Mobile News 8/6/10
Hello everyone,
While I don’t have a lot of topics this week, I do have some very big topics, mostly based around RIM.
First and foremost, the BlackBerry Torch 9800 was announced on Tuesday. The Torch will officially be sporting OS 6.0 which is a huge leap for RIM. Torch is a slide device with a storm-sized touch screen without the click. I’m sure you are all familiar with the click screen on the storm and how much fun that is. You can all sleep tonight knowing that the Torch will not have the click screen. The slide-out keyboard is a full QWERTY with the optical trackpad, menu and escape keys, along with your send and end keys. The keyboard slides out portrait style as opposed to the usual landscape style that most of today’s touch-screen users are accustomed to.
OS 6 is truly designed for touch screen devices and works very well. They’ve added a lot of great features to OS 6, one of which is a universal search. You can use the search from practically any screen and it will automatically search locally on the device and the web while you type. This allows you to navigate to your destination extremely fast without opening different applications to reach that destination. Another great new feature is the ability to update multiple social networking sites at once. You can type in an update and choose which social networking sites you would like to send the entry to, and blam, you’re done. So basically you can now tell the world that you’re at the mall on facebook, even though you think only your friends can see it, and bring twitter over capacity all at the same time.
OS 6 has a tabbed home screen, similar to the iPhone and Android, of course. This does make the user experience much more organized and easier to use. The OS 6 browser is now a WebKit browser which allows you to surf the actual web extremely fast instead of the old BlackBerry browser which was a sluggish mobile view. The Torch is scheduled to be released on August 12th. It looks like the Torch will be exclusive to AT&T in the US, and shipments are already arriving at local stores.
OS 6 is RIM’s hail Mary to try and stay in the running with Apple and Google, and it has a fighting chance. RIM still holds the title for enterprise use but their non-corporate sales are in the gutter (compared to Apple and Google). A recent study indicates that %50 of individual BlackBerry users plan to jump ship and join forces with iPhone or Android, which is not good for RIM. Hopefully OS 6 will change that outlook.
BlackBerry services were disabled in Saudi Arabia today after a national ban on BlackBerry services. India and Lebanon have placed the same ban, but are giving carriers until October 11th to shut down the BB services. The UAE (United Arab Emirates) claim that BlackBerry services are actually TOO secure. Their argument is that users could potentially commit crimes and the government would be unable to trace the crime due to RIM’s high level of encryption. Basically they’re saying that BlackBerry’s are not able to be tracked electronically. RIM has offered to give access to the IP address of BES servers, the PIN and IMEI number of the BlackBerry devices, but the UAE says that this is “unacceptable”. UAE wants full access but RIM will never budge close to that request. But until they do, the UAE claims that they will enforce the ban on BlackBerry Services.
All of you Motorola Droid users out there should be happy to know that Android 2.2 (Froyo) is available for manual download from Verizon. I know, it’s a bummer that it isn’t available OTA yet, but hey, at least it’s available without rooting. The Droid X is rumored to get froyo in September, so stop complaining about a manual download for your Droid! I have already discussed all of the new features included with Froyo, but Verizon has decided to axe the mobile hotspot and tethering for the Moto Droid, claiming that the hardware requirements are not up to par to handle these features. I’m sure many D1 users out there would argue this claim, but I’m sure big red will continue on with their plans.
Last, but not least, the Motorola Droid 2 is rumored to release on August 12th. We’ve already received verification that Droid 2 will be the first Droid from Verizon to come out of the box with Android 2.2 installed. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for that release date.
That’s all for this week. Have a great weekend!
Jonathan Ross | VoxMobile.com
Mobile Technology Engineer
