Telus, Canada’s national telecommunications company will be offering the BlackBerry Pearl Flop 8230 soon as the phone appears to be ‘coming soon’ on Telus website. It is rumored to be priced at around $100 on a 3 year contract. Canadian wireless provider Bell was the first carrier in the world to offer the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8230.

Specs of the phone include GPS sensors, 2 megapixel camera, video recording functionality, Bluetooth, 128MB built in memory with expansion through microSDHC cards. It will be available in the standard black or pink colors.

Source: Engadget Mobile

Net Applications, a research firm takes a look at the web market share for mobile browsing for cellphones in February and showed that the iPhone operating system is trouncing its competitors with a 66.6% share. Java ME came in second with 9.06%, Windows Mobile third with 6.91% while Android and Symbian settles for a 6.15%.

iPhone is literally without competition in the smartphone traffic in the US, however it was noted that the achievements of Android and BlackBerry was praise worthy since they were only available at a later date and Android even manage to tie in with Symbian.

Source: Hits Link

Research In Motion has jumped onto the application marketplace bandwagon and its upcoming store for BlackBerry smartphone has been officially named as BlackBerry App World. BlackBerry owners would be able personalize their phones with games, social networks, personal productivity applications and many others.

Minimum requirements are Blackberry smartphones that uses the operating system 4.2 or higher with trackballs or SurePress touch screen. User can now register their email to be alerted when the App World is officially launched.

Source: BlackBerry

Pwn2Own, the annual hacker competition held for the 3rd year running will be held at the CanSecWest Security Conference on Marth 16-20th in Vancouver BC. Sponsored by 3Com’s TippingPoint unit, the contest will target two sets of technologies: mobile devices and web browsers.

For the first track, it will present contestants with fully patched iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile phones in their default configuration and they would have to submit exploits that uses general actions a normal user would take while using the device. Cash prizes amounted to $10,000 for those who can break into the mobile devices.

For the second track, contestants would have to take a shot at web browsers (IE8, Firefox, Chrome) installed on a Sony Vaio running Windows 7 as well as Safari and Firefox installed on a Macbook runnig Mac OS X. All browsers will also be fully patched. Cash prizes amounted to $5,000 for those who can track a malicious bug.

So if you are good in hacking and wants to take a chance in participating in this competition, you can choose any of the track or both and must generally prove successful code execution. A rule though states that each contestant can only win one prize. For more details head over to TippingPoint website for rules, regulations and details.

Source: TippingPoint

After the iPhone outsold RIM’s BlackBerry Storm to the tune of four to one in the last quarter of 2008, New York based Guava came up with this ad concept to RIM which comes with an anti-Apple message. After much consideration, RiM decided not to use this ad for its BlackBerry Storm which depicted a slow motion capture of BlackBerry Storm bullet passing through an apple which ended with a words ‘The world’s first touch-screen BlackBerry. Nothing can touch it’.

1 videoclip of the RIM BlackBerry advertisement with an anti-Apple message after the jump.

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NTT DoCoMo halted sales of Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Bold in Japan after some 4,000 units sold. Word was an estimated 30 people issued complaints of the mobile device’s keyboard area overheating while recharging.

So far the issue was only affected the devices sold in Japan while sales of the BlackBerry Bold in other countried were unaffected. RIM ruled out battery problem and said the root cause is still being investigated.

Source: Reuters

The BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 is the first clamshell BlackBerry from RIM and it’s a sleek departure from the bulky business wide look of the BlackBerry lineup. It uses the Tron UI and the latest BlackBerry OS and although the screen is smaller and lacks the horsepower, the translation goes pretty well but marred with performance issues.

Features include OVGA 2.4 inch 320×240 screen supporting 65K colors, media capabilities, 2 megapixel camera and video recording, html rendering, stereo bluetooth support, external microSD memory card slot and full fledged BlackBerry apps such as email, Flickr and Facebook.
Connectivity support includes Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE/WiFi network as well as support for international roaming.

T-Mobile is currently the exclusive telecommunications courier for the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220.

11 more pics of the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8820 after the jump.

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Research In Motion is launching the on-device BlackBerry Application Center and online BlackBerry Application Storefront on a planned launched date of March 2009 in an attempt to fend off the smart phone app market against iPhone’s App Store and Android App Market.

Developers would be able to set their own prices for their applications and the revenue share is 80 percent of the proceeds to the developers and the 20 percent goes to RIM and the carriers. For comparison, Apple takes a 30 percent cut from apps that are sold while Google does not take any of the revenue when the apps are sold in the Android Market. Application submissions for the App Center will start to be accepted by RIM in December.

Users would be able to download applications from the carrier controlled store on their phone and applications such as AOL, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Gmail, and Windows Live are among those that will be soon available.

Take a look at how the App Center looks on the BlackBerry with 1 pic after the jump.

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The BlackBerry Storm is RIM’s answer to the iPhone with its all-touchscreen keyboard smart phone and it was just announced for Verizon Wireless. Specs include 480-360 screen 184 pixel per inch, comes with 8GB microSD card, supports stereo Bluetooth and runs on Verizon’s EV-DO 3G Network. It still retains its BlackBerry application features such as Office document editing, full email search and Exchange support.

The BlackBerry Storm is a beautiful consumer oriented device of the BlackBerry series, check out 5 more pics of the BlackBerry Storm after the jump.

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