Yes, yes y’all. We’re back with Act 2. Following up on the much-loved BlackBerry 9700 Review: Part 1, we’re here to go over the T-Mobile version of the handset. We’ll give you another look at it, and clarify anything that might have changed between our previous not-final unit and what we have now (which is what you’ll be getting in stores). And of course give you some awesome pictures to drool over. After the jump, fine friends, is where the goodies are at!

Hardware changes

While not much has changed hardware-wise from a larger viewpoint, there are a couple things we’ve noticed. First off, if you look at the keyboard and the trackpad specifically, you’ll see a very small piece of plastic that’s connecting the back and menu keys. This actually broke in half on our pre-release BlackBerry 9700, and while it hasn’t affected its use, it got us a little concerned about the build quality. We haven’t confirmed whether the retail Bold 9700s use different parts or not, and we haven’t heard of this happening to anyone else, but it’s just something to look out for.

As far as the processor is concerned, we reported that the Bold 9700 was sporting an 800MHz capable CPU. RIM’s official specs say it’s a 624MHz processor, but we think it might be a newer model than what the original Bold had. It’s also quite possible it’s under-clocked as well. We’ll try and clarify this and report back. Regardless of the actual CPU specifications on the 9700 though, one thing is certain: it’s the fastest damn BlackBerry we’ve ever used. There unfortunately is no internal memory as there was on the previous Bold, and while we believe it’s carrier dependent, the T-Mobile unit ships with a 2GB microSD card.

One last thing about the hardware… honestly not a big deal, but since we’re comparing the retail unit to the other unit we had, Michael and I both noticed that the lock and mute keys are very easy to press on the retail unit. And that’s not for the best as we both accidentally lock / put our Bold 9700s in a mute coma from time to time. Again, not the end of the world, just a change from our other unit.

OS changes

OS 5.0 is finally ready to rock. The much-needed upgrade tries to bandage RIM’s aging yet nicely skinned operating system, and it seems to do a good job of it on the top layer. While dumb things like gradients, sounds for events, and other little UI improvements may look stupid on paper (read: they are), hey, us BlackBerry folk have to take all that we can get. And even though that’s not a lot, it’s still something to slightly freshen up this beast. Something we’ve noticed in the version on the 9700 is that marking messages as read takes a long, long time. This was an issue on a couple beta OS builds for the 9700, so it’s surprising to see it on a production OS. Not a show stopper, but something annoying if you mark message read fairly frequently like I do.

Keyboard changes

Oh those pesky QWERTY keyboards. Some are too small, some are too big, some are spaced too close, some have incorrect layouts — is there a perfect keyboard in existence? Well, if there’s one to be found, we’re pretty sure it is on the BlackBerry Bold 9700. A beautiful blend of the original Bold keyboard with the Tour’s keyboard, it really provides a great typing experience. Keys click but aren’t clackity, there’s enough spacing to allow a definition between keys yet it isn’t boat-sized like its older brother — and it just feels damn good to type on.

Phone changes

Using the phone as an actual phone is still really pleasurable. Calls are very clear, volume is great, and BlackBerry smartphones in general just rock as phones. There’s no fuss, you dial a number and make your call. We’re used to AT&T, but to be honest we couldn’t tell the difference between the two. This T-Mobile unit is solid and we experienced no dropped calls even in fringe areas, and 3G service was great.

Battery changes

This isn’t going to be fair because of T-Mobile’s global meltdown yesterday–the day when we were really pushing the 9700 to the floor– so, well, you know, it didn’t work. We were on SOS for the better part of a day, but Wi-Fi did stay connected to the outside world thankfully. Unfortunately however, Wi-Fi kind of ransacked our battery. The good news is that even with Wi-Fi on and connected for 12 hours straight with constant email usage, BlackBerry Messenger usage, and very light browsing, we still had around 25% of battery left at the end of the day. It’s great, and we’re really happy that RIM has further improved their battery life while making a device faster and smaller. We weren’t kidding when we said average usage is about double compared to the original Bold, and it looks to stay that way in the retail release.

Conclusion

You know, it’s sort of like clockwork. Once every six months we proclaim the latest BlackBerry to be the best BlackBerry ever. Well, we hate to disappoint you, but it doesn’t look like we’re stopping that tradition anytime soon. The BlackBerry Bold 9700, for whatever network it’s powered by, is the finest BlackBerry to date. From the gorgeous screen to the perfect keyboard, to the pocketable size and swift processor, the Bold 9700 seems like it can do almost anything you throw at it. With 256MB of RAM, you’ve got a little more room for applications and data, and the device doesn’t ever seem to get bogged down. We have never even gotten a spinning clock (yet). It’s that solid.

The BlackBerry platform has its advantages and disadvantages (what, we’re not vocal enough about it?), but if you’re an existing BlackBerry user or just don’t require a media-focused device, the Bold 9700 might be right up your alley.

Rogers, Bell, and TELUS in Canada have pretty much all started to release BlackBerry 9700 units into the wild, T-Mobile’s offering business customers a little head start, and AT&T’s looks to be near as well.

And yet another manufacturer has officially entered the Android game as Sony Ericsson has formally announced the XPERIA X10. Powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and running on Android 1.6 “Donut”, the X10 boasts a 4″ WVGA capacitive touchscreen display, an 8.1 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, GPS and two flavors of UMTS/HSPA — one of which supports T-Mobile, the other, AT&T — in addition to quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE. Regrettably there is only 1GB of built in memory, although an 8GB microSD card ships in the box. In terms of UI customization, the X10 comes with the UI overlay UX called Rachael (user experience) which extends into two premier apps: Mediascape — the media player which we’ve already seen twice — and Timescape, which more or less is SE’s answer to a MOTOBLUR type skin. Pricing and countries of availability has yet to be announced, but the XPERIA X10 will be available in Q1 2010 in Sensuous Black and Lustre White (yes, we LOL’d, too). Hit the jump for a promo video and a press release.

03 November 2009

Sony Ericsson XPERIA™ X10 introduces an open and integrated world of social media, communication and entertainment

• XPERIA™ X10 is the flagship phone in a family of phones coming to market during the first half of 2010. The XPERIA™ X10 will be available in Q1 2010
• New UX (user experience) platform lets consumers organise everything and discover more with the most open, human and intuitive user experience yet

London – November 3 2009 – Sony Ericsson today unveils the XPERIA™ X10, the first phone in a family of phones to deliver a consistent user experience where communication truly becomes entertainment. Building on Sony Ericsson’s entertainment heritage and combining rich graphics with intelligence capabilities, the XPERIA™ X10   introduces a new UX platform that will evolve across the product portfolio and expand over time continuously introducing new features and capabilities.

The UX platform builds on top of the Open OS and creates a unique Sony Ericsson user experience by combining best-in-class entertainment features with signature applications, unrivalled integration of social media services and a rich graphical user interface. The XPERIA™ X10 is the first mobile phone to truly humanise the way people interact with their phones.

Bert Nordberg, President, Sony Ericsson said, “The XPERIA™ X10 and the family of phones launching in the first half of 2010 underpin our commitment to an open and multi-platform strategy that maximises choice for the consumer and delivers the best possible consumer experience. The reaction from our global operator partners to the XPERIA X10 has been extremely positive and we will be rolling out across the world including Japan from the first half of 2010.”

Rikko Sakaguchi, EVP and Chief Creation Officer, Sony Ericsson said, “The XPERIA™ X10 is a fantastic example of our make.believe philosophy because we are pushing the boundaries of what is possible and demonstrating that anything consumers can imagine, we can make possible. With the X10, we are raising the bar we have set ourselves with entertainment-rich phones like Aino and Satio by making communication more fun and playful, multiplying and enriching opportunities to connect.”

Introducing signature applications like Mediascape and Timescape™, the XPERIA™ X10 lets consumers organise everything in their phone in an intuitive way:

• Sony Ericsson Timescape™ manages all your communication with one person in one place.  Browse through your conversations the bright way to check out your Facebook™, Twitter™, photos, emails, and texts all in one go
• Sony Ericsson Mediascape is the smart way to get all the music, photos and videos you want from your favourite friends and artists. It accesses content from everywhere – your phone, YouTube™, PlayNow™ – and presents everything for you

Intelligence capabilities, integrated into Mediascape and Timescape™, can automatically recognise connections between contacts, content and media. By recommending alternative ways to communicate or guiding to new media experiences, consumers can discover more in a truly open way. For example:

• Pressing the new “infinite button” guides you through the connected world, aggregating all your interactions with one person into one view
• Intelligent face recognition features recognise up to five faces in any picture, automatically connecting them with your social phonebook and all other related communications with that person.

Sony Ericsson’s open approach gives consumers maximum choice and with the XPERIA™ X10, users can download any application that they want direct from a wide variety of stores including PlayNow™ and the Android Market™, co-creating an experience that is entirely unique to them.

Sony Ericsson is also introducing the new Wireless Stereo Headset with FM Radio – MW600. Featuring advanced Bluetooth™ technology and a built-in FM radio, MW600 lets you stream music to your headset in high fidelity through sound-enhancing ear-buds. With a crystal clear OLED display, easy access controls and RDS radio station information, you don’t even need to take your phone with you to tune in to your favourite radio station.

The XPERIA™ X10 supports GSM GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900, UMTS HSPA 900/1700/2100 and UMTS HSPA 800/850/1900/2100

The XPERIA™ X10 will be available in selected markets from Q1 in the colours Sensuous Black and Luster White.

Log on to The Sony Ericsson Product Blog for more information: http://blogs.sonyericsson.com/products

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA™ X10 at a glance

Camera

• 8.1 megapixel camera
• Up to 16x digital zoom
• Auto focus
• Intelligent face recognition features
• Geo tagging
• Image and video stabilizer
• Photo and video light
• Send to web (photo and video upload)
• Smile detection
• Touch focus
• Video recording
• Recent shot tray

Music

• Album art
• Bluetooth™ stereo (A2DP)
• Media player
• Music tones (MP3/AAC)
• PlayNow™
• TrackID™

Web

• Bookmarks
• Google™ search (from standby)
• Web feeds
• WebKit web browser

Communication

• Sony Ericsson Timescape™
• Speakerphone
• Vibrating alert

Messaging

• Conversations
• Email
• Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync®
• Picture messaging (MMS)
• Predictive text input
• Text messaging (SMS)

Design

• Auto rotate
• Gesture control
• Picture wallpaper
• Touchscreen

Entertainment

• 3D games
• Media browser
• Infinite button
• Video streaming
• Video viewing
• YouTube™

Organiser

• Alarm clock
• Calculator
• Calendar
• Flight mode
• Infinite button
• Office suite
• Phone book with dialer
• World clock

Location-based services

• A-GPS
• Google Maps™
• Wisepilot™ turn-by-turn navigation* (free trial version)

• *The service may not be available in every market. For more information, go to www.sonyericsson.wisepilot.com

Connectivity

• 3.5 mm audio jack
• Bluetooth™ technology
• Micro USB connector
• Synchronisation
• USB support
• Wi-Fi™

Preloaded applications

• Sony Ericsson Timescape™
• Sony Ericsson Mediascape
• Sony Ericsson Home with clock widget
• Sony Ericsson Sync
• Android Market™ Client
• Gmail™
• Google Calendar™
• Google Maps™ with Street View
• Google Media Uploader
• Google phone-top search
• Google search widget
• Google Talk™
• Google Voice Search™
• Network Location Provider
• Set-up Wizard
• YouTube™

Screen

• 262,144 colour TFT touchscreen
• 4.0 inches
• 480 x 854 pixels (WVGA)
• Scratch-resistant

Accessories
In-Box:

• XPERIA™ X10
• Battery
• Stereo portable handsfree
• 8 GB microSD™ card
• Micro USB cable for charging, synchronisation and file transfer
• User documentation

Optional:

• Hi-Fi Wireless Headset with FM Radio MW600
• Car Charger AN300
• Screen Protector ET902

Facts 1)2)

• Size: 119 x 63 x 13 mm
• Weight: 135 grams

• Phone memory: Up to 1 GB

• Memory card support: microSD™

• Memory card included: 8 GB

• Operating system: Google™ Android Donut, version 1.6
• Processor: 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon™ QSD8250

Availability and versions

• Networks

• UMTS HSPA 900/1700/2100
• GSM GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900

• UMTS HSPA 800/1900/2100
• GSM GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900

• Available in selected markets in Q1 2010

Colour

• Sensuous Black
• Luster White

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Canadians with a ravenous appetite for all things BlackBerry should take note that Rogers Wireless has begun selling the BlackBerry Bold 9700 on its website. Available for $299.99 on a 3-year with voice and data, the Bold 9700 is also being offered for $599.99 with no strings attached. As for when HSPA newcomers Bell and TELUS will be offering up the 9700, the latest word is that both carriers will offer the device the day they launch their new networks. For Bell, that’s the 4th of November with TELUS following the very next day.

Thanks, ILLIONAIRE!

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Let’s be clear right off the bat: this is no rumor. The Motorola DROID is steaming towards a release on O2 Germany under the name MILESTONE. The news of this came from a German blog which leaked a photo of a business guide (pic after the jump) as well as an official O2 device price list which shows the MILESTONE coming in at 404.20€ or $594.93 USD before taxes (and subsidies). If that isn’t proof enough, we pulled the image above from from O2’s site after a simple Google query. No doubt there will be some people Stateside that refuse to go over to Verizon to get the DROID (we get a huge kick out of network fanboyism), so how many of you would be willing to import one of these Android 2.0 behemoths even if it lacks US 3G?

Thanks, Schreifels!

Read – Business Guide

Read – O2 Price List [PDF link]

Read – MILESTONE on O2’s website

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Lovers of all things BlackBerry might want to stop on by their local Verizon dealer this Wednesday as that’s the day “a powerful new Storm rolls onto Verizon Wireless’ network” (sorry, we couldn’t resist.) Going for $179.99 on a 2-year contract after a $100 MIR — no word yet on full retail — the Storm2 is everything that Storm 9530 users could hope for in that it is reliable, dependable and has Wi-Fi. We’ve got a production unit from Verizon that we’re currently testing and will publish a review of it shortly, but for now the best we can give you is a press release couple enormous press shots after the jump.

BASKING RIDGE, NJ, and WATERLOO, ONTARIO — Verizon Wireless and Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) today announced that the BlackBerry® Storm2™ smartphone will be available in Verizon Wireless Communications stores, online at www.verizonwireless.com, and through business sales channels beginning Oct. 28. The BlackBerry Storm2 with BlackBerry® OS 5.0 evolves the BlackBerry® touchscreen platform with hundreds of hardware and software enhancements – including new SurePress™ “clickable” display technology and built-in Wi-Fi® – delivering the exceptional multimedia experience and communications capabilities customers have come to expect from their BlackBerry smartphones.

Key Features:

• Smooth design and premium finish with sloped edges, chrome accents, glass lens and stainless steel backplate
• Large (3.25”), dazzling high-resolution 480 x 360 display at 184 ppi
• Capacitive touchscreen with integrated functions (Send, End, Menu, Escape) and new SurePress technology that makes clicking the display practically effortless
• 3G and global connectivity support for making phone calls in more than 220 countries and accessing data in more than 185 countries (with more than 80 destinations in 3G)
• Network Connectivity: EV-DO Revision A; UMTS/HSPA (2100 MHz); and quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM networks
• Supports Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g)
• 256 MB of Flash memory
• 2 GB of onboard media storage and a microSD™/SDHD memory card slot with a 16 GB card included

Software Updates on BlackBerry Storm2:

• Features BlackBerry OS 5.0, which includes typing accuracy and selection improvements, as well as usability and visual enhancements such as inertial scrolling, spin boxes that make it easier to set dates and times, gradient shading on buttons, and more use of animation
• BlackBerry® Browser is improved with faster JavaScript and CSS processing as well as support for Gears and BlackBerry Widgets
• Customers running BlackBerry® Enterprise Server 5.0 will gain the ability to set follow-up flags, manage e-mail folders, access remote files (Windows Shares), forward appointments, view calendar attachments, and more

Additional Features and Specifications:

• 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, Image Stabilization (IS), flash and video recording capabilities
• Premium and easy-to-access phone features, background noise suppression technology, loud distortion-free speakerphone and face detection (proximity sensor) that prevents accidental clicks and blanks the screen while the customer is on the phone
• Media player for videos, pictures and music, plus support for BlackBerry Desktop Manager for both PCs and Macs, and BlackBerry® Media Sync, for easily syncing Windows Media® Player music with the smartphone*
• 3.5 mm stereo headset jack and dedicated volume controls
• Bluetooth® (v2.1) capable with support for Secure Simple Pairing, hands-free headsets, stereo headsets, car kits and other Bluetooth peripherals
• Built-in GPS for maps and other location-based applications, as well as photo geotagging; and Verizon Wireless’ VZ NavigatorSM service is pre-loaded
• V CAST Music with Rhapsody
• Access to BlackBerry App World™, featuring a broad and growing catalog of third-party mobile applications developed specifically for BlackBerry smartphones, with categories including games, entertainment, IM and social networking, news, weather, productivity and more
• Support for Verizon Wireless’ Mobile Broadband Connect tethering service
• Removable, rechargeable 1400 mAhr battery that provides up to 5.5 hours of talk time or up to 11.2 days of standby time

Pricing and Availability:

• The BlackBerry Storm2 smartphone is available beginning Oct. 28 for $179.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement on a voice plan with an Email and Web feature or an Email and Web for BlackBerry plan. Customers will receive the mail-in rebate in the form of a debit card; upon receipt, customers may use the card as cash anywhere debit cards are accepted. Data plans for the BlackBerry Storm2 smartphone begin at $29.99 when added to any Nationwide voice plan.
• New Operating System for Existing BlackBerry Storm Customers
• Existing BlackBerry Storm customers will be able to update their handsets to the new BlackBerry OS 5.0 software via Web software load (www.blackberry.com/update), BlackBerry Desktop Manager, or from Verizon Wireless’ download site (www.verizonwireless.com/storm). The software is available today.
• For additional information on Verizon Wireless products and services, visit a Verizon Wireless Communications Store, call 1-800-2 JOIN IN or go to www.verizonwireless.com. Business customers can contact their Business Sales Representatives at 1-800-VZW-4BIZ.

* Certain music files may not be supported, including files that contain digital rights management technologies.

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Remember when The Wall Street Journal said that Dell was working on an Android MID? Well it turns out that it was bang on as today images and a video of a prototype device known as the Streak emerged by way of everyone’s favorite Vietnamese mobile site. Running Android 2.0, the Streak boasts 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity, a 5″ WVGA multitouch capacitive display, 5 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, Bluetooth, microSD and a 1300 mAh battery. Looking through all of the pictures, we couldn’t help notice what looks to be the spitting image of a front-facing camera for checking ones hair video calling, but then again it could just be the worst ambient light sensor ever. Enough talk. Hit the jump for a ton of pics and a video, because the Streak cries out to be seen.

It’s always a lot of fun for us — and hopefully for you, the readers — any time we can run wild with pictures, news, and even reviews of an unannounced handset. Today, however, RIM spoiled our fun and formally announced the BlackBerry Bold 9700. Things like carriers, release dates and pricing have been withheld for the time being, but RIM has made a statement saying that we should all expect to see the BlackBerry 9700 go on sale “around the world beginning in November.” Spec wise, nothing has changed since our pre-release review, but just in case some of you forgot or weren’t paying a whole lot of attention, here’s a quick refresher on the critical specs:

• BlackBerry OS 5.0
• 624MHz CPU
• 256MB flash memory and support for microSD cards up to 32GB
• Quad-band UMTS/HSDPA (800/850/1900/2100 MHz) or tri-band UMTS/HSDPA (900/1700/2100 MHz)
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with UMA support (carrier dependent)
• A-GPS
• 2.44″ HVGA+ display
• 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash
• Optical trackpad
• Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP/AVCRP
• 1500 mAh battery
• 6 hours of talk time and 17 days of standby (3G)
• 109mm x 60mm x 14.1mm, 122g

In short, this is the BlackBerry device of your dreams. We’re expecting pretty much every single major GSM carrier on the planet to pick up the 9700 sooner or later, so we’ll be sure to keep the updates coming. As always, high res pics and a few other odds and ends are available after the jump.

UPDATE: AT&T, Rogers and T-Mobile have announced they will be carrying the Bold 9700 in the weeks ahead. AT&T and T-Mobile’s 9700 will go for $199.99 after a $100 MIR on 2-year deals while Rogers will be asking for $299.99 on a 3-year contract with a monthly minimum voice and data plan of $45. Bell and TELUS have yet to come forward with pricing but have confirmed they will be carrying the device.

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• 512MHz CPU
• 2 megapixel camera, fixed focus, no flash
• 320×240 display
• 256MB of RAM
• 3.5mm headset jack
• QWERTY keyboard
• Trackpad
• Wi-Fi with UMA
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE

In terms of pricing and availability, the BlackBerry 8520 is available starting tomorrow, October 8th, for $99 on a three-year agreement with minimum combined service fees of $45/mo or more.

Looks like the Palm Pre will be making another GSM appearance this month, this time in Spain on Telefonica’s HSDPA network starting October 14th. O2 has already announced a release around the same time in Germany, Ireland, and the UK.  The Official Palm blog announcement:

“Telefonica today announced the availability of Palm Pre on its HSDPA mobile network in Spain on 14 October. New Telefonica customers can receive the phone at no cost, depending on their service plan commitment. Telefonica is also the exclusive initial carrier for Palm Pre in United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany. The phone can be purchased at Telefonica outlets in Spain and online at www.telefonica.es. More information about Palm Pre is available at http://www.palm.com/es-pre-notify.”

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Although not a soul alive is shocked by the news, today Verizon Wireless announced it will be releasing the HTC Imagio — its first Windows Mobile 6.5 device — online starting October 6th. The Imagio, known to most by its codename Whitestone, will feature the following key specs: 3.6″ WVGA touchscreen display (resistive, of course), 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, Wi-Fi, EV-DO Rev. A, quad-band EDGE and 2100MHz UMTS/HSDPA for international roaming. Being a WinMo device from HTC, TouchFLO 3D is naturally included while Verizon will be chipping in MediaFLO support for those who are willing to part with an extra $15 per month. So what will the Imagio cost come its big day? $199.99 on a 2-year deal after a $100 MIR which isn’t all that shabby, all things considered.

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Motorola. Regardless of your brand loyalty, the aforementioned company changed the mobile landscape. Twice. First with the legendary StarTac and once again with the Motorola RAZR. Unfortunately, the RAZR by itself wasn’t enough to keep propelling Motorola’s mobile handset division forward for eternity. Here we are some five whole years later looking at what is Motorola’s most important product (and upcoming products) in recent memory. Enter the Motorola CLIQ. We’ve been fortunate enough to have one or two units of our own, even though there’s already been hands on sessions and a couple of reviews, we’re finally ready to tell you about it. We labeled this as a preview instead of a full review because we’re about two months out from launch. We’ll follow up to this post with findings from a unit T-Mobile sends us if there are any differences and additional thoughts.

Hardware:

Motorola really hasn’t been known as the most reliable company when it comes to manufacturing, but they’ve also previously dictated trends as far a cellular devices go. With that said, the Motorola CLIQ’s hardware isn’t a surprise to us. It seems decently solid, albeit a little cheap. Physically, buttons are spread nicely throughout the casing with a loud / vibrate ringer switch on the left side of the handset, volume bottoms below that, and a microUSB port just underneath that. On the right side there’s a power / lock and unlock button (one key for all three actions) followed by a two-stage camera shutter key. On the front of the device there’s a menu key, home key, and back key. Pretty simple and clean.

When you slide the display up to reveal the full QWERTY keyboard (the slide mechanism is very solid and fun to use), you get access to more Android-specific keys as well as a 5-way directional pad. There’s a dedicated search key and a back key, but what’s a really nice design touch is the alt key.

No, the alt key itself isn’t anything special, but when the backlight on the keyboard is active and you press the alt key, the alternate numbers and symbols on the keyboard independently light up. Very cool. (This doesn’t seem to be the case on the titanium version of the CLIQ).

Plus, who could forget to mention the glowing Motorola symbol on the back of the display? That’s right. It’s a blatant rip on Apple’s notebooks and we love it.

Screen

With a 3.1″ capacitive display, it’s a little tough to completely fall in love with the screen even though it’s one of the best as far as capacitive ones go. The smaller size of the display really affects usability and the on screen keyboard shows this issue the best — Motorola had to use even smaller on-screen keys for the keyboard. It’s plenty responsive but without multi-touch, it just feels primitive to say the least in some applications. The screen itself is definitely bright enough and pretty accurate in the color space, though it’s a little pixelated for our tastes.

OS:

Motorola did something pretty smart with their customizations — unlike HTC’s Sense UI, we don’t believe there’s a complete skin (extra process) running on top of the regular Android OS. Instead, Motorola uses widgets to display live information on the homescreen of the device and their other customizations seem to be OS-deep. This speeds up the entire phone dramatically. They even modified the Android homescreen to display 5 pages instead of 3, again, without having to run a process on top of the existing OS.

What’s not so good about the CLIQ’s software is that everything is disconnected and nothing really flows. For example, you can update your Facebook status, but there’s no way to see your previous statuses in one place, or even refresh the latest status manually. So, if your phone is powered off and you just updated your status from a computer let’s say, then powered the phone on, it shows your last update from the handset but not from the web. Not unless you let it refresh on it’s own schedule which can sometimes be never. The whole refreshing thing automatically is a little wonky, but again, that might just be not final software talking.

The Happenings application is a valiant effort to combine your social networks into a tidy timeline, but from our usage of it, it’s pretty clunky, slow, and lacking some features. What Motorola should have done is build more custom applications a la HTC’s Peep Twitter application because Happenings isn’t really cutting it when there are 500 updates. You can also forget about flicking through 500 updates in single view mode when you launch a friend’s update from the homescreen widget. The base concept here is awesome, it just needs some refining to make it usable in high-volume situations (read: lot of status updates/messages)

We think the execution is a little flawed for anyone with more than 20 friends total out of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. While trying to simplify their creation of widgets infused with status updates and linked contacts, Motorola in our opinion has made it even more difficult to manage your social life from this handset. Things like be able to manually refresh these updates and statuses, or even allow menu-based actions would be a plus. If you go into a single “happening” and press the menu key, nothing happens. No “reply”, “email”, “call” selectable options — nothing, even though that contact is in your address book and linked with all their other networks and contact information.

Another problem is how the CLIQ’s BLUR OS treats different forms of communication. For instance, Twitter isn’t like email. Mentions if anything are more a form of direct communication that I’m interested in, not direct messages. The CLIQ only has an inbox for direct messages and there’s no way to see aggregated Twitter mentions. I swear the people that created this phone barely use Twitter or Facebook for anything meaningful…

Thankfully there’s built-in Exchange support which will lovingly sync your mail, contacts, and calendars. Unfortunately, the fastest refresh internal is a whole 15 minutes and push email is no where to be found inside the Exchange program. Hopefully that’s because our unit might not be running final firmware, if it’s not, then well… yeah.

Maybe Motorola could have used the lock screen on the device to give previews of unread status updates, messages, notifications? There’s a ton of ways to properly integrate social services and while this is a decent attempt, its clunkiness we think will turn off any user looking to do more than lightly communicate with a select group of friends.

Phone:

Using the phone was surprisingly pleasant. There are no send/end keys on the device (physically, at least) and it’s a little different than what we’re used to for a Android phone. The built in voice dial/command function is absolutely brilliant and we fell in love with the virtual number pad. The phone app is one of the areas on here where you’ve got a lot of different options. Sorting by all calls, missed calls, outgoing calls, frequent called, recently called, and more are all some of the ways you can access your phone logs and contacts quickly and efficiently. In terms of incoming calls, you not only get the person’s name, number, and photo (if available), you also get their latest status update from whatever service that contact is linked. Sooo cool. We can’t believe no one has done this before (yes, we’re looking at HTC right now). In terms of actually using the phone to talk on, calls sounded pretty clear, though it wasn’t the best phone we’ve ever talked . Speakerphone was definitely loud and surprisingly clear with callers being able to hear us well, and we could hear them fine and have a normal conversation. Just as you’d expect from a phone…

Keyboard:

This is tough. Early reviews have said that the keyboard of the CLIQ was fantastic. We have to unfortunately disagree. It’s decent. Definitely usable, just not something we’d want to bang on all day and every day. The buttons are hard, cheap plastic, and while there is some tactile feedback when you press a single key, it doesn’t “bounce” back up and it’s a little unsettling.

The space bar on our unit has practically no feedback and since this is a sliding phone, the keyboard is sunk into the case which allows for the handset’s shell to rise slightly above the keyboard. The 5-way directional navigational pad suffers from the same common issues as the keyboard — not enough feedback. Childrens will have no problem with it, but anyone over the age of 12 might take issue to the keyboard. We’ll see.

UI:

While widgets are what spices up the homescreen of the CLIQ, Motorola also decided to blend contact information from all your different social networks together in a clean and useful live address book. Think of it as Synergy on the Pre, just executed a lot, lot more intuitively. For one, you can hide and view different networks if you don’t want to see every single Facebook friend or Twitter account you follow.

In terms of being intuitive, there a little UI work on here — Motorola has customized some default Android graphics and thrown on a custom color scheme, they’ve also overhauled the address book with a nice skin, but a lot of it is more application-centric.

We mean instead of there being an actual user interface on top of Android, there’s applications like Motorola’s unified inbox, inboxes for your social services like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc., widgets on the homescreen with popups, and things of that nature.

Something very cool about the Exchange email program, though, is that you actually have a font editor. You can bold, italicize, and completely format text. It’s really neat if not completely useless, but cool nonetheless.

Battery:

Not even joking when I say this — the Motorola CLIQ has possibly the worst battery life of any phone I’ve tested in recent memory with the current software. Maybe Motorola’s BLUR back-end isn’t optimized yet, maybe the phone software isn’t final, but this is ridiculously bad. Especially since it doesn’t even deliver your status updates when you want them, it just sits there pulling in data constantly updating in batches. I haven’t used the device as a primary device so I couldn’t give hard statistics on battery life when phone calling, but with on and off usage, it’s ridiculously bad. The battery itself looks to be 1390mAh for those that are interested.

Again, let’s hope the software isn’t prime time.

Conclusion:

The Motorola CLIQ isn’t a StarTac. It isn’t a RAZR. It’s a decent phone with a great concept. A concept that unfortunately wasn’t executed as well as it should have been when the entire industry is watching. We feel that the Motorola CLIQ’s appeal will be to the young teen market as opposed to consumers as a whole like other Android handsets. It’s only the first phone from Motorola and their new initiative, and they deserve credit for putting together something this unique and creative. Yet compared to something along the lines of HTC’s offerings, we don’t think many people are going to spring for a clunky Android handset regardless of price.

It’s annoyingly slow at times — really hope this isn’t final software — has very little user-customizable settings where you need them (something ironic for a handset that actually does offer a real attractive “connected lifestyle” concept) and has to be pretty low on the totem pole as far as market positioning is concerned. There’s the Motorola Sholes which is said to be extremely high-end with a fusion of aluminum and other metals launching on the Verizon network (as well as a Euro 3G unit we’re told) which is completely opposite of the CLIQ, and that interests us as far as what Motorola is up to.

Motorola was and still is one of our favorite tech companies. This is only their first handset since they did a little spring cleaning and it’s decent. I’m really hoping the software side of things dramatically improves as we get closer to a release, but with less than two months to go, I’m not sure it will happen. We know not everything you wanted to hear about was covered in this preview write-up, so hit us in the comments with any questions and we’ll update the post with answers. We’ve also reached out to Motorola’s PR team and are waiting to hear back from them to clarify some information like the software version and other fun stuff.

UPDATE: We’ve been informed this unit is definitely not running the final OS.

Oh you thought we fell off. Nope — we’ve just been tearing apart BlackBerry’s latest flagship over the past week or so and our review is finally perfectly crafted. The BlackBerry 9700 replaces the Bold as RIM’s newest flagship device. Even though it’s not released yet — look for it anywhere from mid-October to mid-November depending on what part of the globe you reside in — it’s BlackBerry’s most advanced QWERTY device to date and combines all of their next generation features together in a smaller and lighter package. We’ve already detailed our thoughts on RIM and how they are doing on the software side of things and this review will be mostly hardware focused. We will also follow up with a Part 2 review as we did with the BlackBerry Tour since this model is not a production unit.

Hardware / Design:

Gorgeous. How do you like that description? From the beveled edges to the powder-coated keyboard, this is one good looking BlackBerry. The much loved (and hated) fake leather textured battery cover makes a reappearance here as does a trackpad to handle the navigational duties.

The 9700 makes the Tour look like a bloated 8-month pregnant single mother. Shave about 24% of the surface area off the Tour, bevel the edges, round the corners, and you’ll have something close to the BlackBerry 9700. It’s the most gorgeous BlackBerry on the planet. And no, that’s not up for debate or discussion. Early units had the straight RIM color theme on the keyboards (white letters with red accents/symbols) but the unit we have which is most likely what AT&T will receive is all white. This looks great meshed with the titanium chrome finish on the bezel and the high gloss black finish on the front of the device.

This theme is always brought up in our reviews of BlackBerry devices — RIM really keeps innovating in hardware design and manufacturing. It seems as if each device they make has a brand new manufacturing process and technique, and while you might view this as a negative, we view it as a positive. Unlike a car maker, RIM can’t make a chassis, so to speak, that they use for all their models in a series. Since each device is unique, it’s great to see RIM experiment with different planning and assembly options to deliver the best product possible. Eliminating the number one failure point on a BlackBerry (the trackball) and replacing it with something that’s not just going to save money in the long run, but is actually a better solution is great. Making desktop chargers that use battery contact points to save wear and tear on the mini/microUSB port is smart. Speaking about the trackpad, we’re not sure what’s up because there’s a nice and day difference between this one and and the one on the BlackBerry 8520. It might be the exact same hardware revision, but something about it feels better to use and after a day of not using the traditional trackball, we can’t imagine not using the trackpad. It’s a worthy successor to the trackball.

What about something that’s often overlooked? Vibrate. We’d like to be the first ones to report that the vibrate function on the 9700 is straight up violent. It’s possibly the most downright disrespectfully loud and obnoxious vibrate mechanism we’ve heard in recent memory. And we love it. Switching gears to the physical buttons on the 9700, it will make a BlackBerry user feel right at home. Two-stage camera shutter /convenience key on the lower right side of the phone with volume up / down buttons towards the top of the right side. Left convenience key on the opposite side with lock and mute buttons on the top of the handset. There’s the now-default 3.5mm headset jack and microUSB port sitting above the left convenience key. Below those are a lanyard hole. Thrilling, we know.

The 9700 is very much like the 9520/9550 in terms of industrial design and gives us a glimpse at where RIM’s styling is headed for the next round of handsets. Things like soft-touch rubberized finish on the middle of the handsets with matching rubberized buttons (instead of chrome), darker chrome finishes, high gloss black — all these lead to more pronounced and edgier designs for a historically conservative corporation.

Screen:

RIM really moved in a brand new direction with the Bold’s display and ever since, they’ve been continuing the tradition of awesomeness. We’re really happy to report that the BlackBerry 9700 has the best screen to date of any BlackBerry handset. It’s that good. The resolution, which is the new RIM gold standard, is 480×360 and while you wouldn’t expect it to be any better than the Tour’s or Curve 8900’s screens, it is. Pictures appear as if they’re floating on top of the display, blacks are black and colors are crisp and vibrant. There’s a pretty decently-sized black border that goes around the entire display much like how the BlackBerry Tour’s screen looks, and while people have moaned about this ad nauseum, it doesn’t really phase us.

OS:

The latest versions of OS 5.0 (which have leaked for existing handsets like the 9530, 9630, Bold, 8900, etc.) show a slight UI refresh with more blues, more gradients, updated icons and buttons and even — *gasp* — kinetic scrolling on some devices. Here’s where it gets a little tricky, though. AT&T’s BlackBerry 9700 evaluation units shipped with OS 5.0.0.169. The unit we have originally came with that OS and worked magically. It, however, didn’t have the updated UI that later OS 5.0 builds contain. After upgrading our unit to OS 5.0.0.215 (internal builds for the 9700 are up beyond .249, we’re told) it’s now rocking out with the updates features and sexified UI elements. Why we’re going into this so deeply is because there’s a good chance that if AT&T’s 9700 passes technical acceptance without issue (we don’t anticipate the same issues that plagued the Bold’s release), the version that will ship with the 9700 will be 5.0.0.169 or something close to it. That means that you’ll be running an “old” 5.0 build and it’s interesting to see this play out. You’ll obviously be able to install different OS versions for yourself that have been released by other carriers, but we just wanted to give you guys a heads up that the release unit’s OS might be a little different.

Keyboard:

We don’t have to keep reinforcing it (well, we just did, we guess): we take those keyboards seriously. Throw the BlackBerry 8900 keyboard out of the window on this because it’s completely different. Imagine the BlackBerry 9700 keyboard as a mix of the Bold and the Tour keyboards. Tour-shaped (little better) with the bounce and feel of the Bold keyboard. It’s really fantastic. Definitely not as large as the original Bold’s mammoth boat-sized chiclet pad, but it’s great. We’d probably go as far as saying out of the current generation BlackBerry handsets, the BlackBerry 9700 is the best. You’ll see that theme appear time and time again in this review. Each little key has a nice carved design that allows for precision typing at its finest. Keys have a decent amount of space and even though the shift keys at the bottom look a little small (they are tiny), they’re completely usable and really don’t turn out to be a hindrance when it comes to getting your typing on.

After a couple hours of usage we have no doubts that you’ll absolutely fall in love with the keyboard. The feel of the keys coupled with the shape and proper layout that’s standard on all BlackBerrys offer a truly excellent typing experience on the BlackBerry 9700.

Phone:

The unit as a phone is fantastic. That will obviously depend on what network you sign your life away to, but even on AT&T, when the network worked, the 9700 made for a great phone. The actual ear speaker seems less recessed than previous BlackBerrys and we could hear callers loud and clear using the ear speaker. Speakerphone also worked well (as it should) with minimal distortion at maximum volume. Quite refreshingly, the device didn’t get too hot during long voice sessions and we really had no problems using the phone as a phone.

Browser:

While the browser in OS 5.0 comes with some improved Javascript support, it’s still no where near any of the top dogs like Apple’s mobile Safari, Android’s webKit browser, or Palm’s webKit browser. Using the browser with the trackpad as the cursor is definitely a great input method (remember when the trackball made use of the cursor back in the day for the first time?) and feels natural to navigate websites. The browser seems like one of the things that changes most as OS builds move further and further along so we’ll reserve our hatred for the browser in our final Part 2 review.

Speaker:

While the Bold offered three different audible speaker ports (one on each side and one at the top) for pretty accurate sound reproduction, the BlackBerry 9700 uses a single opening towards the top part of the back of the device. This works fairly well and sound, uh, sounds good. We did notice a volume decrease compared to the Bold, but not by much. Maybe around 15% lower? Nothing is going to beat that Storm 2 speaker, though…

Battery:

We’re not sure how they did it, but the BlackBerry 9700 has the best battery life of any 3G BlackBerry in recent years. It could probably even rival the BlackBerry 8900 — truly unbelievable. The BlackBerry Tour was the king of battery life, and that was odd seeing as how CDMA devices usually are a bit worse than their GSM brothers and sisters, but the 9700 has one-upped the Tour. For some rough statistics, the BlackBerry Bold with normal usage patterns lasted me around 7 hours of usage until the battery was dead. How long do you think the 9700 lasts using the exact same BlackBerry Bold battery? Try around 15 hours. We’re talking more than double with a faster CPU and using the same battery. Really remarkable and will help those on-the-go warriors.

It’s funny to see RIM use such a wide range of batteries in their devices. Then again, for a company that has 15,000 different models, 4,000 different screen resolutions, and 2,000 different form factors it doesn’t surprise us. What you’ll be happy to hear is that your existing BlackBerry Bold battery will work perfectly in the 9700 and will yield you better battery life than you’ve ever imagined.

Note: Battery life was based on OS 5.0.0.169. It’s dramatically worse in OS 5.0.0.215 which the unit is now running.

Conclusion:

It’s pretty hard to make a general recommendation nowadays with any device, let alone a BlackBerry. With four form-factors in the BlackBerry family, it complicates things.

The BlackBerry 9700 is a much-needed refresh to the aging BlackBerry Bold. To date, RIM has released only a single 3G GSM device in the United States and with competition heating up, the BlackBerry 9700 looks to be their answer. We absolutely gushed over the BlackBerry Tour in our review and until the 9700 came along, that was our daily driver. Is the BlackBerry Tour still the best BlackBerry on the market? We think so. But as good as the Tour is, the 9700 is better. There seems to be a drastic difference between CDMA and GSM hardware on BlackBerry devices (we’re guessing it’s the Qualcomm processors opposed to the Marvells) and it’s actually exhilarating to be back on a GSM device. The BlackBerry 9700 combines the most-loved features that have been sprinkled about on BlackBerry phones over the last year (3G, 3.2 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, trackpad, QWERTY keyboard, smaller size, faster CPU) and combines them into a single sexy and compact package.

“So you’re saying the BlackBerry 9700 is the best BlackBerry ever?”

Yes. It’s the finest BlackBerry ever crafted and if you’re asking why it’s so much better than the Tour, it goes back to that CDMA vs. GSM argument as well as the fact that the 9700 is simply a year newer. We nailed the Tour all the way back almost two years ago, and sadly the internals seem to be a little outdated. There’s no official CPU specifications on the Tour, but if we had to guess we’d guess it’s running at around 500MHz give or take. Rumblings have pegged the BlackBerry 9700’s Marvell Tavor CPU running at close to 800MHz! It’s a lot faster in normal usage than the Bold (both running OS 5.0) so in addition to the RAM being doubled, we’re pretty sure there is a faster CPU dropped in there as well.

Every single thing about the BlackBerry 9700 screams high-end to us, and for a device that’s a part of the Bold-series (the Bold won’t go anywhere, we’ve been told), it should. It’s the best of the best to come out of Research In Motion to date and we can’t wait until everyone’s able to use one.

Check back for Part 2 when we follow up with a review on an AT&T release unit.

Image courtesy of TweetGenius.

One of our ninjas just blessed us with a look at a portion of AT&T’s Windows Mobile road-map for the rest of the year. Quickly glancing at it we can see that the AT&T Tilt 2 will obviously launch in October, and refreshingly, the Samsung Epix and Samsung Jack will be getting upgrades to Windows Mobile 6.5 courtesy of upcoming maintenance releases. What’s more exciting, however, are the HP Obsidian and LG Monaco launches. While not brand new to the world, it’s nice to know that these Windows Mobile business-focused handsets will finally see the light of day come November. We know October is going to be full of 6.5 handsets like the Tilt 2 and Pure, and November shows no signs of slowing down either. Here’s a quick refresher on specifications for the LG Monaco and HP Obsidian and a larger shot after the break:

HP Obsidian:

• GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA (850/1900/2100MHz)
• Bluetooth 2.0
• Wi-Fi b,g
• QWERTY keyboard
• microSD slot
• GPS
• 3.5mm headset jack
• Windows Mobile 6.5

LG Monaco:

• GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA (850/1900/2100MHz)
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Wi-Fi b,g
• Slide-out full QWERTY keyboard
• GPS
• 5 megapixel autofocus camera

Thanks, Feech!

We’re not at the final OS build (haven’t even updated this to latest available OS) and that’s always something to take into consideration. With that said, however, the Storm 2 really makes SurePress a viable touchscreen mechanism that people will enjoy using. This obviously should have been done the first go around, and there’s big bad all-touch-screen smartphones to battle, but we like where RIM has gone with it and we’re eagerly awaiting an official announcement. More photos after the break!

Thanks, Mark!t

UPDATE: Had a chance to load a more recent OS on here (5.0.0.224) and it’s improved the screen feel immensely. Any wonkiness and erroneous screen taps seem to have gone away. Plus, you know… there’s threaded SMS now.

While Motorola announced a “before-the-Holiday” release time frame for the Motorola CLIQ, we’ve been able to confirm that units will be shipping out to T-Mobile corporate stores, warehouses/fulfillment centers on or around September 29th. Do you know what that means? We’ve been told that the Motorola CLIQ will pop it’s head out for a mid-October launch on T-Mobile. We don’t have pricing details at the moment, but you can bet your bippy it will won’t be above $199 with a 2-year, possibly lower. We’re working on getting supporting materials, but this is pretty much a go!

Thoughts?

You might have recently heard Motorola had some sort of announcement to make… well, it’s all over now and we’re left with the Motorola CLIQ. It’s the much-awaited and much-needed refresh to the company’s mobile device portfolio and it’s rather interesting. Like we reported, much of the customizations to the Android OS fall under the UI name of MOTOBLUR and that’s going to give you more social networking integration, widgets, and other connectivity options than you can handle. It will also allow each user to “customize his/her mobile device experience.” As far as raw specs go, we’re pleasantly surprised to report a 5 megapixel camera with video recording, UMTS/HSDPA, Wi-Fi, QWERTY slide-out keyboard, 3.5mm headset jack and a bunch more. Stones left unturned? Is the screen capacitive (our hearts hope so and we’d assume so, just odd how it’s not mentioned) and is there multi-touch support. All in all, we can’t wait to get our hands on it.

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After Mr. Epstein attended the RIM event on Tuesday for the BlackBerry Curve 8520, I promptly snatched the review unit he received out of his hands when he got back to the office. Let’s not beat around the bush: a BlackBerry is going to either me or Michael and I was closest. It’s not the first time we’ve been fondling the BlackBerry 8520 but hey, we won’t complain. Available as of yesterday, the Curve 8520 throws the Curve lineup forward with a speedier processor, improved keyboard, more memory, new trackpad navigation system and other tweaks and additions like dedicated music keys. One thing we can’t for the life of us understand, though, is T-Mobile’s pricing. At $49.99 with a two-year this would have absolutely killed on T-Mobile’s network, but $130? Isn’t the BlackBerry Curve 8900 $199? Ok, T-Mobile’s lost it as the Curve 8900 is $149.99 on a two-year. Seriously? While this is still one of the most usable and solid low-to-mid-end handsets we’ve ever picked up, it’s no where near Curve 8900 territory (obviously on purpose by RIM). Our guess is within a month you’ll see this at around $99 or even lower on T-Mobile, but that’s just us.

Back to the hardware… if you’ve been holding off on a BlackBerry for a while due to cost reasons or maybe you just always get your phone lost or dinged up, we have no problem recommending the BlackBerry Curve 8520. It’s a real solid piece of hardware — it’s a BlackBerry after all — it’s just as fast as the high-end BlackBerry devices out there, it’s pocketable, and functional. Want to see some photos? Hit the jump!

While many of our readers think the BlackBerry Curve 8520 is about as boring as it gets, truth be told it’s infinitely more functional than most devices in its (Walmart or Amazon) price range and it invites a whole new demo over to Berry. One of our RIM ninjas hit us up this morning to let us know that within the next month it should be available for purchase in France from Bouygues Telecom. A hard price and street date have yet to be set, but we can’t imagine that it will cost all that much, if anything at all, considering the $0.01 – $48.88 pricing we have here in the states. Vive la Curve.

What’s that? Another big launch for Tmo today? If you managed to make it through the entire summer without picking up a Pre, iPhone 3GS, N97 or Tour then perhaps T-Mobile can tempt you with the myTouch 3G. Available today online, in stores and over the phone, the smartphone that should have been named anything but myTouch 3G will set you back a penny shy of two C-notes on a 2-year contract — a price no where near as crippling as the inferiority complex that you’ll develop knowing that you’ll never see the infinitely better Hero on T-Mobile. If you can stomach that, then by all means, please go nuts.

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You know the deal… A big box retail store receives stock of the BlackBerry Curve 8520 a few days before it’s due to go on sale so an overzealous employee throws caution to the wind and sells one to someone. Obviously, the purchaser must then proceeded to go straight home and post an unboxing video on YouTube. The contents of the box provide no surprises either as the 8520 comes with nothing but the phone, microUSB cable, travel charger, stereo headset, installation CD and manuals. Hey, what can you expect from a smartphone that goes for $48.88 at Walmart? Hit the jump for the unboxing vid.

Thanks, Alex!

Just one day after it was officially announced by LG, a super special variant of the incredibly sexy BL40 surfaced on the FCC. Dubbed the BL40g, it contains absolutely no surprises save for two of the things we love most in life — the 850 and 1900 MHz bands of UMTS. Now before any of you get jumping to conclusions such as “holy crap, it is coming to AT&T” we should remind you that the BL40 has long been known to be TELUS-bound in time for the launch of its HSDPA network. You know, seeing how it runs on the same bands as AT&T and Rogers… You get the idea.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

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Canadian Windows Mobile junkies have a couple of reasons to smile this afternoon as TELUS has begun selling two great WinMo packin’ smartphones: the HTC Snap and Touch Pro2. Priced at $0 and $249.99 respectively on 3-year deals with voice and data discount (or $399.99 and $649.99 outright), both the Snap and Touch Pro2 are sure to please prosumers and business users alike. Apart from their obvious differences, each device has an abundance of features including email support, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, speakerphone, visual voicemail, global GSM roaming and well over five hours of talk-time per device. So, Canadians, who’s in?

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While we don’t have a sexy codename for this BlackBerry to attach to the model number, our very same ninja is back again with a list of specifications for this unseen and unnamed device that will launch as the BlackBerry 9700. Ready?

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
• UMTS/HSDPA
• 480×360 resolution display
• Wi-Fi a,b,g
• OS 5.0
• QWERTY keyboard
• 3.2 megapixel AF camera
• Bluetooth

We know, we know, specs on paper are one thing — we’re working on getting more information, don’t worry.

UPDATE: And… the BlackBerry 9700 is the new model number for the BlackBerry Onyx. That’s why the specs are identical. Makes sense!

Well, you wanted it, you got it. T-Mobile just confirmed one of the worst kept secrets and we’re sure there a bunch of happy people out there. T-Mobile 3G, Wi-Fi — an awesome device all around. Look for it to pop into your local hood starting mid-August and available on the 12th through T-Mobile.com and phone sales!

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And yet another oft-leaked BlackBerry has become official as Research In Motion has finally announced the BlackBerry Curve 8520. Heading to T-Mobile USA and Vodafone UK in August, the BlackBerry 8520 is RIM’s latest attempt at luring in the average consumer to its line of smartphones with a very budget friendly price. In the UK, Vodafone UK subscribers should be able to get the 8520 at no charge provided they take on a contract with a monthly tariff of £25 or more (considerably cheaper than the average BlackBerry plan) while in the USA T-Mobile clients will have to wait a bit longer to find out just how much it is that they’ll be asked to pay. Since we’re sure that you’re all more than familiar with the specs of the 8520 by now, let’s just focus on one thing that that’s super cool about the 8520 — it’s compatible with OS X straight out of the box. Does this mean that the Mac version of Desktop Manager will debut before its scheduled September release? It certainly looks as if this is the case.

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We’re still waiting on official word from T-Mobile but with each passing day, the rumored August 5th launch date gets more plausible. This time around, an alleged leaked T-Mobile document reaffirms the date and rehashes the 8520’s specs. Pricing is noticeably absent from the sheet so for the time being all we have is the Walmart price of $78.88 through October, at which time the price should drop to an incredible $48.88. Of course if you are a really cool kid you’ll have already received a voucher for a free 8520, but then again that voucher did come at a high cost — you had to sit through Transformers 2.

Thanks, Jake!

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Oh Best Buy, how we love you so. It doesn’t seem to matter to you whether or not a carrier has officially launched a device, because you’re in the big box business and don’t care about trivialities like carrier announcements. The latest example of this sort of behavior is your peddling of TELUS’ HTC Touch Pro2 for $249.99 CAD despite the fact TELUS has yet to confirm pricing, let alone a launch date. But like we said, you’re Best Buy so you can afford to take these sort of risks. Just do us one favor, okay? Fix the crazy image that you have up on the site because you’re making the sexiest WinMo handset in creation look like one of those LG phones that wants to be a makeup compact. Kthx.

Thanks, Dennis!

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So you read part 1 of our BlackBerry Tour review and then our impressions of Verizon’s BlackBerry Tour, but you’re still too scared to go out and buy one because you live in Canada and aren’t sure how the newest BlackBerry handles life above the 49th. Well it’s time to put your neuroses aside, Canadians, because Bell recently sent a Tour our way just so you crazy Canucks wouldn’t feel left out. So site back, relax and hit the jump to see what’s up with the Bell BlackBerry Tour 9630.

Before we begin, we think it appropriate to clarify just exactly what one gets when he/she purchases a Tour from Bell: The device itself (which was made in Mexico, for those of you who fawn over Canadian-made devices), a leather holster, stereo headset, travel charger, microUSB cable, Bell SIM card, Desktop Manager installation CD and instruction manuals. Unfortunately, Bell does not ship the Tour with a microSD card. Okay, that’s out of the way so let’s move on.

Seeing as we’ve covered the Tour’s hardware and software so many times before, we hope that you’ll forgive us if we skip over all that and focus on the things that make the Bell Tour different from all other Tours. There are two physical differences and although they’re both pretty minor, one makes us really smile and makes us scratch our heads. The positive is that Bell has decided against putting its logo on the device, meaning that those of you who have a coronary out of anger when seeing a physically branded device are safe and won’t have to hit up cnn.cn. The negative is the battery door. While Verizon opted for a soft-touch rubber coating on the areas surrounding the faux carbon fiber, Bell has chosen to leave a glossy black finish in its place just as we saw on our pre-release unit. Why do we take issue with this? Two reasons. The first being that it’s summer; perspiring hands and slick-finished smartphones don’t mix well. The second reason is that it just looks half-assed because it doesn’t match.

Moving on to the OS, the Bell Tour ships with the same OS as every other Tour on the market from various carriers — OS 4.7.1.40. We’re a bit shocked that this is the OS that shipped on all devices seeing as there are quite a few annoying bugs in it, the worst of which seems to be radio issues. Our Canadian office is located a few hundred meters from several Bell towers yet we haven’t managed to get over three bars of EV-DO. The strangest thing however, is that our Tour seems to love to sit at zero bars when not in use. Once we pick it up to use data however, we always get an incredibly fast connection. Whether we were downloading attachments, surfing the web, using GPS Nav by Telenav (yes, GPS is unlocked) or using the awesome Bell TV & Radio streaming app, everything worked fine despite only showing about two bars of service. Guess it goes to show you that bars aren’t everything and CDMA does provide a digital connection regardless of bars most of the time.

Despite a few issues here and there, the Tour is a solid performer and overall it handles itself very well in its infancy. In fact, we’d go as far as to say that it’s the best device Bell has in its catalog. If you don’t already have one, it’s definitely one to check out.

Yes ladies and gentlemen pre-teen boys and girls, school is starting up again in just over a month and that means carriers across the country are going to start rolling out a bunch of new phones to gobble up the money you worked so hard to get over the summer. The latest in this crop of devices are the Samsung Comeback and Gravity 2 from T-Mobile. The Comeback, a device we’re sure most of you are familiar with by now, is a 3G-enabled horizontal clamshell with a full-QWERTY keypad, 2 megapixel camera, MP3 player and microSDHC support. The Gravity 2 isn’t much different except that it is a straight-up side slider and is considerably smaller. Sadly for those who are thinking about picking up a Comeback, which is available this very moment, we hit the nail squarely on the head when we said that it will be going for the absolutely ridiculous price of $129.99 on a 2-year deal after a $50 MIR. Insane. As for the Gravity 2, pricing and a specific release date have yet to be set, although it will be available sometime next month. Huzzah.

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