Well, well, looks like Unkie Walt accidentally programmed his calendar to publish a combined preview of the Motorola CLIQ and the BlackBerry Storm 2 a little earlier than everyone else. Nothing particularly insightful on the CLIQ, but Mossy says RIM’s latest is a big improvement over the original Storm — mostly because of the revamped touchscreen, which provides “faster, smoother typing.” Yep, that’s pretty much what we were expecting. Walt’s also high on the inclusion of WiFi and the portrait-mode keyboard, but ain’t nothing gonna make that BlackBerry browser any good, and the big guy says the touch interface still feels tacked to the rapidly-aging BlackBerry OS. So Walt — now that you’ve confirmed RIM and Verizon’s big holiday launch, what can you tell us about pricing and availability? “Likely to appear in November at around $200,” you say? Thanks, buddy. You’re always so dependable. Video that we took of a broken Storm 2 prototype in May after the break, tons of pics in the gallery
Posts Tagged handsets
This looks an awful lot like an Onyx to us, but Salomondrin — who has posted several blurry shots of this puppy — claims it’s the mythical Essex, a Tour refresh that should make CDMA BlackBerry fans very happy. Why? Well, first, there’s the apparent addition of WiFi, something that we’ve heard was bound to happen sooner or later; secondly, the Tour’s infamously finicky trackball has been tossed to the wayside in favor of a trackpad, yet another signal that RIM’s looking to ditch trackballs altogether. It’s also said to have a better camera, though the definition of “better” in this context remains unclear; also unclear is a release date, but considering that the Tour’s still minty fresh on store shelves, we wouldn’t realistically expect it until mid-2010.
[Via CrackBerry]
We’ll withhold judgment until we have a far more intimate encounter with the device, but at a glance, the HTC Pure — AT&T’s branded, customized version of the Touch Diamond2 — might carry the least-exciting industrial design of any variant launched thus far. Considering the business-oriented clientele, that might not be a big deal for the phone’s bottom line — but when you take a look at the slightly better-equipped Imagio that’s about to launch over on Verizon, we would’ve liked to have seen something with a little more spunk here. At any rate, it seems Pure units are starting to flow into AT&T retail locations, which inevitably leads to some time in front of the bright lights and camera; AT&T was mentioned as one of Microsoft’s global launch partners for Windows Mobile 6.5 on October 6, so if we connect the dots, we’re guessing this is the phone that’s gonna make it all happen. So where’s that Touch Pro2, then, eh?
[Via wmpoweruser.com]
Apple might be talking a big game about how it’s revising the App Store approval process with an oversight board and trotting out Phil Schiller to do damage control at opportune moments, but the process itself is still generating inconsistent and maddening results.
Like today’s rejection of an app advocating for healthcare reform called iSinglePayer, which was rejected for being “politically charged.” Yeah, that’s insane, especially since the app just consists of healthcare spending information and a GPS-driven lookup tool for local Congress members and how much money they’ve received in health-sector donations.





