blackberry phone reviews

The USA’s Wireless Association has announced that 25.7 million new wireless subscribers were added in calendar year 2005, breaking a previous 12-month growth record that was set in June. The total number of estimated wireless customers in America at year-end 2005 was 207.9 million. This is 14.17% increase over 2004, when 182.1 million subscribers were reported at year-end.
“Each year, more and more consumers are experiencing the incredible benefits that only wireless can offer,” said CTIA – The Wireless Association� President and CEO Steve Largent. “The mobile communications revolution is in full swing, and now nearly 70% of America is taking part in it. Only wireless allows consumers to communicate and connect while on the move, and it is that ability to conduct your work and play from wherever you are that is so appealing to Americans of all walks of life,” continued Largent.

According to the survey, revenues from wireless data services jumped more than 86% in the past year. Revenue from wireless data services amounted to more than $8.58 billion in 2005, up from $4.60 billion in 2004. On the SMS/Text Messaging front, the survey reported a total of 48.7 billion messages being sent during the sixth-month period ending December 2005. This is a 97% increase from the last sixth months of 2004, when 24.7 billion messages were sent.
The survey also revealed nearly 1.5 trillion wireless minutes consumed in 2005, an increase of nearly 36% over 2004 when 1.1 trillion minutes were used.

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It’s tough to find a solid smartphone that will provide you with 3G and Wi-Fi goodness, which is why Samsung’s new SGH-i600 looks like a steal (at the price of aesthetic sense, mind you, but oh well…). Strutting its stuff at IFA in Berlin, Samsung’s latest WM5 QWERTY “beauty” features, tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900 — but look for it to probably get 850 before it hits North American shores), HSDPA, EDGE, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth support, a 1.3 mpx camera and a MicroSD expansion slot. Engadget Mobile is saying it’s already FCC approved, so we could be seeing it in Q4 2006 (which actually extends to March 2007, but oh well…).
MobileMania.sk has a bevy of pics, some of which you can see after the jump.

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The rest of MobileMania.sk’s many pics can be found here.

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Fellow gadget lovers Smartphone Thoughts have a pre-production shot of what they’re saying is the next HTC smartphone. Dubbed ‘Excalibur’, the full QWERTY device looks a little garish, but where hoping it’s only due to the quality of the Photoshop’d image. The Excalibur is rumored to be a quad-band, WiFi enabled WM5 smartphone, a couple of millimeters thicker than the Samsung i320 and about 2 millimeters shorter. Interestingly, the device doesn’t have a scroll wheel, but instead has a touch sensitive strip to mimic one of our favorite BlackBerry functionalities.
Go here to check it out. Thoughts, ladies and gentlemen?

Thanks to various sources, we found out about GMail’s launch into the mobile world. Apparently this java-based application will load your GMail quicker than it would on your average browser, and an added bonus: no ads. A simple visit to gmail.com/app will have the Google goodness up and running in no time. Thanks, GoogleFolk.

In a long, painful, 13-quarter game of Battleship, smartphones have slowly been decimating the PDA fleet. (While the report cites “handheld devices” as in decline, which BlackBerry could conceivably fall under, make no mistake – they’re talking PDAs and anything that doesn’t qualify as a smartphone.)

The worldwide handheld device market opened the year with its thirteenth consecutive quarter of year-on-year decline as user interest continued to transition towards converged mobile devices and other consumer electronics devices. According to IDC, vendors shipped just over 900,000 handheld devices in the first quarter of 2007, 36.3% less than the previous quarter and 40.6% less than the same quarter a year ago.

Dell has retreated from the market, tail between its legs, which should only hasten the downward spiral of handheld devices. Palm’s done best of the batch in Q1, and even they’re looking at a -37.8% decline in growth versus last year. The big lesson from these numbers? Convergence is king. If other devices can pack more than you into fewer products, then you’re left in the dust.

Today marks the two weeks until Judge Spencer gives his decision on a possible Blackberry injunction. So it wasn’t a surprise that RIM released the actual workaround details today. Which doesn’t give NTP that much time to review if the new workaround infringes on their patents, possibly scaring them to settle at a lower price than the reported $1 billion mark everyone is throwing around. We actually wouldn’t be surprised if NTP settled at a lower price than the old $450 million mark. Don’t call us crazy yet, let us explain our reasoning. If NTP and RIM can’t settle and Judge Spencer imposes an injunction on Blackberry service, RIM would therefor release their workaround. In this case, NTP would obviously get nothing so they would have to file a new patent infringement case against the workaround because that’s how a patent troll company operates. However, when they do this, the courts would now have to consider the recent USPTO rulings which voided NTP patents – you can’t sue with invalid patents. So before they can file a new lawsuit against RIM, they would have to go to back to the USPTO and ask them to re-examined their patents which does not guarantee that the USPTO will reinstate their patents. This process could also take a year or more and by then the push email landscape would probably look much different.
So long story short, NTP backs are now on the wall which contradicts most people’s feelings thinking that RIM are the ones that are worried because they have the most to lose. Infact NTP has a huge amount of money to lose aswell, $450 million in fact.

Thanks to BlackBerryInsight.com and their recent post about new ebooks for the BlackBerry for inspiring this. I’ve got a question for you, readers. How many of you have a) downloaded an ebook for your device and/or b) actually READ an ebook on your device?
I’ve never tried it, but I can tell you that, especially while I’m on the road away from my inbox, I find just reading copious amounts of email to become tedious and a little hard on the eyes. I don’t know if I could handle an entire book.

This isn’t going to turn into a pro-literary kind of rant, but I’m just wondering about the popularity of ebooks and why people use them. Yes, I understand that the higher enterprise users who spend a lot of time on planes and whatnot need something to pass the time, but do they want to strain both their eyes and neck with an ebook on their BlackBerry? Sure, a book’ll take up more space in your carry-on, but you’ll be that much more comfortable in the long run.
When I’m reading, I like to be able to get into the book, no matter what the subject matter. If it’s an educational book about, say, how to speak Italian, I need to get immersed in the book and soak it all in without any distractions, same with a novel. If I’m reading on my BlackBerry, that red light’ll blink every five seconds and let’s be honest, who can ignore a new email in their inbox?
I want to put my feet up, lay back, and get so far into the book that I almost become print. Maybe that’s just me, though. Maybe I’m the last of the readers and everyone else has already evolved to ebooks without telling me.
So, pals – please tell me. What’s your reasoning for spending time with an ebook? I’d like to know. Maybe I’m missing out.

In a spiced rum-induced stupor, the fearsome Captain Anonymous has let slip that amid his varied travels on the turbulent Wireless Seas, he had heard whisperings of the fabled AIM chat app coming to BlackBerry on Sprint June 18th (both iDen and CDMA). You can’t always trust pirates, but the sheen of lootlust in his eye told me he knew it was coming and he would have it. I tried to tell him about JiveTalk, but he just passed out on the floor, mumbling drunkenly to himself about buddy lists.

RIM has opened a new technical support operations center in Halifax yesterday. Premier Rodney MacDonald, federal cabinet minister Peter MacKay and company co-CEO Jim Balsillie attended the ribbon-cutting. The new technical support center is expected to create 1,200 jobs over five years at its Halifax operation. Salaries are expected to be $45,000 to $48,000, plus benefits.
“I love it when a plan comes together and this plan has definitely come together,” said Jim Balsillie, RIM’s co-CEO.
The province is offering $19 million in subsidies, including $14 million in payroll rebates and $5 million for training and recruitment.
Mr. Balsillie said the government programs were included in the decision-making process but did not necessarily clinch the deal.

“You make decisions on an integrated basis with all the factors,” he said.
Mr. Balsillie said Halifax “is a strategic part of where we are going.”
“It is a great location for us with very highly skilled people and very good educational environmental and institutional infrastructure to support what we are doing.”
The province’s strong post-secondary research environment and talented information technology workforce also provide an excellent recruitment base.
“The Halifax technical operations centre will play a key role in RIM’s strategy of delivering world-class support to our rapidly growing list of customers,” he said.