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RIM unveils BlackBerry Bold 9790, Curve 9380, hitting the market within weeks
Now that we've seen all the leaks and heard all the rumors, RIM has finally announced the BlackBerry Bold 9790 and Curve 9380, welcoming two new members to the OS 7 family. Picking up where the Bold 9780 left off, the comparatively higher-end 9790 boasts a 2.44-inch touchscreen display with 360 x 480 resolution, and is powered by a 1GHz CPU. The QWERTY-equipped handset also ships with 8GB of onboard memory and features a microSD slot that offers up to 32GB of additional space. The Curve 9380, meanwhile, is an all touchscreen affair, with a 3.2-inch, 480 x 360 display and a five megapixel camera. RIM hasn't offered any other details on the 9380's specs, though the company did specify that both devices will offer NFC and augmented reality support, and will come pre-loaded with BlackBerry Messenger, Documents To Go Premium, and BlackBerry Protect. No word yet on pricing or availability, though RIM says to expect a launch "over the coming weeks." Find more details in the full PR, after the break.
BlackBerry Protect moves to wider beta, ready to secure your stuff
After a limited beta last year, RIM's BlackBerry Protect service has been opened to a wider test audience with tweaks based on feedback collected in the first round. As you might recall, Protect is a fairly standard-issue suite of security features to put your mind at ease in the event your phone meets its maker or the hands of a thief, including location capability, a remote alarm, wireless backup, and -- of course -- the doomsday remote wipe option. It's available in North America and parts of Latin America for the moment through App World's Test Center, though RIM promises to open it to additional regions "in the next couple of months."
AT&T, Verizon, RIM get serious about security for mobile devices
As commonplace as smartphones have become, it's about time that carriers and manufacturers start getting serious about mobile security (and no, we don't mean iPhone tethers). According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Verizon is currently working with Lookout, a San Francisco-based company known for remote backup and geolocation apps for BlackBerry, Android, and Windows Mobile devices, while RIM has recently announced a little something called BlackBerry Protect, which promises to lock or even wipe a misplaced phone, pinpoint the thing on a map, and make regularly-scheduled wireless backups. By far the most ambitious plans in the article, however, belong to AT&T, which -- aside from recent deals with MobileIron and McAfee -- is currently opening a new mobile security lab in New York City. From here, the company will research malware, worms, viruses, and other threats as they develop in the mobile sphere. "Everyone is realizing that this is an uncontrolled environment," said AT&T chief security officer Edward G. Amoroso. "We don't want to have the same problems that we had with PCs."
BlackBerry Protect protects (you guessed it) your BlackBerry
You might expect a product with as much enterprise street cred as BlackBerry to offer the best lineup of options for dealing with a lost or stolen phone, but not quite -- devices in a controlled BES environment can be wiped from afar, but for non-enterprise consumers, the options are a little more limited. That's where RIM's new BlackBerry Protect software comes into play, combining a host of services into one product; on top of being able to remotely message, lock, and wipe a misplaced phone, you can locate it on a map and take regularly-scheduled wireless backups that make replacing the handset (if it comes to that) as painless as possible. It's going into an invite-only beta period later this week, after which it'll move to a wider-scale public beta "later this year" at no charge. Considering that MobileMe's similarly-styled features do less than this for $100 annually, the word "free" has an especially sweet ring to it, doesn't it?
