Blackberry Storm2 Smartphone

Waterloo, Ontario -- Vodafone and Research In Motion today introduced the BlackBerry Storm2(TM) smartphone for customers in seven European countries as well as South Africa.

The second generation of RIM's innovative and award-winning touch-screen smartphone, the BlackBerry Storm2 significantly improves the BlackBerry touch-screen platform with new technology and new features to let customers stay easily connected to the people, places and things that matter most.

In the busy holiday gift buying period, customers in the UK and Ireland will be able to get the new smartphone first through Vodafone, and it will be offered exclusively by Vodafone in Germany, Netherlands and Spain. It will also be made available in France, Italy and South Africa in time for Christmas.

The BlackBerry Storm2 with BlackBerry OS 5 evolves the BlackBerry touch-screen platform with hundreds of hardware and software enhancements.

The BlackBerry Storm2 smartphone (model 9520) from Vodafone features:

New SurePress Technology

The BlackBerry Storm2 smartphone introduces a new SurePress(TM) technology based on an electronic system that provides the user with tactile feedback when the touch-screen is pressed. The new system responds equally to gentle pressure applied anywhere on the surface of the screen and makes clicking the display practically effortless. Typing on the smartphone's virtual keyboards is easier, more comfortable and more accurate. The new SurePress technology also allows the user to type a letter with one thumb even while their other thumb may still be touching or resting on another letter, enabling faster typing and multi-key actions such as Shift or Alt -key combinations.

Hardware Features

- Smooth design and premium finish with sloped edges, chrome accents, glass lens and stainless steel backplate

- Large (3.25"), dazzling, high resolution 360 x 480 display at 184 ppi

- Capacitive touch-screen with integrated functions (Send, End, Menu, Escape) and new SurePress technology that makes clicking the display practically effortless

- Global connectivity support: UMTS/HSPA (2100Mhz), quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM and Wi-Fi? (802.11 b/g) networks

- 3.2 MP camera with variable zoom, autofocus, flash and video recording

- 256 MB of Flash memory

- 2 GB of onboard memory storage and a microSD/SDHD memory card slot that supports up to 16 GB cards today and is expected to support 32 GB cards when available

- Premium and easy-to-access phone features, background noise suppression technology, loud distortion-free speakerphone and face detection (proximity sensor) that prevents accidental clicks and blanks the screen while the user is on the phone

- Media player for videos, pictures and music, plus BlackBerry Desktop Manager for both PCs and Macs, and BlackBerry Media Sync for easily syncing iTunes and Windows Media Player music with the smartphone(i)

- Vodafone's music client pre-installed, giving access to an extensive catalogue of artists

- A 3.5 mm stereo headset jack and dedicated volume controls

- Bluetooth (2.1) with support for Secure Simple Pairing, hands-free headsets, stereo headsets, car kits and other Bluetooth peripherals

- Built-in GPS for maps and other location-based applications, as well as photo geotagging

- Access to BlackBerry App World(TM), featuring a broad and growing catalog of mobile applications developed specifically for BlackBerry smartphones. Categories include games, entertainment, IM and social networking, news, weather, productivity and more. Applications developed for the original BlackBerry Storm are fully compatible with the BlackBerry Storm2

- BlackBerry Internet Service and BlackBerry Enterprise Server support

- Removable, rechargeable 1400 mAhr battery that provides approximately 6 hours of talk time on 3G networks and 280 hours of standby time

BlackBerry OS 5

- More responsive experience and includes usability and visual enhancements such as inertial scrolling, spin boxes that make it easier to set dates and times, gradient shading on buttons and more use of animation

- Typing accuracy and selection have been significantly refined

- BlackBerry Browser improved with faster JavaScript and CSS processing as well as support for Gears and BlackBerry Widgets

- Customers running BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5 will gain the ability to:

-- Set follow-up Flags on the handset like they can in Microsoft Office Outlook

-- Manage Microsoft Exchange email folders (Add, Rename, Move, Delete) on the handset

-- Access remote files shares (Windows Shares); Save, View, Edit, and Email documents from remote file shares

-- Forward appointments and view calendar attachments on the handset

-- Benefit from wireless sync improvements for Contacts, including sync for multiple contact folders, personal Distribution Lists and contacts in Public/Shared folders

(i) Certain music files may not be supported, including files that contain digital rights management technologies.

Pricing

Pricing will be announced by the individual in-country operating companies. As an indication, Vodafone UK will be offering the BlackBerry Storm2 free from GBP 35 per month on a 24-month contract that includes 600 minutes talk-time, unlimited BlackBerry Internet Service, unlimited text messaging, as well as unlimited access to VMI (Vodafone Mobile Internet) and broadband.

This article is from www.mobiletechnews.com

Google Voice App in Blackberry and Android handsets soon

SOURCE

Google Voice is headed for Blackberry and Android handsets, potentially turning smart phones into your hub for managing voice mail, all your contacts, and making low-cost phone calls, according to reports surfacing on the Web today.

The news, which by early this morning hadn't yet officially been posted on Google's own Voice blog, could be huge for mobile phone users who will be able to take advantage of all the cool features included in the Google Voice service. It also has the potential to irk wireless carriers by turning them into essentially "dumb pipe" providers, as Om Malik points out in a blog post.

The Blackberry and Android applications were privately demonstrated yesterday by the creator of the original mobile application, which was originally called GrandCentral before being acquired in 2007 by Google, according to the GigaOM blog. The imminent release of the new applications was also reported on Google Voice's Twitter page early this morning, promising that more details about the releases would come today.

The Google Voice application for Blackberry and Android handsets will reportedly allow you to:

* Play voice mail messages from your Google Voice account

* Send and receive SMS messages, bypassing wireless carrier fees

* Read and store transcripts of voice mails

* Allow you to save money on long distance phone calls

Calls initiated from your cell phone using Google Voice are carried over your wireless carrier's network and are not VoIP calls, according to reports.

Late last month, Google began sending out a limited number of invitations for users to sign up and try Google Voice. You can still send in a request for the service.

To read more on this, click SOURCE

Blackberry Tour

Good news to all Blackberry fans! This good news is from cnet.com; have fun reading.

Unlike its smartphone competitors, the BlackBerry Tour is not offered exclusively on a single carrier network. Instead it will be available on two carrier networks: Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless. Each carrier is set to launch the device on Sunday. Making its phone available on multiple carrier networks is not unusual for RIM, which sells its products on all four major carrier networks. But typically carriers don't make the devices available on the same day. In some ways, the non-exclusive arrangement could help RIM sell more devices because it greatly increases the potential sales base. But it might also hurt, if carriers focus more marketing attention and budget on promoting their exclusive phones.

 

It's yet to be seen how popular the new BlackBerry Tour will be. But at this point any new device from BlackBerry is likely better than none.

"Sales of the Tour are key in our opinion, as our checks indicated RIM may need strong July and August sales to meet its guidance," Walkley said in his research note.

The new phone, which sports Bluetooth, GPS, a 3.2-megapixel camera, a full QWERTY keypad, and a high-resolution screen offers everything that BlackBerry lovers have come to expect. And it also comes equipped with a Quad-band radio that allows the phone to be used internationally on both CDMA and GSM networks. The addition of the 800MHz and 1900MHz radio for CDMA is particularly important for users traveling to Latin America and parts of Asia where CDMA is available on these frequencies.

The device is likely to appeal mostly to business customers, particularly those who travel, and existing BlackBerry users. While Sprint Nextel also plans to market the phone to consumers, the carrier plans to target these customers first.

"Clearly there is already a strong base of BlackBerry customers, and many of them are business users," said Tim Donahue, vice president of business marketing for Sprint. "And we want to make sure they have access to the latest and greatest BlackBerry device out there."

To read more on this, click here.

Skyfire Lets Fly With Speedier Mobile Browser

Skyfire stirred up the smartphone world further on Wednesday with the release of a full 1.0 version of its mobile Web browser.

More than 1 million mobile phone users have installed and used the beta version of the browser over the past five months, according to company officials.

The new browser supports Windows Mobile(versions 5 and 6), as well as Symbian with Nokia's platform. A new version that also supports BlackBerry platform may be released in beta form soon.

"We just launched a private closed alpha version of the browser for BlackBerry devices. We are working towards a public beta this summer," Tracy DeMiroz, vice president of marketing for Skyfire, told TechNewsWorld.

Feature Rich

Skyfire's full-function Web browser for mobile phones supports popular Web standards and plug-ins such as Flash 10, Silverlight 2, Ajax and JavaScript, DeMiroz said.

Its ability to provide users with a means to view the rich media on Web sites from their smartphones may give Skyfire an edge. The browser lets users watch any Web video and live event on a small-screen mobile phone.

Skyfire users can customize their start pages with RSS feeds from their favorite Web sites. They can also integrate their Facebook and Twitter accounts to import status updates and tweets and easily publish their status to these networks with a single click.

What's New

The architecture stayed the same from the beta to the full first release version, according to DeMiroz. As they built version 1.0, however, developers focused on two things: user experience and speed.

Power optimization and search functions were also improved from the beta release.

"What is unique is that the complexity of processing the Web page takes place on our servers. That's how we get the faster performance and quicker page loads. That's how we can render the full Web page on the mobile phone," said DeMiroz.

Job One: Speed

Having previously delivered rich media and text readability on a small screen, the focus of the latest release was to help users get to content they want more quickly, added DeMiroz.

For example, users can enter a search term or Web site location while Skyfire is connecting to the network, she noted. After a Web page loads, the user can scroll and zoom; the experience is much like using an iPhone. Also, users can click on links on the first page load without having to zoom first.

"People say that we give an iPhone-like browser experience on other platforms," said DeMiroz. "We actually take that a step further by supporting Flash 10. Many Web sites are built with Flash and Ajax, and the complexity of the Web continues to grow."
Big Deal?

Though Skyfire joins the likes of Opera Software, which has offered a mobile browser for years, and Mozilla, whose Fennec mobile browser is just beginning to get off the ground, it remains to be seen whether an impending mobile browser battle will be anywhere near as fiery as the fight for desktop supremacy.

"My first response is, better than what browser? Especially with handsets, you have multiple browser functionality already," Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist for In-Stat, told TechNewsWorld.

Many applications running on smartphones can access the Internet. While these apps are usually not general browsers that people will use to surf the Web and look at various sites, most people do not use their mobile phones for the same kind of surfing they'd do on a desktop. Instead, they use very specific application functionalities that are tied to the Internet in some way, he explained.

"So it begs the question: OK, is it really that important? I have several browsers on my various mobile phones, including Opera. Surfing on most cellphones still is not a very pleasant experience," he argued.

(by Jack M. Germain of TechNewsWorld)