BlackBerry Tour announced by Sprint, too: $199.99 later this summer
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Jun 16th 2009 12:37AM
posted Jun 16th 2009 12:37AM
[Thanks, Martin]
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FINALLY!!! Doesn't overtake the Pre, but it's about time us Sprint people got a new BB!!!
Also first.
iphone>blackberry>iphone>blackberry>iphone>blackberry
Good thing House stuck to medicine and not math.
Photoshop fail with that picture. I've never seen a mirror reflection BEHIND the subject.
Listen this is what is says on www.sprint.com
Just announced! New BlackBerry® Tour™ coming soon.
The new BlackBerry® Tour™ 9630 smartphone will be available at Sprint stores, www.sprint.com and 1-800-Sprint1 later this summer for $199.99 with a new line activation or eligible upgrade and two-year agreement (and $100 mail-in rebate). Sign up now at www.sprint.com/tour to be among the first to own the new BlackBerry Tour.
THAT CONFUSES ME
This is far superior to the Palm Pre.
Why?
HOW
who?
When?
Where?
What?
It doesn't have Wi-Fi, check the BB website. FAIL!!!!!
because it has a keyboard made for adults
That price is going to fail big time, especially with how expensive BES plans cost.
BES is corporate. BIS is $30 usually. Sprint doesn't discriminate on smartphone data, non-corporate is all the same. On Verizon, same thing. The price is perfectly reasonable and even realistic, compared to the $299 the Bold started at on AT&T.
wow, would of never noticed that if not for you. Good spot, and very true....FAIL
hey engadget!! keep ur commenting system civil!!!!!!!!!
Damn kids and their lazy Photoshopping. Somebody better fix that reflection before they begin a marketing campaign for this thing.
Nice catch. Reflections are so commonplace now that I don't even notice them.
Looks damn near perfect to me! Was it fixed?
The phone is overlapping the reflection. Which is not how that works in reality...
lol that is a nice mirror job thanks Yevon for bring it up.
ANDREWNONUMBERS IS A VAMPIRE
@anonymoose LMFAO
Forgive my stupidity- what's the difference between the Tour and the Bold (besides the addition of GSM and CDMA radios)?
Thanks
Nicer camera, higher res screen, its smaller...etc...Not much different but as a Verizon customer and Storm owner, I'm pretty pissed. We should have got this FIRST.
They are the same except for the radios. There's nothing to hide. The names Bold and Tour are carrier and not Blackberry names.
9630 is the actual name of the phone.
This looks more like the BB 8900 than the BB Bold if you ask me. I think a batter comparison would be to say its a CDMA variant of the 8900. I think everyone is comparing it to the Bold just because of the 3G. But every other spec matches the 8900 for the most part...and it's looks are dead on with the 8900.
The Tour doesn't have Wi-Fi. -1
too many effin blackberries, streamline your production!!!!! someone needs to make one of those eeepc comparison charts for blackberry models
So will this phone work on a Sero plan?
Nope, it won't. Sero plans don't work on BB's, Pre, Instinct and prolly some new PDA/Smartphone in the future.
Yes Blackberries work on Sero plans, always have and always will. If you want the Blackberry Service it is $30 extra, but it is not required if you don't care about the Blackberry email service. There is even a hack out now to use the Blackberry browser without the BB service, in the past you would have to hook up your BB to a computer and load Opera on it to use the internet, but now you can use the BB browser if you so choose.
nicky, can you tell me where i can go to find information on activating a BB on Sero and also how to hack the browser to work?
Thanks!
What a small screen
It's all about pixel density.
The iPhone has a 3.5" screen, 480x320 resolution, 163 ppi (pixels per inch, number found on Apple's site)
The BlackBerry Tour has a 2.8" screen, 480x360 resolution, ~214 ppi (a number I calculated)
Images on the Tour will have more detail, but there's less screen real estate.
hey engadget! you should actually read your post before you post it and find allll of the mistakes that i keep finding.
you are a business! make it professional!
"allll of the mistakes"
Kettle, meet pot. He thinks you're black.
im not the business that needs to have perfect grammar and spelling buddy
OMG part of his identity was stolen!
Nick, sorry, what's the mistake? I've got a mental block here...
"...and a a two-year..."
Double-a. That's the only mistake I could find though. Not a big deal.
Man, I seriously read and re-read that thing like 10 times. Thanks.
Try reading it backwards.
Your mind is predicting the sentence structure and filling in the gaps.
Its one of the best ways to proof read for spelling errors.
Grammar, not so much.
Feature for feature the Pre wins hands down. I'd say the Pre is more of a Blabkberry killer than an iPhone killer.
It's not really an anything killer, just an excellent competitor for pretty much the entire range of smartphones.
m3nphls:
I have a SERO plan, and a blackberry, all my shit works, BES, BIS, PAM? Gets your facts right.
This is the CDMA variant of the Bold, right? Or something close to it?
Basically.....Yes.
Curve Sized, with a Bold Keyboard
Don't forget it looks nicer than the Bold--which is no small feat.
But no Wi-Fi on the Tour. This is a huge disappointment. I have to go with a Pre because of Wi-Fi and carriers disabling large data apps over 3G, like Slingbox. I can just enable Wi-Fi for those apps and then use my Mi-Fi router, which, btw, is freakin AWESOME (and doesn't block any apps)!!!!
It's funny how Verizon has a teaser page for the phone, but then later on Sprint announces it.
i just hate the fact that you have to have bb int and not just any data plan.... my sero plan wont work for it...
Yes you Sero plan WILL work with ANY blackberry. Don't spread mis-information.
"...which makes the Pre comparison virtually inevitable."
No.
These devices, while sharing some similar features and both being lumped into the "Smartphone" category, do not compare.
Neither is better than the other, they are simply different. The Pre is definitely marketed and designed more for a consumer, with the touch screen and media features, etc. And, given the early reviews, it does these tasks, and others, extremely well, with great speed and a great UI. As it has been said before, the Blackberry is ultimately designed with the corporate customer in mind, no matter what shiny veneer you throw on it. The operating system, while it has been given facelifts recently, is still extremely utilitarian at its roots, which is painfully evident in the Storm, which I currently own. It is designed with efficiency and reliability in mind. But, it does these things, like push email and messaging, exceedingly well, which is why RIM has cemented itself as the cornerstone corporate device.
So please, interwebz, stop trying to compare things that don't need to be compared.
The Pre is awesome, I played with one earlier today at a Sprint Store, and i loved the UI, the cards, the browser, the whole device.
And the Blackberry will be too, for its own special reasons, like push email, and speed, and reliability.
So, fanboys, why can't we all just get along. Your favorite device is cool, so is the other guys.
Love it. Post of the year.
While I mostly agree that the comparisons are USUALLY really stupid (The business-minded Pre vs. the Sheep-made iPhone is just a stupid Venn Diagram waiting to happen), these are comparable smartphones. Let's not forget Palm's past in this. While the Pre does gear more towards consumers than say, Treos, it's still a business-centric device (stuff like Synergy show this). And the fact is, RIM is going to have to step up their hardware and OS unless they want to be left behind.
While I love BB products, the fact is, if efficiency is the goal, well the race has changed. It's new name is WebOS, largely due to Synergy and multiple simultaneous apps.
Agreed.
Most people love making comparisons without first stopping and studying what they are speaking about.
Blackberry's are almost at a point where it's impossible to compare them to other smartphones. BIS and BES are UNMATCHED. I really wish other companies would step it up when it comes to this because it's the ONE factor that is usually the deal breaker for me.
As a result I had to join CrackBerry anonymous.
Yes What i Was told it should work on the SERO plan the only phone that doesnot work with the SERO plan is the pre but who knows last year when that stupid Instinct launched my rep said you couldnt but it was BS i put it on my cuzins sero plan
Seen one blackberry you've seen them all !
I hope this comes out sooner than later. I want a Pre but the wife wants a BB. Sprints current BB selection is old as crap so we are holding out until this is released. As soon as it is available I get my Pre, come on Sprint lets go.
Well well, I have been long waiting for this. My contract has expired over four months, my body wanted the Pre but my mind just just really focus on the love of this version of BB. Well its time to go for anther two years....Sorry big red u wont be seeing me, not when I have another choice.
Holy crap, how many Blackberries are there? Are each of these devices the same, but with different names for different networks or what?
These are made to all look the same, kinda like a business suit. There are nuances but nobody wants to be _too_ different in corporate-land, and the BB caters to that with flawless execution.
Blackberry, morelikeFAILBERRYamIright?OMGOMgWhenAppleAnnouncedTheNewIphoneInearlyShitMyPants,AFasterProcessorAndMoreRamAndTheAbilityToRecordVideo???NowIfIWantToHookUpWithHotHorneySingleIphoneUsersICanSendThemVideosOfMeSittingInStarbucksBeingCoolReadingWilliamFaulknerOrHentai.
WrittenFromMyApplePiePhone
lmfao!
Only 3.2MP camera??!111!!!
FAILLL!!!
(because trolls need love too... sometimes)
http://delivery.sprint.com/m/p/nxt/dyn/reg.asp?promo=Tour&id9=vanity:tour
Can anybody tell me why Sprint and Verizon rip the WiFi module out of Blackberry's and ATT keeps it in?
Not sure its exactly a reason. But Sprint/Verizon's 3g coverage is about 25x that of ATT. I travel extensively throughout the US and have EVDO 3G coverage on my Sprint Curve about 95% of all places I go.
With ATT the 3G coverage would be about 25% of all places I go, thus the need for wifi.
Because their network needs it more?
Suits, marketdroids, corp-whores, rejoice!
Having a free unlimited data plan (which includes tethering), I really don't care about having WiFi on my Blackberry. EVDO coverage and speeds are awesome. Not sure about "data heavy" apps another poster mentioned, but I use any app I want without problems. Why would you want to use a Sling app on a small screen anyway?
Has BlackBerry gotten around to the basics yet? My current one can't even provide an audible notification of voice mail. How lame is that? And please don't bring up Blackberry Alerts. Why should I have to buy something extra to cover Blackberry's shortcomings? It's like RIM has decided the "telephone" feature is low priority. Case in point: if you let the battery die, the Blackberry turns off the radio to save battery life. For what, I don't know. Again, to me, it's primarily a telephone. But even when the device is recharged, the radio is not automatically turned back on. I just don't understand their lack of concern about the telephone features of this device.
Wow, I think you need to read your instruction manual.
If you want a phone to just make calls, why get a smart phone?
I love the fact that when the battery is low, i can still read old emails and access my address book.
cant wait for this.
This phone actually looks a lot more like the T-Mobile Curve 8900 than the bold to me? Any thoughts?
Why does the Tour not have Wi-Fi, but the Bold does??
fix the photoshop!!! overlapping imgs!!!