Posted on November 5, 2008, at 4:52 pm .
It’s Wednesday, November 5th, which means by now Americans have finished waiting in two lines: one to vote and one to pick up their AT&T BlackBerry Bold. For our friends down south waking up to a new President and a new BlackBerry, we’ve compiled a list of 5 accessories you need to help maximize your Bold to the extreme!
MicroSD Card
Trust us, with all great multimedia features on the BlackBerry Bold, 1GB of internal memory isn’t going to cut it. We recommend the SanDisk 8GB MicroSDHC card (with a MobileMate Micro Reader) for all your image, movie and music storage needs. If the $60 8GB model is too much, there’s also a $50 4GB model available.
SanDisk 8GB microSDHC Card with MobileMate Micro Reader
SanDisk 4GB microSDHC Card
Bluetooth Headset
Even though the BlackBerry Bold has great call quality, most power users will still need a Bluetooth headset. Most people are vary particular about their Bluetooth headset, so instead of trying to find one to satisfy all your needs, we’ll just point you to the most popular line of headsets in the BlackBerry Cool Store: The Jabra Bluetooth headset line. Below you find links to the $70 BT8040 model and the $20 BT2040 model.
Jabra BT8040 Bluetooth Headset
Jabra BT2040 Bluetooth Headset
Top 5 BlackBerry Bold Accessories
Posted on October 3, 2008, at 12:33 am .
Earlier this week SanDisk announced the introduction of 16GB microSDHC (high capacity) cards, which makes me stare at the media-enabled BlackBerry Bold sitting beside me with both wonder and greed. However, those of you not fortunate enough to have an OS 4.6 BlackBerry may be wondering if your BlackBerry can support the new SDHC cards. Thankfully, our good friend Al Sacco over at CIO has already composed a useful chart depicting which BlackBerrys make the cut. We’ll spoil the ending for you, though: all BlackBerrys OS 4.5.0.81 and higher should be fine.
Supported microSD Memory Card Sizes Based on BlackBerry OS
Posted on November 2, 2007, at 1:59 pm .
Pinstack vet cp6169 has managed to get some play time with the BlackBerry 8130, where he managed to get the scoop on some tidbits, including bass and treble adjustments for calls, harder keypad, as well as Bluetooth and camera improvements. The hidden gem among all of it was the hint that 32 GB microSDHC memory cards are due out by the middle of next year. For those not keeping track, we’re now up to 8 GB on something the size of your pinky’s fingernail. All that being said, a fair estimate would put a 16 GB card due out around February, if progress is steady.
Posted on August 24, 2007, at 8:10 am .
Toshiba’s busting out their own 8 GB card alongside some considerably beefier cards, getting up to the 32 GB mark. SanDisk’s cards high-density memory cards have been in the works for awhile now, and Samsung’s are on the way too, but damn, have you ever tried to actually get your hands on any SDHC card? They’re in short supply, let me tell you. Remember the BlackBerry 8820’s press release stating how the microSDHC slot would be able to support up to 32 GB? It’s really not that far off. The 16 GB SD card should be available in October, while the 8 GB microSDHC and 32 GB SD card will be rolling out January ‘08.
Posted on August 14, 2007, at 10:49 am .
The folks at Reg Hardware managed to get their mitts on a BlackBerry 8820 and aren’t overtly impressed with the Wi-Fi capability. The UMA format of voice handover works fine, depending on your network, but doesn’t jibe with many VoIP clients, let alone how the lack of SIP support gets in the way of corporate PBX phone systems. The reviewer also had some issues getting Google Talk running and BlackBerry Maps while on the Wi-Fi. On top of that, e-mails wouldn’t send if the radio receiver was off. It sounds like if both Wi-Fi and cellular connections are on, things should work hunky-dory, but that’s quite the strain on your battery. Besides Wi-Fi, the BlackBerry 8820 is supposedly packing the microSDHC support which we love so very, very much. Hopefully the shortcomings of Wi-Fi will be ironed out before widespread sales start. It seems that in the haze of voice handoff hype, we forgot that there’s a lot of other things, like e-mail, that we’d like to hand off to Wi-Fi as well.
Posted on August 1, 2007, at 8:57 am .
Obviously, take this with the grain of salt that all rumors deserve, but over the past year we’ve come to trust Boy Genius when he drops a date in our laps (even while he’s smacking us around like the BlackBerry-happy punks that we are). The straight word coming from an AT&T insider is that the BlackBerry 8820, with all it’s Wi-Fi and MicroSDHC goodness, will launch on North America’s largest GSM carrier by August 13th or 14th.
Considering that we haven’t heard a peep from AT&T enterprise users about a soft-launch, it seems like we got it half right last time. Oh well, that’s what we get for being BG wannabes. The biggest question now, however, is how quickly can we get our informant friend to send us an unlocked 8820 for use on Rogers?
Posted on July 23, 2007, at 9:58 am .
Poor Boy Genius. The guy has so many sources on the inside that sometimes their “hot tips” conflict with each other. Take the impending release of the BlackBerry 8820 (mmm, sweet Wi-Fi goodness) on AT&T, for instance. One BG devotee claims that AT&T will be launching the 8820 as early as this week, for $299 on a 2 year plan. The launch will coincide with a “phase out” of the already passé BlackBerry 8800. Others, citing “internal AT&T training documents”, are claiming that AT&T will have exclusivity on the BlackBerry 8820 (sorry, T-Mobile), but not until August.
With RIM’s official press release failing to offer a firm date, it’s no wonder there’s so much confusion. For our money, it’s most likely that AT&T is soft-launching the BlackBerry 8820 this week for enterprise customers (a common carrier tactic), with a full consumer rollout to hit in August. Only time will tell, however. Keep your ear to the ground, BG, but do your best to filter out the noise.
Posted on July 18, 2007, at 7:54 am .
Hot off the presses, we’ve got news that the BlackBerry 8820 is en route, packing delicious Wi-Fi connectivity. Wi-Fi 802.11 a, b and g will all be supported, as documented in the FCC patent last week, and not only for data. Generic Access Networking (a.k.a. UMA) will allow for seamless dual-mode calling while in a Wi-Fi hotspot. Although that’s the big feature, besides which the device is largely an 8800, the new BlackBerry will also also be bringing a few other goodies. For one, it will support microSDHC memory cards, meaning up to 32GB of storage capacity. We looked at the 8 GB cards that are in the works from Samsung not too long ago. No 3G just yet, still quad-band GSM/GPRS and EDGE. GPS is in there too, and RIM also points out AZERTY and QWERTZ keypad availability, pointing to an early launch in both France and Germany. In fact, RIM’s handset index lists France as the only European country confirmed to carry the 8820 so far.
Press release and more behind the jump.
