Hasta La Gadget!

Anyone looking for the hottest T-Mobile-powered BlackBerry experience that money can buy need only wait a few dozen hours now, because the carrier has just revealed that it’ll be launching the latest rendition of the Bold — the 9700 — on Monday, November 16 for $200 on contract. Your hard-earned cash reels in T-Mobile’s very first 3G BlackBerry underpinned by a 3.2 megapixel camera and 480 x 360 display, beating AT&T’s launch by a solid six days. Enjoy, folks.

Filed under: Cellphones

T-Mobile launching BlackBerry Bold 9700 on November 16 for $199.99 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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T-Mobile has unveiled the Tap, a 3G touch-screen cell phone with a compact, slightly rounded design that’s oddly similar to the Samsung Highlight already in T-Mobile’s stable.

The Tap comes with T-Mobile’s web2go, a 2-megapixel camera, video capture, a music player, GPS, and stereo Bluetooth. It measures 4.2 by 2.2 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 3.7 ounces. A microSD slot is provided for sideloading media and storing photos.

The T-Mobile Tap available in berry and midnight blue beginning today online and in stores. It costs $79.99 with a two-year service agreement and after rebates. Hey, at least it gives you two new colors to contrast with the Highlight’s rather garish Fire and Ice hues. (And is it just me, or does that UI look an awful lot like Palm OS?)

T-Mobile is now offering unlimited voice for little enough cash through its Even More promo these days that it’s officially bidding myFaves adieu, spelling out the final chapter of one of the better-known plan packages in the US wireless biz. It won’t go away completely — the myFaves app will apparently continue to be offered as a convenient, cutesy way to access five frequent contacts and existing subscribers won’t be kicked off their plans — but for new subscribers, Even More is being billed as the spiritual successor. For the record, unlimited voice through Even More Plus starts at $49.99, so the price is definitely right — but more importantly will this end up meaning that we lose the beloved silkscreened myFaves logo on the back of virtually every T-Mobile handset sold today?

Filed under: Cellphones

T-Mobile to myFaves: ‘Good day, sir; I said good day’ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The BlackBerry Bold 9700 in a word? Compact. It’s efficient, almost cramped, like a Japanese car from the 80s.

Succinctly, it’s the new BlackBerry to buy if you’re on T-Mobile or AT&T. Doubly so on T-Mo, since it’s their first 3G BlackBerry.

It’s not very much like the original Bold at all, which was the Escalade of BlackBerrys: big, obnoxious, but seriously comfortable to drive because it gave you tons of room to spread your legs (err, thumbs). If you’re used to that, at first the 9700—which is even smaller and lighter than the Tour on Sprint and Verizon—feels like you’ve been shoved inside of a clown car because the keyboard and screen, while retaining the same shape and resolution, respectively, have been shrink-rayed. (Update: Actually, the resolution’s been bumped up 40 pixels, to 480×360, from 480×320.)

But, then you realize you’re not typing any slower, or less precisely. The 9700’s keyboard isn’t as flat out comfortable as the original Bold—purely a matter of physics—but it’s a minor marvel of ergonomics that RIM has recession-sized the keyboard this effectively. They’re simply brilliant at building keyboards. The screen has the same resolution as the Bold’s, but in a smaller size, meaning it has a higher pixel density. Despite that extra clarity, I felt a bit constrained by it, especially browsing the web.

It’s the second BlackBerry to ditch all-too-easily-slain-by-lint trackball for an optical trackpad, and the first that’s not built for Walmart. You’ll miss the trackball for about 15 seconds. Like I said before, the trackpad’s 90 percent as good as the ball. You might miss the physical feedback, and it sometimes doesn’t totally accurately interpret a diagonal swipe that you know wouldn’t be a problem with the ball but it’s good enough, and by far the most accurate and responsive trackpad I’ve used on a phone.

It’s running BlackBerry OS 5.0 which isn’t tons different than the OS that shipped on the original Bold or Curve 8900, but it’s definitely springier and it has a few brushstrokes of added polish here and there. One place you notice is the browser—while not as fast as the iPhone 3GS or Android, it has some extra zip to it, and it even sped past the Storm 2 loading pages, despite racing on T-Mobile’s 3G network vs. Verizon’s.

Note: In the gallery, the T-Mobile one is the Bold 9700, the AT&T phone is the original Bold.

Basically, barring any major bugs that pop up over the next couple of days, this is the BlackBerry you probably wanna bug your corporate overlords to handcuff to your pants if you’re on AT&T or T-Mobile, since it’ll slide into them easier than any BlackBerry yet. I just hope you enjoy the feel of faux leather. [BlackBerry]

T-Mobile has acknowledged what appeared to have been a widespread outage of many of its services Tuesday night.

At about 9:30 PM Eastern Time, a T-Mobile representative contacted PCMag.com to report that the outages were confined to a small number of users. However, those customers and others took to Twitter, where a T-Mobile account acknowledged the outage and said the company was working on the issue.

“We’re making good progress restoring voice and messaging service to affected
customers,” the T-Mobile representative said in an emailed statement. “At this time, approximately 5 percent of T-Mobile customers are
experiencing service disruptions. Issues began at approximately 5:30 p.m.
Eastern time. Our rapid response team is working continuously to fully resolve
this disruption. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this has
caused our customers.”

By 10:25 PM, T-Mobile had posted to this notice to its support forums, advising its customers that the problem had been fixed:

“T-Mobile confirms it has fully restored voice and
text/picture messaging services for customers affected by intermittent
service disruptions on Tuesday,” the company said. “About five percent of our customers
across various geographies were affected for much of Tuesday evening,
and by late Tuesday PST their service was restored.  Our sole focus has
been restoring full services for all customers; we are now
investigating the root cause of the incident.  We sincerely apologize
for the inconvenience that this has caused our customers.”