Rogers BlackBerry Bold, Today

If you’ve been paying attention to the BlackBerry blogosphere, you should be pretty excited about today. It’s August 21st, and it’s been confirmed that the BlackBerry Bold will be coming out of Rogers… yes, today (am I even right?).

We’ll see what we’ll find out about the news today as the Canadians should be able to get their hands on a BlackBerry that has been through a lot of delays, after delays, after delays. Stay tuned…

BlackBerry Bold gets some serious competition?

I think I found this out too late: a new smartphone from the Nokia E-series, the E71, is already out in retail stores, at least locally. I was at the mall yesterday afternoon doing some window-shopping when I spotted a BlackBerry-Curve-looking phone in one of the Nokia business centers here. I thought it was one of those usual mess-ups with mobile display galleries but I was wrong. So I checked it out and recognized that it’s the real E71, the upgrade from the notorious E61, E61i and E90 E-Series variants. When I went out to check the web (yup, you guessed it: using my neighbor’s Wi-Fi, thanks to Globelines), this new addition to the business phones from Nokia came out so loud on the blogosphere and in many other forums. It seemed almost everyone over at PhilMUG who had an older E-Series phone wanted to take home an E71 soon after it hit the shelves, check out this thread. I think it hit the stores just last week, on a Friday perhaps? But please read on. 

All the hype aside, let’s move on to its specifications. If you go and hit up this page from the Nokia-Asia site, you’ll find out that this phone has got every connectivity option available: Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, WCDMA, HSDPA, Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, AND Infrared (yes, Infrared!). It’s also got integrated and assisted GPS and a 3.2 megapixel camera. That’s quite a slew of features, I must admit. 

I’ve only read two full reviews so far, one from the Boy Genius himself and from allaboutsymbian.com, and it’s clear that this smartphone has gotten nothing but praises due to its super-slim design and functionality. While I was able to play with a demo unit at the mall yesterday, one thing I could remember that I didn’t like though was that the keypads seem so tightly-squeezed into each other, there’s like no air in-between keys. It’s so different from the perfect keypad spacing I have on my BlackBerry Curve. 

Right now, I am not sure if the E71 would come in as serious competition for the BlackBerry Bold. We know the BlackBerry’s forte is push-email and top-of-the-line security but if you’ve checked out the specs of the E71, it’s got the Nokia Intellisync feature and some security too. So I’m not sure if that could match up to what the BlackBerry has been doing (and doing perfectly good at that) since 2002. We’ll see for ourselves. 

Now let’s all wait until the BlackBerry Bold comes out. It’s been delayed since forever! The latest feed from BlackBerryNews, hints that it may come out from Australia on July 29th and then UK, hopefully. Hopefully… 

*Photo courtesy of AllAboutSymbian.com.

BlackBerry Updates

The BlackBerry universe has been so loud lately. First, there’s news about the coming of the BlackBerry 9000 a.k.a. BlackBerry Bold. Then there was the big BIS upgrade to BIS 2.5 which now supports HTML email, Hotmail integration and etc. This was rolled out in Asia Pacific first on the first weekend of June. Please check the thread I started on BlackBerryForums about BIS 2.5. The Americas will be getting their BIS upgraded next weekend as well. Aside from that, leaked pictures of the BlackBerry Javelin also started to come out on the web last week. Just today, Jibi from BlackBerryForums wrote an article on BlackBerryNews that the BlackBerry Javelin will have the BlackBerry 9300 as its model number. And it will come out stocked with handheld OS version 4.6!

Software-wise, the BlackBerry Desktop Manager version 4.5 has also come out. Read more of it here, courtesy of JSanders. It is confirmed that this version of DM is clean, good and should be issue-free as compared to 4.3. An ongoing discussion about this software can be found here as well.

The June-July period will see a lot of news and updates for the BlackBerry line. And it’s all about the number 5! Why? Remember the BIS upgrade to 2.5? Then there’s Desktop Manager 4.5. So the only missing piece then would be the device software version 4.5. Everything else would then be covered. I guess 5 is the new 8.

Stay tuned…

BlackBerry Bold to come out of Rogers first?

According to the BlackBerryNews feed, HorizonWirelessOnline has posted up on their website that the BlackBerry Bold may finally be coming out this month. The big BUT is that it would have to come out of Rogers wireless. Target release date: June 25th. It will supposedly come with HH OS 4.6, 4.6.0.60 to be exact.

And while it may not come as good news to some BlackBerry addicts like me, that shouldn’t come surprising enough at all. I mean with RIM based in Canada, I think it’s only fitting that the Canadians would get their hands on them first before the rest of the world does.

So I am really, really excited now.

*Photo courtesy of BlackBerryNews.