8700g
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RIM cleared to sell BlackBerrys in China
Step aside RedBerry, after 8 years of hemming and hawing the Chinese government has finally opened their doors to the original RIM BlackBerry. By the end of August, big city suits should find the BlackBerry 8700g on shelves with China Mobile -- the world's largest operator based on subscriber count -- offering up the service. iPhone, what iPhone? RIM now has open access to a population of more than 1 billion who like BlackBerrys based on, uh, their good looks alone.
Who broke the Bluetooth stack on the 8700?
Just when we're getting used to our Blackberry tethering via Bluetooth, news (and not the good kind either) travels downstream that the latest software release for Cingular and T-Mobile decreases the download speed significantly. Is it that RIM is intentionally making our BlackBerry 8700 slower or is it the carriers' request to cut down on consumer tethering? More than likely it's the first one seeing the problem didn't exist in earlier releases of the 4.1 OS and it doesn't exist in the Pearl's 4.2 OS. According to the Brain Murmurs, which created the "Pulse" tethering application, data speeds went from a decent 200k to a crawling 65k. Hopefully, this is nothing more than some developer's sick idea of how the fast the information superhighway should be, and we can all return to our regularly scheduled speeds in some future release of RIM's OS.
The Boy Genius Report: BlackBerry loves Goooold!
Field report tidbits from Engadget's mobile insider, the Boy Genius.I guess Pharrell really started a trend. Here we have a solid 18k white gold BlackBerry 8700g. If you can stand your service being reduced a little (due to the massive amount of, well, gold) and can afford the high price tag, call up your boy Jacob The Jeweler -- he made this flawless. I have never seen such craftsmanship.[Click on for another pic! -Ed.]
T-Mobile's BlackBerry 8700g reviewed
Despite Cingular's claim of being "the network with the least dropped calls," PC Mag's Sascha Segan finds that T-Mobile's version of the BlackBerry 8700 smartphone, the 8700g, actually outperforms its 8700c cousin in terms of call quality. Other improvements upon the Cingular model are T-Mobile's addition of two key software features: the OZ semi-universal IM client (no Gtalk, and AIM users are restricted to their small mobile buddy group) as well as the first implementation of the Yahoo!/RIM partnership we heard about last month, in the form of a handy Y! Mail icon pre-loaded in the launcher. Besides these small differences, however, Sascha finds the 8700g to perform almost exactly the same as the 8700c -- that is, very well. Email and texting are a pleasure, attachment support is good for all but PDF files, and the crisp screen delivers web pages cleanly (albeit at EDGE speeds), making this seem like the new go-to device for the Mob's business clientele.
Blackberry's 8700g with EDGE available on T-Mobile
It was bound to happen sooner or later, and now the Blackberry 8700 smartphone is finally available to push email-loving members of the T-Mob, as the 8700g. As far as the features go, well, you should all know them quite well by now, as Cingular has had this model since late last year: quad-band GSM with EDGE data, a 312MHz Intel processor, QVGA color display, Java, and Bluetooth 2.0, plus the standard suite of RIM-supplied applications. Getting your Crackberry fix from the big "T" will cost you $300 with a contract (after $100 in rebates).[Thanks, Phil G]
