The voice of the BlackBerry community.
Our fellow Canadian droogs over at MobileSyrup have uncovered a black and white image of some upcoming BlackBerrys on the Bell network. Ignore the ugly Palm device on the left and you will see Black and Pink versions of the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8230. The image also displays a launch date of March 6th, but no pricing information. However, I think it’s reasonable to expect a ‘less-than-$100′ pricetag, or possibly even free, with a 3-year contract.
|via Mobile Syrup|
Those that know me know I’m a huge fan of music and particularly a connoisseur of Canadian music. The big story of the Canadian music scene recently has been all the great bands coming out of Quebec, and Montreal in particular (sorry Toronto and Vancouver, but you know it’s true). That’s why I was immediately excited when my friends at Telus tipped me off that their Mobile Music service now has 25,000 tracks by home-grown artists, making it the largest collection of Quebec songs for mobile phones.
TELUS will continue to expand its musical library by adding new productions from Quebec-based record companies, such as TACCA Musique, Audiogram, Indica Records, Déjà Musique, Sphere Musique, Vega Musique, Dare to Care, Grosse Boîte, K.Pone.Inc Music Group, Iro Productions, Tandem.mu and Abuzive Muzik, as soon as they are released. The most avid music lovers will be able to enjoy new releases in real time, without having to wait to buy their favourite artist’s latest album.
25,000 tracks is a lot. I was strolling through the list and found composer Coeur de pirate (shown above), which I recommend because I think her name translates to “Heart of a Pirate” or potentially “Heart Pirate”. Telus customers can find their own favorite artist at www.telus.com/music. Tracks start at $0.99 each, or for $20.00 per month, music fans can also download an unlimited number of tracks from a catalogue of over one million songs. The full press release is after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Telus Mobile Music now has 25,000 tracks from Quebec artists’
After a few months of speculation, Fido has relaunched BlackBerry service with the BlackBerry Pearl 8100. That’s right, not the BlackBerry 8120 or even the 8110, but the BlackBerry 8100. However, Fido is Rogers’ low-end consumer brand, so there must be some sort of deal involved, correct? Well, the promo image above shows that the Pearl 8100 can be purchased for $25 with a 3 year Fido agreement/data plan. Hmm, three years is a long time, so what about some sort of month to month option? $400 freaking dollars? What about the data plans?
Ok, at least that’s pretty sane. For the youth demographic, though, $15 a month for email and IM (what they want the BlackBerry for anyways) and another $15 for phone service (based upon their cheapest rate) isn’t that bad. But instead of paying $400 or signing a three year contract, swing by the BBCool HQ first: we have a box of old 8100s that we’d be willing to give away, guaranteed (guarantee void in Tennessee).
Late last week YouMail launched Visual Voicemail Plus, a free visual voicemail application that works on the Blackberry Pearl, Curve, Bold and Storm. I like the sound of free, and a new visual voicemail application is always worth a try, but reports are surfacing that YouMail might not yet be up to snuff. Here’s what our main man Troy had to say over at BlackBerry News:
After 24 hours it is safe to say a lot work still needs to go into the application before it is ready for prime time much like the transcription service they charge for now. Many users including myself have experienced nothing but problems with the application… Maybe with all the ad revenue from placing ads on every aspect of your messages they can now put a little more money into their projects and refine their service. Time will tell.
We’re going to give YouMail our own thorough hands-on, but we recommend that you give it a try and post a comment on your experience. If you’re not willing to take the risk, however, post a comment and let us know of your favorite visual voicemail alternative.
It’s Wednesday today, which means people around the world are sitting at their desks thinking about the weekend. To help you get by, we thought this photo of a tasty AT&T BlackBerry Curve cake would help numb the brain until Friday comes. If you’re into mixing and matching your smartphone flavors, there are iPhone and Helio Ocean cakes after the jump as well. A bunch more interesting cake designs can be found here.
Thanks to @JeffHunt00 for the tip!
Slacker today announced the availability of the free Slacker Mobile application for the BlackBerry Storm. Slacker Radio, which is optimized for the handset’s unique touch screen, and can be used in both vertical and horizontal modes, is available as a free download by visiting Slacker.com from your BlackBerry Storm.
Slacker station caching, an exclusive feature for BlackBerry smartphones, enables listeners to store favorite stations on a memory card, allowing the Slacker Mobile application to play without a network connection, reducing battery life consumption by up to 5 times that of streaming playback and enhancing application performance. In addition, BlackBerry smartphone enthusiasts can enjoy Slacker Personal Radio while doing other tasks such as emailing, instant messaging or web browsing (sorry iPhone).
As you know, I’m a big fan of Slacker. Now, my BlackBerry Storm friends can share in the same level of excellence from Slacker Radio that I have enjoyed for weeks. The link was scheduled to go live at 8 AM ET, but it appears to already be functional. If you’re in the USA (sorry Canucks), have a BlackBerry Storm or other BlackBerry with OS 4.3 or better, head over to www.slacker.com on your BlackBerry and download the free application. Hit us up in the comments with your thoughts.
