Posted on June 9, 2008, at 8:29 AM .
BG has done it again, leaking another exclusive picture of a nascent BlackBerry. This time, it’s the BlackBerry Thunder, which Boy Genius tells us is a dual mode (EV-DO Rev. C and GSM HSPA for international travel) touchscreen BlackBerry coming exclusively to Verizon Q3 of this year. Although it’s a mock-up, BG wouldn’t post it unless it was legit. Also, surprise surpise, it looks exactly like the one BG furnished when he originally broke the story during WES — it’s almost like he knew.
Post a comment and tell us what you think of the words touchscreen and BlackBerry being wrapped together in one nice, neat little package.
(via BoyGenius Report)
Posted on June 2, 2008, at 10:51 AM .
Horizon Wireless recently opened up preorders for the BlackBerry 9500 “Thunder”, a device which hasn’t even been announced yet, and yeah, we’ve been hearing about a touchscreen BlackBerry for a couple of eons now, but this is the first even vaguely solid evidence to date. The picture is extra-blurred, and covered in the Horizon logo, so there’s really not much there to comment on… Blogworthiness aside, RIM did give Horizon the legal backhand to remove the pictures, so you gotta think there was some legitimacy to the snap after all. Supposedly the shots were of a dummy version (i.e. just the housing), so more info is sure to come once it gets some guts. Cheers Chris!
Posted on May 20, 2008, at 2:50 PM .
Folks were quick to point out the iPhone-esque bezel on the BlackBerry Bold, but RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis was equally quick to condemn those nay-sayers to an infernal pit of shame.
This is three years in the making. So I’m sorry but this wasn’t a response to another device. Either that or we have a time machine somewhere, or some kind of magic crystal ball or something. This was actually designed three years ago and the actual physical design of this product–I have the original models from 2006. … We have to be realistic about the history of [touchscreen] technology. We have to remember that this is not new–this has been done, this has been tried before. And there are other ways to provide a large screen and a Qwerty keyboard without compromising them by putting one on top of the other.
Of course, it might be a little trickier to say the same if the rumoured touchscreen Thunder comes to light, but then again, it does hint that if a touchscreen is in BlackBerry’s future, it won’t be in the way that the iPhone has established. It seems much more likely that a Treo-style keypad/touchscreen combo would happen before an iClone did.
So long as we’re talking about Mikey, there was another interview with the big kahuna at WES regarding his fave BlackBerry apps, which included Viigo, the top RSS reader for your BlackBerry… Pick it up! Cheers, Giz!
Posted on May 13, 2008, at 5:04 PM .
Bwuh? No tactile keypad, just four buttons and a bigass touchscreen? The patents don’t lie for a change, and a recent interview with co-CEO Jim Balsillie would indicate that a touchscreen is in RIM’s potential future. It’s supposedly going to be a dual-mode device (EV-DO rev. C, and HSPA) and launching internationally, exclusively on Verizon and Vodafone. Now, this thing is still in its extremely early stages, so plenty can change, but still an exciting prospect, especially considering BG is probably at WES talking to someone who knows a thing or two about the project.
Posted on February 8, 2008, at 7:56 AM .
ZDNet has discovered that RIM has patented a form of touchscreen LCD. The patent, titled System and Method for Integrating A Touchscreen Within an LCD, describes “a touchscreen which is integrated into an LCD” in more detail than you can shake a stick at. The technology works primarily by detecting displacement of liquid crystal in a display and sending information based on that movement. ZDNet author Russell Shaw pointed out that the patent was published only four months after being filed rather than the usual 18, a very good indicator that the technology will be used soon. The rumors about a touchscreen for the BlackBerry 9000 have been mostly quashed, so it remains to be seen what device the technology will be used in.
Posted on January 18, 2008, at 9:34 AM .
Obviously the BlackBerry 8900 is the biggest thing on our minds right now, but there’s still a lot of 2008 to look forward to, and if the rumors of a May release are to believed, that leaves plenty of room for a few more devices. It’s been said by a RIM exec that we can expect four to five new BlackBerrys this year, so your mission this week is to name ‘em. Maybe a touchscreen is still in the cards…? Maybe we’ll see an 8910 before the year’s out, but what would it have, if it’s already got Wi-Fi and GPS? Maybe the 8300 and 8100 series will see a next generation upgrade like the 8800? Make a solid case for the upcoming BlackBerry lineup, and win a copy of the fine BlackBerry music-player, FlipSide, now featuring Last.fm support.
Last week’s winner behind the jump!
