The first day of WES started with an early morning press meeting. RIM announced a couple of new devices as well as the new MVS system. Later in the day Mike Lazaridis gave a talk, which sounded like a state of the union address to BlackBerry nation. It was clear in short order what the big talking points of the conference would be: The two sleek and powerful new BlackBerry smartphones, MVS 5.0, BlackBerry 6, The QNX acquisition and the much anticipated Webkit browser.
The Pearl 3G is sleek and colorful device. What used to be categorized as an entry-level device is now a small form-factor powerhouse. After seeing it in the flesh, it’s obvious the 9100 will become a top selling smartphone.
The 9105 gave me nightmares about going back to a 3-letters per key existence, but made me hopeful about courting a whole slew of users who we know will love the way BlackBerry handles communication, especially the T9-loving far east. The delete button seems oddly placed but even still, this will be an exciting device to keep tabs on sales-wise. They call it the “standard” keyboard but I prefer to think of it as “classic”.
The 9650 Bold is a rebranding of the TOUR, and making it up to par with the current 9700 Bold model in terms of specs. The keypad-based BlackBerry smartphones now come in three, well-branded flavors: Pearl, Curve and Bold.
MVS 5.0 is definitely a selling point, and is missing in the BES environment. It’s like something that should have been included in the PBX design.
BlackBerry 6 and the WebKit browser is a smartphone dream. If it comes true I might think twice before getting an anchor, err I mean desktop.
Over the next few days we’ll be looking for answers to all of our BlackBerry questions. If you’ve got a burning question you’d like us to follow-up on just drop up a line or leave us a comment and we’ll do our best to include you in our WES experience.
