The next two blackberries...

As I said earlier, one of my favorite gadgets is my Blackberry Curve. I admit that ever since I've become a technology consultant, I've been addicted to the blackberry devices. I have owned the the blackberry pearl, blackberry 7290, and now the blackberry curve is my mobile device of choice. Who would have thought that we'd be able to have emails, text, picture , and video messages to coming to our cell phones in the year 2008. Now cell phone carriers like Verizon and Sprint are even delivering tv to their subscribers' phones! I can honestly say that in 1993-95 when the internet and "digital revolution" were just beginning that I was just happy to have an email address and be able to browse the web. Now we're in the year 2008 where the expectation is that your mobile device should be able to do everything that your laptop does with some minor limitations due to screen size and software. For the most part my blackberry delivers on this promise on being able to do most of the things my laptop does for me keeping in mind the limitations of screen size and software. This gets me to the reason that I am really excited for the next two blackberries...(I am more excited for the Bold than the Kickstart...more on that in a minute)

Introducing the Blackberry Bold (top picture) and Blackberry Kickstart (bottom picture)...

Now for the specs...

Kickstart:

- flip phone design (first of its kind for Blackberries)

- Quad band GSM / EDGE data service (No 3G, boo!)

- WiFi (at least 802.11b, probably 802.11g)

- 2MP camera

- internal LCD is 320x240, external is 160x128

- OS is version 4.6 (woohoo heard a lot of good things about this version)

- suretype keyboard

- Tmobile is the launch customer (I'd rather tmobile be the launch customer for the Bold!)

Bold:

- Has 802.11a/b/g

- GPS which is enhanced and assisted, and the handset has better map rendering

- 480 x 320 resolution screen with 65,000 colors

- 624MHz Intel PXA270/Marvell Tavor PXA930 processor

- OS version 4.6

- weighs 4.7oz

- Side-loading MicroSD/SDHC slot for up to 16GB additional

- 2MP camera with flash

- Talk time of 5 hours, with standby of 13 days

- MP3, WMA, AAC, DivX4 and WMV3 codec support

- 3.5mm headphone jack

- 128MB of flash plus 1GB of onboard memory (with encryption)

- Rumors on Pricing: $300 to $500 ( most likely 300-400)

- 3G (highspeed data support for AT&T and Tmobile bands)

As you can see much more is known at this time about the Bold than the Kickstart...mainly because this information is publicly available on blackberry.com/blackberrybold. I am excited because this device is truly what I feel is a giant step forward for blackberry. Many people on the internet have called it the iPhone killer. Actually blackberry is working on another device that will feature only four buttons and be completely touch screen. That will be the "iPhone killer". I am not really a huge iPhone fan because of Apple's lock-in to their platform and their insistence on controlling what can run on the iPhone - Blackberry is a much more OPEN device platform and thus has many more applications.

Finally, both of these devices support OS 4.6 which brings about huge improvements in the speed of the blackberry browser and support for things like HTML email - (you'd be surprised how many emails these days have HTML code imbedded in them).

I will probably pickup the Bold if the price is right and Tmobile has 3G coverage rolled out in Minneapolis. Tmobile is the last major GSM carrier in the US to roll out 3G coverage, mainly because they just obtained licenses for the 1700Mhz frequency within the past 18 months. Unfortunately, this has meant that their customers have needed to be more patient than AT&T's consumers, however, I counter with the fact that Tmobile customer service still kicks the crap out of AT&T's. (I just hope I don't get desperate and find the "need" to switch to AT&T to try out the Bold.)

Expected release for the Bold - July 2008 (AT&T with 3 month exclusive)

Expected release for Kickstart - July/August 2008 (Tmobile with 3 month exclusive)

I certainly look forward to each of these device releases and will bide my time trying to figure out how to be more productive with my Curve.