It was a big week, of course, with RIM and AT&T announcing the BlackBerry Torch 9800. We’ve been getting excited about this one for months now, so it was nice to finally have an official announcement that included release date, August 12, and price, $199 with a two-year contract. That means we’re just a week away, so you might want to start lining up outside your local AT&T dealer soon.
(Yeah, just kidding.)
Everything you wanted to know about BlackBerry 6
It’s going to take a few days to get used to calling the OS BlackBerry 6 and not OS 6, and I’m not sure I’ll ever stop referring to new builds as OS xxx. Still, I got my first prolonged look at it this week, and I definitely liked what I saw. Of particular note is the browser. That seemed to be the post-announcement focus around the internet.
At Inside BlackBerry, Mike takes us on a stroll through the WebKit browser. It’s basically everything you need to know, and it includes tons of screenshots like the one you see above. I definitely recommend giving that a read.
Then, at CrackBerry, we get a browser competition between the Torch, the iPhone, and the Samsung Captivate. Here’s what they found:
The bad news: in our little test the BlackBerry Torch 9800 couldn’t pull off even one victory against the iPhone 4 and Captivate. The good news is it held in there pretty darn well – close enough that I don’t think you’ll feel hard done. It’s a matter of a few seconds, which is a massive step forward from our old native BlackBerry web browser.
The speeds could be related to the 624MHz processor, which is by far the biggest detriment to the Torch overall. Here’s the video of the competition:
Tip of the week: Automatically enable Mass Storage Mode. There will be a follow-up to this one soon, too, thanks to a comment.
Carriers teaming up to replace credit cards
Your cell phone is already a credit card of sorts. You can’t go to a store and put a pack of gum on it, of course, but you can shop on the phone and in some instances have it added to your bill at the end of the month. That’s because your carrier extends you a line of credit when you sign up for the account. That’s how they can justify letting you use their services and only pay after the fact. According to a Bloomberg report this week, the big carriers appear to be making a push to become even larger credit providers.
Every year I attend a conference called the Prepaid Press Expo, and a topic of increasing interest is contactless payments. Cellular carriers seem like a logical place to start, since cell phones present the best opportunity for contactless transactions. Reading a bit further in the article, it sounds like this would open up more opportunities for other contactless payment forms, such as moving your credit and debit cards there, too. If the cell companies oppose, it could open up anti-trust issues.
This sounds like the next big thing for mobile, and I’m certainly intrigued. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at the gym with my phone (which I use to listen to music) and no wallet, and have wanted to stop and get some groceries or other odds and ends on the way home. It’s then that I dream of solutions like this. It sounds like they’re not too far off.
Via Engadget.
Roundup
- Just for good measure, my take on the Torch.
- Rod from RIMarkable has glowing praise for the 9650.
- The Curve 9300 is now available on Rogers.
- What a surprise: a study finds that BlackBerry users are more likely to dump the platform when they get a new phone. We’ve been hearing this for years.
