Blackberry 9800 slider coming next month?
Did you know that RIM sold nearly 11 million Blackberry smartphones during Q1 2010? This places them 4th in terms of units sold behind Nokia, Samsung and LG. Not bad for a company that sells only smartphones. You could say RIM is now the world’s 4th largest mobile phone manufacturer. It shows the growth in smartphones as well as RIM’s success in expanding their market. Nokia sold 150 million phones in the same period, so RIM has a way to go still though.
I have had a few Blackberries over the years. Best one was the Bold, worst one the Storm. That clickable no-multi touch screen of the Storm made interacting with the phone slow and painful, while the aging Blackberry OS did not lend itself to touch screen operation. While Blackberry is still renowned for its excellent email capability, as well as Blackberry Messenger, the OS has fallen behind the likes of Apple OS, Android and WebOS. Browsing on a Blackberry is very unsatisfying, youtubing even more so.
All of that is about to change I hear with the release of the Blackberry Bold 9800 next month. This will be a Blackberry with a difference, sporting a capacitive touch screen and a slide out portrait qwerty keypad a-la Palm Pre, as well as the new version 6 of the Blackberry OS. Version 6 is rumoured to have a new Webkit based browser (same technology as used in WebOS and Apple OS browsers) as well as support for multi-touch and pinch to zoom. Details are a bit sketchy still, but this promises to be a phone worth keeping an eye on. I might even buy one, if I can get both my corporate emails and gmails in HTML format on the phone that is. 
No comments yet.