BlackBerry stops bullet, at last proves itself useful beyond BBM
We kid, we kid. There are many excellent reasons to choose a BlackBerry as your main handset in the year 2010, but we’ve got a brand new item to add to the list: bullet stoppage. A woman in Ohio was sitting with her gun-handling boyfriend at a restaurant when the gun went off and hit her leg. Lucky for the both of them, the BlackBerry in her pocket intercepted the bullet — rather sufficiently, though to the considerable demise of the handset. It seems as if it was helped along by a neoprene case of some sort, but it’s still pretty impressive for such a point blank attack. Love is a battlefield, folks.
[Thanks, Tommy G.]
BlackBerry stops bullet, at last proves itself useful beyond BBM originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
BlackBerry Application Suite leaks, ready to corrupt a perfectly good WinMo phone
We’d figured that RIM’s ambitious (if not questionable) project to port the juiciest morsels of BlackBerry OS to a virtual machine running atop Windows Mobile was abandoned long ago, and for all we know, it has — but the half-baked remnants of the undertaking are finally available thanks to the good folks at xda-developers. BlackBerry Application Suite, as its known, has finally found a proper home in a CAB file that’s making the rounds on the forums, and it’s apparently been bolted together with enough duct tape to work on an AT&T Fuze. Well, “work” is a relative term — you’ve apparently got to be on a BES server for it to work, you need to generate a valid PIN, and actuating the touchscreen requires a double-tap, but when you’re ready to stop punishing yourself with this craziness, the cold comfort of WinMo is just a couple clicks away. If you think you need this, odds are you really just need a Storm2, but hey, feel free to ruin your weekend trying to get this to work.
BlackBerry Application Suite leaks, ready to corrupt a perfectly good WinMo phone originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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RIM’s BIS 3.0 email features apparently leaked, finally does Gmail justice
For a platform billing itself as the business user’s best friend, BlackBerry’s list of unsupported protocols that have achieved ubiquity is actually astonishing: you can’t do two-way read status sync with an IMAP email account, for example, and amazingly, you can’t natively connect to an Exchange ActiveSync service without being routed through RIM’s back-end software. In a shocking move that’s straight out of 2002, it seems at least one of those niggles is going to get patched up soon thanks to a leaked list of email features in BlackBerry Internet Service 3.0, the software carriers deploy to marshal all data connectivity on the handsets they’ve deployed to customers. Yes, that’s right: you’ll be able to synchronize read status and sent items with your Gmail account, just as if you were using virtually any other phone produced in the last several years! It’s hard to fathom that it’s taken this long, but hey, we’ll take it — unfortunately, it’s up to each carrier to decide when they’re going to deploy BIS upgrades, so your mileage may vary on the wait time. Of course, RIM could just add IMAP support directly to its phones so that this whiz-bang tech would work with any third-party email service and wouldn’t have to go through BIS in the process, but that would be crazy talk, right?
[Thanks, Jeff]
RIM’s BIS 3.0 email features apparently leaked, finally does Gmail justice originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Virgin Mobile Canada lights up HSPA+ network, iPhone 3GS, Bold 9700 in tow
Virgin Mobile Canada lights up HSPA+ network, iPhone 3GS, Bold 9700 in tow originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 10:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
RIM’s (doomed?) BlackBerry Magnum makes its video debut
The same cat that brought us the last Magnum scoop is back again, this time with a short video detailing the differences between RIM’s supposed first effort at making a touchscreen / QWERTY hybrid device and its nearest cousins, the Bold 9000 and 9700. Notably, the narrator points out that the phone shares its keyboard design more closely with the 9000 than the 9700 — for aficionados, this can be a crucial difference — and it generally shares its physical cues with the older Bold apart from a move to micro-USB (and the SurePress screen, of course). Sadly, the proto here lacks an operating system so there’s not terribly much to see beyond the hardware itself, but it might all be for naught — the latest intel suggests that this phone has been supplanted by a mysterious “Dakota” with updated specs, so we’ll just have to hang on to our Curves and Storms for a little while longer. Follow the break for the full video.
Continue reading RIM’s (doomed?) BlackBerry Magnum makes its video debut
RIM’s (doomed?) BlackBerry Magnum makes its video debut originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
How to Avoid Email Hell — Increasing Productivity by Thinking Outside the Inbox
Filed under: Health, How-to, Required Reading, News, Asylum Exclusive
Do you ever feel like email is ruining your life? Granta editor John Freeman did, so he wrote “The Tyranny of E-mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox” to chart how this insidious technology has festered in recent years.
His … Read more
At Long Last, BlackBerry Desktop Comes to Mac [BlackBerry]
After years of borrowing friends’ PCs to update firmware, buying 3rd party sync apps and being generally frustrated by their technologies’ poor communication skills, BlackBerry-owning Mac users may soon stop wanting to die: BlackBerry Desktop is coming to OS X.
Although there were workarounds more most BlackBerry sync/update/media needs, including a decidedly decent Media Sync app for iTunes syncing, the using a BlackBerry has never been easy for Mac types, and BlackBerry Desktop will make lots of peoples’ live much, much easier.
The feature list:
* Sync your iTunes® playlists, calendars, contacts, notes and tasks
* Add/Remove applications
* Update your device when new software becomes available
* Backup and restore your device data with such features like automatically scheduled backups and optional encryption (security is #1 as always…)
* Manage multiple devices
The release is set for somewhere in September, or around two months from now, max. [BlackBerry]
Whoa, Apple and RIM Make a Lot of Money [Cellphones]
Surprise, Apple and RIM actually make a lot of money despite selling only 3 percent of the world’s cellphones. Together, they pull in 35 percent of the industry’s operating profits. An analyst suggests that if iPhone and BlackBerry’s marketshare climbs to 5 percent, they’ll rake in something like 58 percent of the industry’s operating profits.
Man, Nokia’s billion phone strategy don’t look so great now does it? [WSJ]
The Month in BlackBerry Apps: Too Sunny to Work Edition [Blackberry Apps]
Hey guys, it was too nice this weekend to sit inside and round up apps for you. So solly! Inside we’ve got illicit messengers, “disruptive” Twitter apps and bloggy blog blog goodness.
BlackBerry Messenger 5.0: It’s a leak and installing it is at your own risk, but if you’ve got a relatively recent BlackBerry—anything after the Curve 8300—it should be compatible with your device. Why take the risk? It integrates GPS location, has a proximity sensor, and other features and aesthetic niceties. Grab it here, if you dare.
Google Voice: We mentioned it before, but it’s worthy of another shoutout—after all, we’re talking about a native Google Voice app for your BlackBerry here. It’s not quite as tightly integrated as the Android app (wonder why that could be), but it does make it easier to make calls from Google Voice number and manage your inbox from your BlackBerry. Download it here.
Camera to Go: Promise you won’t use this to be creepy. CameraToGo lets you silence your BlackBerry’s shutter sound and take timed shots. It won’t work with CDMA BlackBerrys for some reason—maybe that’s for the best. It’s $5, but CrackBerry’s got a free trial. Download is here.
Verizon FiOS Remote DVR: Storm only for now, with Curve (and presumably Tour) support “coming soon,” this one’s pretty self-explanatory: It lets you scope out TV listings and remotely program your FiOS set-top box to record TV shows. Yay synergy. Snag it here.
Slacker Radio on BlackBerry Storm: Whether you want it or not, Slacker Radio is getting pushed by Verizon to your BlackBerry Storm.
Pandora 1.1: The latest version of Pandora for BlackBerry now streams in stereo AAC+. Update here.
Tweeteev: Supposedly coming out any day now, tweetev is one of the flashier BlackBerry Twitter apps we’ve seen—up there with TweetGenius. It looks fairly full-featured too: Trends, search, multiple account support and plenty of pop. We’ll have to wait and see if it’s actually “disruptive,” but you can sign up to be pinged when it’s out here.
WordPress for BlackBerryI don’t know who the smarmy European prick narrating their intro video is or who picked the ridiculous elevator music playing behind him, but it’s only forgiveable since we’ve finally got an official WordPress for BlackBerry. It looks pretty hideous on older BlackBerrys (the 8700 version makes me want to barf) but feature-wise, it seems fairly solid in terms of actually putting crap up on your blog. It’s a beta, so if it breaks on you, don’t expect to wag your finger too hard. Grab it here.
Bolt Browser Beta 3: While we wait for Skyfire for BlackBerry to go all public, in the meantime we’ve got the WebKit-powered Bolt browser, which has hit beta 3. Besides adding in basics that were missing before, like copy and paste, direct text entry and the ability to kil images for faster loading, you can do stuff like upload to YouTube and Photobucket now. Oh, and it’s faster. Download it here. (Image via BlackBerry Cool)
More BlackBerry App Coverage:
• BlackBerry OS 5.0 Gets Tabbed Browsing
• NYC Exit Strategy: The Other NYC Subway App You Need
• Google Voice on BlackBerry
• MyBlackBerry Social Network Gives BlackBerry, App World Users a Place to Whine About BlackBerry, App World
• BlackBerry’s Getting a Music Store in September
This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this month, give us a heads up or let us know in the comments. Have a good week!
Rumor: Verizon’s Upcoming Cellphone List Features Big Names, Ugly Phones [Rumor]
Curious about what Verizon might have up its sleeve in terms of upcoming smartphones and what not? Well, if you can stomach a rumor or ten there’s a list that’s making the rounds today:
- LG Chocolate Touch VX8575 (touchscreen)
– BlackBerry Storm 2 9550 – October/November
– Nokia Shade 2705 – Replaces the Mirage 2605
– Nokia Twist 7705 – The swivel phone from earlier this year?
– Palm Treo 800W
– Motorola Entice W766 (Replaces the W755)
– Samsung Rogue U960 (Replaces the Glyde U940, August)
– Samsung U450 – Verizon Mobile TV-compatible
– Samsung Strut U440 – QWERTY
– Samsung Omnia-II i920 (Holiday 2009)
Again, all rumor, although that ugly looking swivel phone was previously mentioned in the same sentence as “summer 2009.” [BGR]
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