Hasta La Gadget!

Not that we haven’t heard a few miraculous gadgets-saving-lives stories before, but this one is in a league of its own. According to the always-embellishing Sun, one David Fitzherbert is thanking his smartphone after coming entirely too close to falling 700 feet to his death. As the story goes, he got wedged between a pair of rocks after losing control of his skis in the Matterhorn, and while we aren’t quite sure why he chose RIM’s BlackBerry over — say, chap-stick, car keys, his wallet or a fattening breakfast — he credited it with adding just enough width to his person to keep him wedged. Two hours after finding himself between a rock and a hard place, rescue crews arrived and flew him to a hospital where he used the “0.5-inch wide” phone to tell his wife that he had survived a nasty spill. We still say David owes a round of thanks to genetics, luck and Zeus, but hey, what do we know?

Filed under: Cellphones

BlackBerry credited with saving skier’s life, serendipity left hanging originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When the teaser went up, we knew the hotly anticipated BlackBerry Tour for Sprint was right around the corner, but the only hint of a release date was “later this summer.” Lucky for us, the, um, insiders at Inside Sprint Now have clarified the vague window for all of us mere mortals. They confidently state that the Tour will be available on July 20th, just over a week after the purported release date on Big Red. This hasn’t yet been confirmed by Sprint, but we’re sure they want this baby out sooner rather than later, so quasi-mark your calendars, quasi-set your alarms, and get your $199.99 ready.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Sprint launching BlackBerry Tour on July 20th? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Research in Motion is soaring at the top of the U.S. smartphone market these days, but it had better watch out: A new study reports that 4 in 10 smartphone users would switch to the iPhone for their next purchase, while 4 in 5 current iPhone owners would buy another one, according to MediaPost.

Contrast that to the BlackBerry: just 14 percent of smartphone users that don’t have one would switch to one of Research in Motion’s handhelds for their next upgrade. “The findings highlight the challenges the
BlackBerry faces in stemming the iPhone stampede,” said John Martin, the CEO of market research firm Crowd
Science, in the article.

The report said that the iPhone also beat out other smart devices for customer satisfaction in numerous other areas such as screen size, navigation, the ability to add new features, and video playback quality.

Research In Motion has launched a new 3G BlackBerry phone called the Tour 9630 that continues the design aesthetic of its recent Curve and Bold phones.

“With its striking design and well-balanced mix of powerful, useful features, the new BlackBerry Tour will offer a compelling choice for the growing number of wireless customers looking to upgrade their existing cell phone to a smartphone,” said Mike Lazaridis, president and co-CEO at Research In Motion.

The BlackBerry Tour will have a 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with flash, 256 MB internal memory, 3G support, Bluetooth and GPS. It will have a full-QWERTY keyboard  and 2.4-inch display.  The dual-mode phone will also include a full HTML browser with support for streaming audio and video, along with all the quintessential BlackBerry services.

The Tour is billed as a device for CDMA customers in North America so it will be available on Verizon Wireless and Sprint networks. Sprint is likely to offer the phone for $200 with a two-year contract. No word on exactly when the phone will be hit the market this summer.

Photo: BlackBerry Tour/RIM

It’s hard to believe this is really the first official confirmation that BlackBerry Tour is bound for Verizon’s network, given what we’ve seen and heard so far, but that’s exactly what we’ve got. The self-proclaimed “America’s Best 3G Network” company has unveiled a teaser page for the smartphone. Not much else here other than a fancy product shot and a newsletter sign up, but more importantly, it looks like an official launch can’t be too far off now.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Filed under: Cellphones

Verizon launches BlackBerry Tour teaser page originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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