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Posts from the ‘Blackberry’ Category

13
Dec

$20 Blackberry from the McCain-Palin campaign comes with Secret Emails, Contacts

It’s pretty much common sense that when you’re ditching your old cell phone you want to erase your personal data, contacts and emails — or at least try to. Oh sure, there are plenty of examples of failing to do so, but this one’s rather… shall we say, “special.” Some operatives at Fox 5 in Washington, D.C. booked over to the McCain-Palin campaign headquarters’ yard sale yesterday, and they saw some ultra cheap Blackberrys — just $20 a pop, probably an inventor’s discount — so they picked up a few, undoubtedly thinking they’d make nice holiday gifts. They were kind of surprised to find that, after giving the ‘Berrys some juice, one of them had 50 contacts for “campaign leaders, politicians, lobbyists and journalists” as well as hundreds of emails. When reached for comment, a campaign spokesperson said that “procedures are being put in place to ensure all information is secure,” followed minutes later by a blank email CC’d to his entire address book with the subject line “We’re so screwed.” Read

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30
Nov

BlackBerry Storm update leaks to the masses

 Okay, remember that bit about waiting for a wide release? Yeah, screw that noise. Firmware 4.7.0.75 for the BlackBerry Storm has drizzled out onto the interwebs, and initial reports from intrepid updaters seem to be generally positive. We can’t verify the authenticity of this sucker, but if you were counting down the minutes until RIM got around to patching up issues and killing some lag, 75 might be a good start. Good luck, friends. Read 

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25
Nov

RIM clears up BlackBerry Storm OS situation

So here’s the deal… by now, you’ve no doubt seen our theory on why the OS that shipped with the Verizon BlackBerry Storm was so low. We had all along thought that this OS was never actually intended to be released. While we ran our story on what we thought happened, we did make our best efforts to convey that the information published was nothing more than a theory from me personally, not from any of our official contacts, nor sources. We just received an official statement from RIM which effectively debunks our theory about the OS and the issues they faced prior to launch. Instead of commenting on the actual statement ourselves, we’ll let you. It’s after the jump, fellas and all my single ladies in the house!
1) The official code shipping with the BlackBerry Storm from Verizon Wireless is “v4.7.0.65 (Platform 4.0.0.82).” This information appears in the Options / About section on the handset. The first number (v4.7.0.65) is the software version that appears on the bar code sticker applied to the outside of the BlackBerry/Verizon Wireless box.
2) A limited batch of bar code stickers was initially printed with an incorrect software version number (the last two digits of the number was incorrectly listed as .82 instead of .65) and the stickers were applied to several thousand boxes. The error was detected early (and prior to launch) and new stickers with the correct software version number were printed and applied to the boxes over top of the incorrect stickers. Again, this only involved a relatively small batch of boxes.
3) There is not and never was a software version 4.7.0.82. A blogger noticed the incorrect sticker (underneath the correct sticker) on a box provided to him by Verizon Wireless and posted a “theory” suggesting (as a potential explanation for the second sticker) that the software may have been “downgraded” at the last minute and the blogger further speculated that this may have been due to a “security vulnerability”. It is very important to note that the blogger clearly and voluntarily stated upfront that it was only a theory. In fact, the blogger even described it as a “conspiracy theory” and wrote the following in his original post: “I want to preface this by saying that the following statements are my opinions and hypotheses, and have not be confirmed nor denied by any of sources of mine or official contacts at either corporation. It should serve as a nice little ‘conspiracy theory,’ though.”
4) The theory was incorrect. A software version 4.7.0.82 has never existed and there was no such security vulnerability. Further, the software was not downgraded as incorrectly theorized. The simple explanation for the presence of two stickers on a relatively small batch of boxes is that a limited number of misprinted stickers were discovered on boxes prior to launch and were covered with new (correct) stickers.”



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21
Nov

BlackBerry Storm now available on Verizon

Nothing more I can say, really.. except it’s $200 for a 2 year ontract. Read

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13
Nov

MySpace + Blackberry Addict?

At 12:01 AM EDT on the 13th of November, MySpace is releasing their much anticipated mobile application for the BlackBerry platform. You can download it here from your desktop or navigate here from your BlackBerry browser.

11
Nov

Blackberry Storm: $219.99 w/ 2 year contract

Ah, now this is a bit more solid pricing information. Verizon’s testman pre-launch site now lists the BlackBerry 9530 Storm for $219.99 under a 2 year contract. Not quite below the $199 threshold set by the iPhone 3G as predicted by some analysts. Then again, the fat lady isn’t singing yet so maybe we’ll see some kind of mail-in rebate before this gets officially official. Without contract, we’re looking at $520 according to the staging server. Pretty close the prices we saw hinted at early last week. See that screen grab and another for the $290 one-year contract after the break.
It’s worth stressing that these prices could just be leftover placeholders. In fact, much of the describing text refers to the BlackBerry 8830 World Edition Smartphone which currently sells for a pre-rebated price of $219.99.
Check out that Verzion test server here.