If there is one thing that bothers me to no end about my BlackBerry Storm, it is the extreme difficulty in using it as a phone. It’s not because of call quality, which is great, or problems with dialing phone numbers via the SureTouch screen. It’s because the freaking screen doesn’t lock during a call, causing you to often accidentally hang up or mute your call. Extremely frustrating!
Thankfully, there is an application in beta right now that corrects RIM’s poor design choice. Called TalkLock, the application prevents users from accidentally pressing the screen and launching programs or functions while talking on the Storm. Disabling the lock and returning to normal phone behavior is done by swiping your finger across the screen from left to right at any time. Yes, it’s just that simple.
The application can be found free at www.cellavant.com/TalkLock/. You can see the full TalkLock feature list after the jump.
I feel bad for all those poor souls that have locked themselves into Sprint/Nextel for push-to-talk functionality, only to wait an average of three years for new iDEN BlackBerrys. HipVoice is a cross carrier push-to-talk service that will soon be launching for BlackBerry. As the video shows above, not only does it work irrespective of your BlackBerry or carrier, subscribers will also be able to communicate with WinMo and Symbian devices (iPhone coming soon). Here are the different ways HipVoice can be used.
UNICAST: Push-To-Talk one to one MULTICAST: Push-To-Talk one to many (Also to Walkie Talkies) CHANNEL: Push-To-Talk to anyone subscribed to the channel RICH MESSAGING: Text message users that are on or off-line
HipVoice is looking to charge $10/month for the service. Honestly, I’m not sure how they’re doing this, but sign me up. You can learn more about HipVoice at http://hipvoice.com.
Just before the New Year we had posted a screen capture showing a February 18th release date for the BlackBerry Curve 8900 on T-Mobile. Those fine gents at BerryReporter have published a new image showing a possible February 11th release date. Whether it comes just before Valentine’s Day or just after, I’m sure T-Mobile subscribers are itching to get their hands on the ‘BlackBerry Bold Lite’.
TechCrunch has posted an interesting (if cursory) investigation of the ways in which the Twitter community gets their Tweet on. Getting their metrics from Twitstat, TechCrunch shows that not only does popular BlackBerry Twitter client TwitterBerry crack the top ten, but TwitterBerry users are going Twitter crazy, with an average of 3.68 tweets per user. Currently, TwitterBerry is beating out desktop clients TweetDeck (a personal favorite) and FriendFeed.
While Twitstat’s metrics come from both a small and dedicated group of users, and thus don’t reflect the general Twitter population, it really doesn’t matter. BlackBerry users have always been considered ‘hardcore’ adopters, and it’s cool to know they’re using TwitterBerry to keep their Twitter feed well stocked. Are you on Twitter? If so, follow us:
Verizon and AT&T have been neck and neck for the right to call themselves America’s largest carrier, but on January 9th there will be one clear leader. Verizon has announced that their purchase of Alltel, the fifth largest telecom in the United States, will close on January 9th. The merger will bring Verizon’s total share of the market to a whopping 85.2 million wireless subscribers.
The deal includes paying $5.9 billion for Alltel’s privately held equity, as well as assuming $22.2 billion in debt. To finance this massive purchase Verizon Wireless has received commitments from eight financial institutions to provide $17 billion of cold, hard liquidity. It looks like the Verizon ‘can you hear me now’ guy will be working overtime to check up on all his new customers.
When we first reported that Orange UK was suspending BlackBerry Bold shipments due to ongoing technical problems — unexplained crashes, poor reception and dropped calls — it was a serious blow to RIM. Flagship products are supposed to be, well, a company’s standard bearer, and (on Orange UK at least) the BlackBerry Bold was waving the white flag.
However, at the time the issues were attributed to a launch OS that was… less than robust. Orange reinstated the BlackBerry Bold with the updated OS 4.6.0.162, but this has apparently not solved the problem. We hope for RIM’s sake that they can get this situation under control before Orange pulls the Bold permanently, but Orange customers deserve a BlackBerry that works. Perhaps an update to a new OS (4.6.0.190 perhaps?) will get the job done.
While pretty much any GSM subscriber in the world that wants a BlackBerry Bold can now easily get one from their carrier, things have not been so easy for those CDMA subscribers. Our poor friends on Sprint and Verizon (and Telus and Bell) have been waiting patiently for world on release dates of the BlackBerry Niagara (the CDMA Bold/8830 successor), but news has been slim since early October.
Thankfully, Engadget Mobile is reporting that Sprint is looking to release the BlackBerry Niagara sometime this quarter. The CDMA Bold variant would feature a 3.2 MPx camera, aGPS, Wi-Fi, EV-DO Rev. A, a gorgeous HVGA screen and possibly an updated design to make it similar in style to the BlackBerry Curve 8900 and BlackBerry Storm. Obviously, ‘this quarter’ is fairly vague, but I know it will make at least one person happy. We’ll post more as it comes!
Potentially lost among the Lazaridis’ statements about netbooks in CNET Asia’s RIM interview are a few important morsels about the BlackBerry Application Center, something we haven’t heard much about since it was officially announced at the BlackBerry Developer Conference. Below, you’ll find what Tyler Lessard, Director, ISV Alliances & Dev. Relations had to say.
Lessard: First of all, we have a strong developer community for many years. We’re looking to build on that and of course take advantage of all the applications that exist today and give them a central spot to be distributed. We think we’ll have a very broad breadth of applications that represent everything from games for the consumer to business productivity-type applications that cater to business professionals. Our focus is to make it a really effective channel for the developers. There are a few important things that we want to make sure we do. One is that the storefront is being designed from ground up for mobile software distribution. We are ensuring that developers will be able to submit applications and upgrades when they need to and letting users set up custom profiles so they can be alerted when new types of applications are posted.
We want to make sure we support free applications, paid applications and also monthly subscription billing or try-and-buy models. Those are things some other vendors have not been able to do because their stores weren’t designed for software necessarily. At the end of it, we want to support the broadest types of applications, different types of billing models and operate a very effective wireless channel for downloading of applications whether it’s via a cellular network or Wi-Fi.
Wireless operators can also offer their own customization to that storefront experience. So this won’t be the only place you can get applications for BlackBerry. If a wireless operator chooses to have a separate store where they highlight applications they want to sell because, for example, they have billing integration with those vendors, or it’s an exclusive application that’s available only on that operator, we want to make sure they can offer those separate applications and customize the storefront experience. We see the application store as a very important distribution mechanism, but it won’t be the only place. We’ll continue to let developers distribute directly as well.
Prior to the development of the BlackBerry scrollball, the BlackBerry trackwheel (found on the stalwart BlackBerry 8700 among others) was probably the best navigation mechanic of any smartphone. It was always a wonder to me how RIM could get it right where so many others failed. RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis gives us the answer in his interview with CNET Asia.
Lazaridis: We had the first symmetric keyboard and the first real successful use of the track wheel. Other companies have tried using track wheels and they gave up. Nobody really got the ball right. The problem with the track wheel was that in the early days, the manufacturers made them very stiff. The plastic was so rigid that, no matter what you did, if it hits the ground like this, it would break and the circuit board would crack.
We have very sophisticated labs with high-speed cameras, electronic scanning microscopes and infrared fast frame rate transform scanners that we invested in a long time ago. What we found with high-speed photography was that there was no deflection in the wheel when it hit the surface. The wheel stayed totally rigid and that snapped it right off. There was no saunter joint, metal pin, nothing. It’s so hard to manufacture and that’s why most companies gave up on it because there were a few phones that had it earlier on.
What we discovered and invented was a suspension in our track wheels. The suspension is sort of like the moon buggies, and what’s interesting about it is, you can’t feel it. It’s so stiff that you don’t notice that it’s got a suspension. But high-speed photography shows that when it hits, it bends in and it doesn’t break. That lowered the breakage a hundred times. Not a 100 percent, but a hundred times. That was a very big breakthrough for the industry, but we patented the technology.
Lazaridis goes onto state that RIM was also first company to come up with USB charging. Two cool pieces of trivia about what makes BlackBerrys so special.
This is just a friendly reminder from BlackBerry Cool that the California text messaging ban while driving we told you about in September is now law, so watch out - violators can expect to face up to a $50 fine. If you desperately need to communicate to loved ones/colleagues while driving, we suggest using Vlingo, one of our favorite (and free) voice-enabled BlackBerry applications.
If there is one thing that bothers me to no end about my BlackBerry Storm, it is the extreme difficulty in using it as a phone. It’s not because of call quality, which is great, or problems with dialing phone numbers via the SureTouch screen. It’s because the freaking screen doesn’t lock during a call, causing you to often accidentally hang up or mute your call. Extremely frustrating!
Who Wants To Be A Million...
Playboy Pool Party
Pirate Academy
Seltzer
Snow Globe
Fireplace
Verizon and AT&T have been neck and neck for the right to call themselves America’s largest carrier, but on January 9th there will be one clear leader. Verizon has announced that their purchase of Alltel, the fifth largest telecom in the United States, will close on January 9th. The merger will bring Verizon’s total share of the market to a whopping 85.2 million wireless subscribers.
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