship handset.

With that said, we also exclusively reported that RIM might only launch one device at BlackBerry World, as opposed to previewing and demoing the company’s 7-device lineup for 2011. It looks like what we reported will be correct — the introduction of the new BlackBerry Bold (we’re still not positive if the final name will include Touch in it) as well as BlackBerry OS 7 (formerly known as OS 6.1). There’s one more image after the break.

At long last, it seems that T-Mobile has finally rolled out the BlackBerry OS 6 for its BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone, although this piece of news did not come from an official spokesperson over at T-Mobile.

The update hasn’t yet gone live on their website at press time, although Bold 9700 owners who connect to BlackBerry Desktop on their PCs shouldn’t have any problems with the update’s installation process. We do know that the release build is version 6.0.0.448, and what makes this special is that it is the first version of OS 6 made available to Bold 9700 users via T-Mobile.

Our No. 1 UK ninja just hooked us up with an unbranded OEM BlackBerry Bold 9780 in Pearl White, and we wanted to give you guys a detailed look at it.

• For starters, the device is visually identical to the BlackBerry Bold 9700 in white. While the black Bold 9780 traded in the chrome bezel for a glossy black bezel, the white version of the handset still sports the chrome bezel and metallic white paint job (Pearl White, as RIM likes to call it).
• We would have loved a solid white finish on here, as it would look a bit more high-end as opposed to this glitter-laced white — oh well.
• As far as the backlight is concerned, you might remember we had serious issues with the BlackBerry Torch 9800 in Pure White — we couldn’t use the device as a daily driver due to the fact that the cutouts for the keyboard backlight made the passing light look “blurry” to us. Thankfully, the 9780 is better. There is still an issue, however, and that’s the fact that there does not seem to be a backing to the keyboard like the black version has. RIM opted to simply leave the cutout letters and symbols bare, and this makes for a really poor and uneven lighting situation. Is it usable? Definitely. It’s just not perfect, and we kind of feel like it should be.
• The soft-touch mid-plate of the 9780 is a shade of medium gray as opposed to black on the  Pearl White version. You know what’s even better than medium grey on a white handset? White.

Head on over to our Pearl White BlackBerry Bold 9780 hands-on gallery for some more shots.

Our friendly FedEx guy just dropped off a present for us — the BlackBerry Bold 9780, replacing the Bold 9700 sometime in the next month or so. As far as the physical changes, well, the device features a glossy jet black bezel, with everything else outside staying the same. We leaked an internal document  highlighting the changes in the Bold 9780, and we can confirm that the device seems to be using an updated CPU, even if the clock speed is around 624MHz. The phone boots up very fast, even faster than our regular 9700 with OS 6. The 512MB of RAM in the handset leaves around 300MB free at device start up, and like we said before, OS 6 really works great on a non-touch device overall. We have a boot up comparison video of the current BlackBerry Bold 9700 with the upcoming BlackBerry Bold 9780 side by side as well as photos if you want to get your viewing on. It’s all past the break, folks!

It seems like Vietnam is the new hotbed for cell phone activity these days. Today, site mainguyen.vn  has published an extensive gallery of BlackBerry Bold 9780 images along with one 10-minute video. The site doesn’t really provide us with any additional details on the handset, but if you are anxiously awaiting its release, 17 hi-res images and a video can’t hurt your cause. Hit the jump to check out the video and hit the read link to see all the images.

Ah, a Tour owner’s dream. The BlackBerry Bold 9650 started life out as the BlackBerry Tour2. It then went through a late-stage metamorphosis and received a memory upgrade and name change for a couple of different reasons. One of the reasons is to utilize a positive product name RIM has built (the Bold line), and another would be to prevent hundreds of thousands of angry BlackBerry owners from practically taking over the entire city of Waterloo, Canada. You see, the BlackBerry Bold 9650 is what the Tour should have originally been, and by releasing a Tour2 under a year from the original device’s debut would be straight up insulting. RIM killed two birds with one stone by renaming the device to be a Bold, continuing a successful device brand, and also trying to not completely obliterate an existing handset (even though the Tour 9630 will certainly be end-of-life’d very, very quickly). So is the BlackBerry Bold 9650 the best in the biz? You’ll see soon enough, after the jump of course.

We have been playing with the BlackBerry 9650 on and off for a couple months, and now that we have an official unit from RIM and Sprint, we’re able to effectively judge the handset. Instead of doing a traditional review, we figured since the device really hasn’t changed so dramatically from the original BlackBerry Tour, we’d put our likes and dislikes into different sections.

Likes:

* Durable, solid construction and hardware.
* Great keyboard as always.
* Sounds great as a phone, great reception, perfect voice performance with calls.
* Much faster than the original Tour 9630, no real slowdowns or hangups in the OS, and a much speedier overall experience thanks to a newer and faster processor.
* Wi-Fi — obviously.

We love the solid hardware that RIM has been known for. It definitely shows in the BlackBerry Bold 9650 and it’s a real work powerhouse.

Dislikes:

* The raised trackpad, menu, send, BlackBerry, back keys (they are raised up beyond the keyboard and are a little too high).
* The terrible music speaker on the phone. It’s on the left side, and is a single speaker with a single opening in the case compared to 3 openings in the BlackBerry 9700 case. Sound sounds muffled, and the volume is pretty low. Overall, it’s kind of disappointing. Note: the speakerphone sounds great, we’re talking strictly about music/audio playback.
* The camera lens is still recessed so it can collect dust and isn’t cleaned easily. It would have been great for RIM to make the entire cover go over the camera lens so it would be flat and thus easily accessibly/wipeable.
* The phone is large in size and feels pretty outdated compared to sexier, even on carrier alternatives.

At the end of the day, this is what the BlackBerry Tour should have been. RIM’s hardware roadmap seems to be 1-2 years behind other mobile smartphone powerhouse manufacturers (that is being generous), and the BlackBerry Bold 9650 demonstrates this. The device is incredibly solid, but it’s overly large, especially when compared to a sleeker, sexier BlackBerry Bold 9700 sitting next to it. With phones that are pushing CPU speed barriers at 1GHz and beyond, RIM’s using an estimated 500MHz CPU here with 512MB of RAM and no internal storage. And that’s not exploring the truly ancient operating system that powers it.

The handset itself just straight up feels outdated. It’s a logical choice for a CDMA user, but we can’t help but feel like this device really doesn’t belong in a 2010 lineup. This is a great BlackBerry, and if email is your life, great. If not, there’s not too much we can say the BlackBerry 9650 offers over competitors on Sprint or Verizon. HTC’s EVO 4G and the HTC Droid Incredible (yes, they are two Android handsets) are miles ahead of this device, and unfortunately we’re not sure we’d recommend this handset over one of those except in extreme scenarios.

I just hoped that I would get it up yesterday but the BlackBerry Messenger Stress Test shenanigans somehow made me crazy!
So now I have a white 9700 so the black one I had is getting paid to a member of Crack berry!

So no need to wait any more! Here is the announcement! The name of the winner of my BlackBerry Bold 9700! So the winner is … Dita!!!!

Congratulations to Dita! There were over 3,000 comments I was so surprised to see them! They were about 60 pages! At the end of the day the luck was with Dita and she became the winner! If I had 3000 blackberry mobile phones I would give each of the members that had left comments so you should try to participate again and may be you will be the next winner! Thanks very much to those who had participated and left comments!
As for Dita! I will contact you! Thank you very much!

We know, Tour owners — you’re so ready for a little WiFi in your life that you could quite literally scream. Go ahead, let it out! There, doesn’t that feel better? No? Well, maybe this will: new shots out of The BlackBerry Zone suggest that Verizon sales reps are being actively trained on the Bold 9650, adding to a trail of evidence over the past month from a variety of sites that the phone is coming shortly. It certainly should, considering the relative importance of BlackBerrys in Verizon’s lineup and the fact that Sprint now has it at retail, and it’s still possible that documentation on CrackBerry last month pointing to a May 27 release — that’s this Thursday, for the record — is accurate. We’ll know soon enough, but in the meantime, treat those old trackballs with care, alright?