Hasta La Gadget!

Less than a week after it officially unveiled its new BlackBerry 6 OS,  Canadian smartphone maker Research in Motion has debuted BlackBerry Curve 3G (9300),  a “BlackBerry 6 ready” upgrade to the popular line of smartphones.

In keeping with the Curve’s tradition, this model is aimed squarely at the consumer market.

“The majority of people in the worldwide mobile phone market have yet to buy their first smartphone and the BlackBerry Curve 3G is designed to provide an extremely attractive and accessible choice that will help convince many of them to make the leap,” Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion said in a statement Monday morning.

The feature set of the Curve 9300 is rather modest:  quad-band GSM, Tri-band UMTS, 802.11 b/g/n, GPS, a 2 megapixel camera, and support for microSD up to 32GB in size.  It ships with BlackBerry OS 5, but BlackBerry 6 will be available as an upgrade “in the coming months.”

The Curve 3G will ship worldwide in August.  RIM did not mention carrier partnerships or retail price of the device.

Photo Credit:  Research in Motion

Come on, admit it, you want to believe that RIM is working on a tablet called the BlackPad don’t you? You’d better, because Apple Daily is piling on with more unsubstantiated rumor this morning. So, in addition to the 9.7-inch display, Bluetooth, WiFi, and front- and rear-facing cameras already mentioned by Bloomberg‘s sources, Apple Daily claims that Quanta won the bid to manufacture the tablet with plans to ramp up for 2 million units starting in September (for a November retail launch) with another 8 million planned for 2011. The price? $499 is the target, naturally.

RIM BlackPad tablet priced at $499 when it ships in November? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Aug 2010 06:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It took two long years for India to (allegedly) tap BlackBerry traffic, but Saudi Arabia may not have to wait nearly as long; the Wall Street Journal reports that RIM has all but agreed to set up a local server in the country. While we’ve no details yet on what the deal entails, an unnamed Saudi telecom official said negotiations are already in the final stages. Sorry, RIM, but it looks like Saudi Arabia called your bluff. We imagine the company will deny any potential for government snooping in short order… and both Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates will start planning their own attempts to wrest away control. We’ll let you know where this house of cards falls.

Update: Saudi Arabia has reportedly given its three national cellular carriers 48 hours to try out proposed solutions that “meet the regulatory demands” of the country, else the BlackBerry messaging ban will take effect as originally planned.

RIM averts Saudi Arabia’s BlackBerry messaging ban, negotiates surrender (update: 48-hour ultimatum) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 07 Aug 2010 20:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Brace yourselves, humans, because we have an all new, amazing Engadget Show fresh out of the box! For your viewing pleasure, we sit down with insightful game designer Peter Molyneux to get the inside scoop on some of his ongoing projects, from Milo to Fable III. Then, Josh, Paul, and Nilay bust out RIM’s latest, the BlackBerry Torch and put it through its paces live on stage. They dive into Windows Phone 7 and do battle with K-mart’s Augen Android tablet, and a bunch of audience members walk away with giveaways. Oh yeah, we also have brain-busting music from Zen Albatross and mind-numbing visuals from invaderbacca that you will absolutely want to check out. What are you waiting for? Watch it now!

Hosts: Joshua Topolsky, Paul Miller, Nilay Patel
Special guests: Peter Molyneux
Produced and Directed by: Chad Mumm
Executive Producer: Joshua Fruhlinger
Edited by: Peirre Verna
Music by: Zen Albatross
Visuals by: Invaderbacca
Opening titles by: Julien Nantiec

Taped live at The Times Center

Download the Show: The Engadget Show – 011 (HD) / The Engadget Show – 011 (iPod / iPhone / Zune formatted)

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The Engadget Show – 011: Peter Molyneux, Fable III, Milo, BlackBerry Torch, Windows Phone 7 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Aug 2010 14:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The new BlackBerry flagship has been put through one of the more important ceremonies of acceptance into the smartphone world: a teardown. The CrackBerry crew have disassembled a Torch to see what makes it burn and produced some glamor shots of naked hardware for us to gawp at in the process. As you can see by the exploded shot of the phone above, most internals are either integrated or soldered down, but this undressing does afford us an opportunity to take a look at the biggest novelty in this new BlackBerry, namely its slider mechanism. It’s impressively thin, rated for 150,000+ cycles, and yours to witness on video just past the break.

Continue reading BlackBerry Torch teardown offers few surprises, much like the phone itself (video)

BlackBerry Torch teardown offers few surprises, much like the phone itself (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Aug 2010 03:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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