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U2 gets sponsored by BlackBerry

Monday, March 9th, 2009

The tour U2 are soon to be embarking on is brought to you by those Canadian Smartphone manufactures Research In Motion - expect to see a U2 branded handsets any day now.

U2’s 360 degree tour is backed by BlackBerry to promote their 12^th album ‘No Line On The Horizon’, kicking off in Barcelona on June 30^th this year.

The name of the tour comes from its apparent effort for the concert goer to experience an uninterrupted, unobstructed, full view, of their stage performance.

Those of you who remember the last album might recall or even purchased one of the U2 branded iPods that came out at the time. Which begs the question; Why BlackBerry and not someone bigger like Apple to back the tour? Surely greater tie-ins can be obtained elsewhere and with a more apt backer?

Questions such as those will probably relate to the economy not being all that great at the moment, in the US of A. We could always be wrong on that point, or they just missed the boat on this one.

RIM has been for the past few years trying to ever so eagerly break into the mass consumer market, with their candy bar Pearls and more recently the Vodafone/Verizon Storm backed touch screen handset.

This new move from them could very well cement this deal, or at least add a greater impression that they play nicely with consumers too along with the business world.

Just in case you were wondering when and where you might be able to catch U2 and BlackBerry on stage, the following are dates produced by Live Nation.

EUROPEAN TOUR SCHEDULE:

30-JUNE BARCELONA, SP NOU CAMP

07-JULY MILAN, IT SAN SIRO

11-JULY PARIS, FR STADE DE FRANCE

15-JULY NICE, FR PARC CHARLES EHRMANN

18-JULY BERLIN, DE OLYMPIC STADIUM

20-JULY AMSTERDAM, NL ArenA

24-JULY DUBLIN, IE CROKE PARK

31-JULY GOTHENBURG, SE ULLEVI

06-AUG CHORZOW, PL SLASKI STADIUM

10-AUG ZAGREB, HR MAKSIMIR STADIUM

14-AUG LONDON, UK WEMBLEY STADIUM

18-AUG GLASGOW, UK HAMPDEN PARK

20-AUG SHEFFIELD, UK DON VALLEY STADIUM

22-AUG CARDIFF, UK MILLENNIUM STADIUM

NORTH AMERICAN TOUR SCHEDULE:

12-SEPT CHICAGO, IL SOLDIER FIELD

16-SEPT TORONTO, ON THE ROGERS CENTRE

20-SEPT BOSTON, MA GILLETTE STADIUM

24-SEPT NEW YORK, NY GIANTS STADIUM

Now, the details passed to the press today mentioned the tour is presented by ‘BlackBerry Revolutionary Production Design Revealed’. We’re not entirely sure if this is just word play, or if there is anything on the horizon named ‘Revealed’ in the BlackBerry portfolio.

We are however expecting some tie-in at a later date, with exclusive content or a limited edition branding of a handset, as the tour kicks off. As why else would there be a deal like this announced, someone has to make some money somewhere out of this.

Let’s hope it’s a BlackBerry U2 Storm handset, then we can write headlines such as - U2 Storms the charts with mobile phone tie-in.

What about a Curve or Pearl branded mobile, in order to produce such gems as - U2 launches a Pearl of a handset or Curve your mind around U2’s new phone.

Tags: Blackberry, curve, storm, U2
Posted in Mobile | Comments

BlackBerry sell 50 million handsets

Friday, February 6th, 2009

In news we almost missed this week, Research In Motion came out with their figures from the last quarter with some other interesting stats that we thought we’d bring you.

An email wandered past our already massively cluttered desk this week with a mammoth of Mobile World Congress invites. This was on the subject of those Blackest of Berry handset people, just rounding up what’s been happening of late. We’re expecting not a great deal of news from them at Mobile World Congress this year, so whatever bones they’re throwing out right now we’re happy to bark over.

Last month, with this month being February of course, those Canadian phone makers shipped their 50^th million email device. A milestone that did take 25 years to reach, since they were founded that long long ago and have really only been in the BlackBerry business for the last 10 of those. Can others make so bolder claim to that larger number? We think not, so the belittling and humour shall endeth here.

Other stats they presented that we weren’t aware of and made us utter the words ‘really?’ and ‘cool’ are as follows; there’s around 21million active BlackBerry users in the world right now with RIM’s backend handling around 3 petabytes of data a month. That’s a lot of data, a lot of a lot of data, about 3072 terabytes of information. Quite a vast number, when you think that Google handles around 20 petabytes of data each and every day.

During the last quarter alone RIM shipped close to the princely figure of 6.7 million devices. A nice sum, but we’re wondering if the Storm really did tipped those scales or not as the case may be *cough*

Tags: Blackberry, research in motion, RIM, storm
Posted in Mobile | Comments

It’s a dark day for Storms

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

The Wall Street Journal has just run a piece on the failings of the BlackBerry Storm and problems that plagued it soon after its launch in the States, some of which were clearly mirrored elsewhere in the world *cough*

It’s an interesting read, which contains items that even our deft investigation did not uncover to our shocking surprise.

They started with the startling fact, Verizon and RIM spent two years in the development of that mobile in a retaliation to the Apple’s iPhone. We were told both Vodafone and Verizon has approached a number of handset manufactures to create a rich multimedia phone for their networks, where RIM won the tender in the end. Also, that the particular design of the phone is a lifetime exclusive to them both, meaning we won’t or shouldn’t be seeing a similar device elsewhere anytime soon.

WSJ also when on to note - “Some early buyers have complained about technical bugs with RIM’s first touch screen BlackBerry, although others say most new gadgets have problems that need to be ironed out.”. We’re assuming the bugs that were ironed out were resolved by the firmware updates, which there really has only been one of late. If current reports are to be believed there is another one on its way. At the tail end of last week, rumours started to pick up momentum of a leaked firmware being seen in the wild.

They went on to list some of the woes that surrounded the phone, and a few of which we found in our detailed review we’re prepping right now. Mentioned was the ‘clunky software for typing’ and ‘device’s sluggish performance’, one of which we found to have cleared up nicely with the aforementioned latest firmware.

Apparently Verizon and RIM were originally aiming for an October launch, but missed that target date which would have inevitably forced the hand of Vodafone’s shipping date in the UK. We weren’t made aware at that time of this early date, which the Wall Street Journal seemed to of obtained from interviewing RIM co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie.

From the interview, another fact came to light that we overlooked at the time of the phones release surrounding its fortuitous arrival date. The man from RIM said they just made Black Friday deadline “by the skin of their teeth”. If you weren’t already aware, this is the day after Thanksgiving in the USA where a great great deal of the Christmas shopping revenue is made on just one single day.

The US carrier also reported they sold half a million units within the first month of launch, a figure that wasn’t really shouted about over in good auld blighty and for obvious reasons too. As the press coverage it was given wasn’t all that complimentary from the get go. Plus there’s always the issue of advertorials being around rather than straight up hard hitting journalism, where the overall message is then somewhat tainted.

Verizon’s fourth-quarter results are due out anytime soon, this will be a solid indication of exactly how well the Strom really did for them. Or if this was just another pipe dream that a company could really take on Apple and produce an iPhone killer. With the economy being what it is at present we hope all the pundits will take that into account when they start to write the news up.

RumourMill: Palm prē to be on Vodafone in the UK

Monday, January 19th, 2009

In what appears to be another leak, Vodafone could be getting the latest handset from Palm with their very latest OS later on this year. Trumping all the other networks vying for the ultimate iPhone killer to be with them, bar O2 of course.

The website MobileTopSoft ran a piece indicating news from ‘Vodafone officials’ the prē is set to be with them, this is much welcomed news and just adds to their catalogue of media rich phones such as the BlackBerry Storm.

To some, this could even be seen as competition to the Storm, or at the very least a possible competitor to BlackBerry and RIM as a whole. As the phone sits on the fence between a business handset and a personal one. Although it lacks in our humble opinion out of the box business tools with the likes of Office Suite access and corporate email support to a high level.

Reading between the lines of the copy, as not every site can afford to spell out exactly who the source is and how accurate the news is, it does appear they most certainly know Vodafone will be carrying the mobile.

The piece also goes on to state this could be a case of one up man ship for the network, with O2 exclusively getting the iPhone and the fortunes of Vodafone could be definitely endorsed by this new deal.

MobileTopSoft added the negotiations are in the early stages still, and they doubt anyone will hear any official news of this sort until the ink is nearly dry. This just goes someway to stamp even more credibility on the fact they have received this leak from an internal source.

With the carrier Sprint in the US of A being a full partner in the launch of the prē, we’re assuming a UK network will have the same level of involvement too. Who knows, all this could be made public at Mobile World Congress next month *cough*

Tags: Blackberry, Palm prē, RIM, storm, uk, Vodafone
Posted in Mobile | Comments

RumourMill: BlackBerry touch screen Bold coming soon

Friday, December 26th, 2008

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A posting over at Gizmodo via the original source of a Tmonews forum item has a leaked image of the RIM roadmap, with a new Bold model on the horizon with a touch screen in a slider casing.

There’s nothing much more to tell other than what the picture above shows, but still it’s an interesting rumour none the less.

In all practicality, we can’t really see the benefit of a touch screen in the Bold’s current housing. Unless RIM are open to crosspollination of their range, which they might very well be if the latest phone is anything to go by.

With the Curve 8900 we’ve seen the old model Curve from last year updated, to house a screen of the current BlackBerry Bolds likening.

Working on that principal and that principal alone, perhaps a screen somewhere in between the Bold and the Storm could be of use in this supposed new handset.

Seeing as it’s also designated to be housed in a slider format this could be much more of a feasible solution.

Of late we’ve seen the BlackBerrys break out of their corporate monstrosity mould, to adopt a much more consumer focussed design.

One model of phone they haven’t actually brought to market yet is a slider, so perhaps the concept isn’t as wild and unbelievable as it first appears to be.

A few years back you wouldn’t have believed RIM would have produced a candybar shaped mobile any more than you would have believed a full touch screen handset, minus a keyboard.

Even the thought of a flip phone wouldn’t have made sense to most, now look at the sales. It’s actually doing rather well.

With a product codename of ‘Pluto’ we’re guessing the rumour this model’s design isn’t so out-of-this-world after all.

Tags: Blackberry, bold, curve, curve 8900, RIM, slider, storm, Touch Screen
Posted in Mobile | Comments

Just how bad is the Blackberry Storm?

Thursday, December 4th, 2008

Reader Hugh spotted this Storm review on the MoMo Forums and sent it to me:

Volker Konietzko writes:

“I have recently upgraded from Curve to Storm and the experience has been devastating so far, partly because of the immature firmware. As far as the clickable screen is concerned, I was expecting more (also in terms of quality of the components), but it is possible to get used to it. The clickable screen is surprisingly useful for navigating through lists and menus as every choice has to be confirmed by a click - no wrong menu selection by accident. But this is also the biggest drawback - it is effectively a 2 step process, touch and click, which makes fast typing absolutely impossible.

I was quite used to taking meeting notes with a Blackberry - that’s simply not an option with the Storm… It really needs an additional keyboard. Hope this helps.”

I’ve been trying to find a link but failing that, here’s the link to Mobile Monday London.

Now, I’ve not seen the Storm up-close-and-personal yet, other than admiring the Pocketlint chap’s one whilst we took a tour around the Nokia Test Lab recently. What’s your view on the Storm?

Tags: Bad, Blackberry, storm
Posted in Devices | Comments