Our buddies at DecalGirl released skins for the 8800 series last Friday, and they’re looking great. Even for a businessy BlackBerry, it’s nice to get a little bit of extra style to set you apart from all the other suits. I’m still packing the Dante skin on my Pearl, and it’s providing a surprising amount of protection, even on the backside where it gets the most damage. Speaking of the Pearl skins, they’ve all been marked down to $5.99 a pop, including the 8130 models, so get ‘em while they’re hot. Remember, all the skins also come with a matching background you can download for extra effect.
Monthly Archive for January, 2008Page 3 of 9
DecalGirl skins the BlackBerry 8800 series
2 Comments
Magmic Games, a developer of BlackBerry games and the creators of the Bplay portal, have released a smartphone gaming survey. Anyone who completes the survey will get a free coupon for 50% off any product at Bplay. The survey has around 40 questions covering a wide range of subjects, including where and when you play games on your BlackBerry–at home, at work, on your commute, and so on–and how often you play the BlackBerry as opposed to computers, consoles, or handhelds like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. It also asks what websites you check for news, including yours truly, and some purely demographic information like age, sex, and (optionally) income. It only takes 20 minutes or so to complete and 50% off is hard to pass up.
This week we take a look at RIM’s presence at Lotusphere (namely their announcement of a Lotus Connections client for BlackBerry), the possibility of OS 4.5 and a CDMA Curve around WES, the BlackBerry 8110 launch, and a bunch of red and pink BlackBerrys just in time for Valentines. You can listen here, or through iTunes which should be working now.
You might have heard about RIM’s recent “Ask Someone Why They Love Their BlackBerry” campaign, which puts the spotlight on respectable folk to pimp out their BlackBerry. Well, Josep and Ronen thought this was a bit lopsided, and deserves a counterbalancing. After bumping heads together, they came up with their own list of complaints about BlackBerry, which can surely be added to. So go on, sound off about the downsides of BlackBerry. Heck, if you’re feeling especially venomous, do a video and share it on YouTube, and even get some bonus points if you can find a cavernous white loft to film it in. The prize? Any combination of three games, themes or ringtones from BPlay for the most colourful parody of RIM’s latest marketing campaign.
Alex will win last week’s contest, for bringing up the interesting possibility of WiMAX and slider BlackBerrys in RIM’s ‘08 lineup. Enjoy FlipSide, Alex!
Apparently smartphones have topped the list of holiday gift returns according to a 2,000-person survey by Research Now, but that’s not counting the iPhone or BlackBerry. The reason for a wooping 21% return rate from smartphone buyers? Difficulty in set-up. Yep, users can determine pretty quickly if a handheld is something they want to keep or not, and being turned off due to technical issues that early on can apparently wreak huge effects on not only sales, but reputation too.
“Irreparable damage to a brand’s reputation and perception of the company itself is at stake when a product is not easy to setup and use,” [Kevin Wood, VP and Senior Technology Analyst with Opinion Research Corporation] added. “Nearly 16% of the respondents we surveyed indicated that their poor setup experience significantly worsened their perception of the company that manufactured the product.”
Given these results, can we say that BlackBerry set-up is notably easier than other smartphones? I’d be curious to see how much the numbers would change if the iPhone and BlackBerry were included.
Bell has recently come out with a cool promo to ditch their old 8703e stock by giving away four of ‘em with every BlackBerry 8130 and 8830. Besides the devices, Bell is also offering bulk data plans to be split among those new users: $100 for 1 GB, $60 for 30 MB, $40 for 8 MB, $25 for 4 MB and another $20 for each additional user (over five?). This is a pretty sweet deal for companies that have executives and underlings to equip in a hurry. More info over here.
3 and RIM have announced the launch of the BlackBerry 8707g for customers in Sweden. That area hasn’t seen a lot of BlackBerry devices before so it’s good to see RIM expanding like this. The UMTS-enabled 8707g has a full QWERTY keyboard, and Cognos has modified their Go business intelligence system to work for the device. Additionally, 3 has pledged that they will collaborate with VM-data when customers need assistance integrating with existing business systems.
After wrestling with Pronto forms, the idea of forms on mobile felt a little awkward and hard to implement. So when we got our hands on HanDBase from DDH, there was some skepticism. DataVault was certainly more user friendly, but not quite as versatile. Could HanDBase, a relative newbie on the BlackBerry scene, paired up with its desktop cousin help us create and fill out databases on BlackBerry with minimal fuss? Only one way to find out…
A facelifted CDMA Pearl will be available on Alltel this quarter, alongside the LG Scoop and Samsung Muse. The original blue-grey one launched over the holidays, and I guess this red one’s just in time for the coming onslaught of Valentined-up handsets. For info on preorders, head on over to www.alltel.com/style.
The Verizon BlackBerry 8130 spotted in pink back at CES is set to launch this Friday. All the usual goodies, like 2 megapixel camera with 5 x digital zoom and video recording, EV-DO network support, GPS, and an externally-accessibly microSD slot, are there, available for $199.99 on a two-year plan. You can get another $100 off if you pick up a “qualifying” voice and data plan. Anyone have a Valentine they want to win over with gadgetry?
Loading ...