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Mobile Miscellany: week of August 19th, 2013
If you didn't get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we've opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week brought a free TV streaming service for Bell subscribers, the arrival of NFL Mobile to BlackBerry 10 and little bit of Windows Phone love from General Motors. These stories and more await. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore all that's happening in the mobile world for this week of August 19th, 2013.
BlackBerry makes 9720 handset official with Curve-era specs and software
No one can pretend it's business as usual at BlackBerry, but for the moment the company is pressing on with new releases. Today marks the official launch of the heavily-leaked 9720, which actually takes the whole carry-on-regardless approach a bit too literally by sticking with BB 7.1 instead of the new (and nice) BB OS 10. The phone has a 2.8-inch 480 x 360 display (214ppi) above a "re-engineered" (but distinctly Curve-like) thumbpad, a 5-megapixel rear camera and 512MB of RAM. There's also a dedicated BBM key to take you straight to the messaging app and the OS has been tweaked with a not-so-revolutionary onscreen button to make photo sharing easier. The handset is destined for Europe, Asia and Latin America "in the coming weeks" and ought to hit a much, much lower price point than the Q5.
BlackBerry 9720 running BB 7.1 OS boldly shows its curves in hands-on video
BlackBerry confirmed that despite the launch of BB10, it'll still deploy one handset running BB7 later this year. We're almost certain that phone will be the 9720, and while the Thai site that got an initial look called it a Bold, it might actually be a new member of the Curve family, according to a fresh leak from our Vietnamese friends at Tinhte. They've given the unannounced QWERTY model a brief video hands-on and taken a bunch of thankfully sharp snaps, including some side-by-side shots with the old Bold 9790. A disclaimer in the translated text states the device is a "trial version," so the final hardware may be slightly different, but it's said to have a 480 x 360 resolution touchscreen and a 1,450mAh removable battery. Our Vietnamese is a little rusty, so while we can't tell you what the narrator is saying, you'll still get a good overview of the hardware in the three-minute vid below.
New BlackBerry Bold 9720 spotted, runs old BB7 OS
We're right in the middle of putting BlackBerry's gently priced Q5 through review testing, but the latest phone leak from Waterloo (well, Thailand actually) doesn't run BB10 at all and will presumably weigh in at an even lower price tag. According to ThaiBBClub, the Bold 9720 you see before you will run on OS version 7, with all the requisite legacy hardware keys and menus. While it looks nothing like the 9900-mimicking Bold 9790 that came before it, there's still a full square-ish keyboard (with contoured keys), as well as a striped finish on the back that'll be familiar to the BB faithful still out there. Unfortunately, there's nothing leaked resembling a spec sheet, but you can visit the source link for a full gallery tour.
