BlackBerry News From The Wire for the Week of 9/7/2009

Aren’t short weeks grand? Of course, missing Monday screwed up my equilibrium, as well as the normal BBGeeks schedule. We’re back with it, though, with our normal Thursday feature, News From the Wire. It being a short week, there wasn’t exactly a whole ton. We’re ditching the three-star links this week, because the handful that I have are all pretty good. To compensate, we’ll add a little multimedia to this one. Might add multimedia even more in the future.

BlackBerry Onyx 9700 appears

We’ve seen images of the BlackBerry 9700, a/k/a the Onyx, previously. We first saw it in primitive form, sans the trackpad. RIM added that, though, and the device is now nearing a release on T-Mobile. Al Sacco had the good sense to post the image, along with some information on the device. The info is officially under embargo, but I totally agree with his reasons for publishing: he never agreed to anything, but rather received the information along with an embargo request. Go Al. I’ve got your back, man.

If you want even more of an Onyx (or Bold 9700, whatever) fix, then check out this video comparing it to the original Bold and the Curve 8900.

Typing on the Storm 2 is fast and easy
Are you, like many BlackBerry fans, a bit concerned about the Storm 2? I mean, it sounds great from everything we’ve heard, but there’s no doubt that the original model left something to be desired. Over on CrackBerry there’s a video of typing on the Storm 2, and it looks incredibly fast and easy. So maybe this one will live up to expectations.

BlackBerry Bold, Curve emit a lot of radiation
How concerned are you about cell phone radiation? It seemed to be a big concern about a decade ago, but it’s certainly died down to a murmur over the past few years. That’s because there’s so much conflicting information, and some of it says cell phone radiation is no big deal. Since we use our cell phones so much, it’s natural to want to turn the blind eye. There’s a recently released list of the highest and lowest radiation handsets. The BlackBerry Bold ranks as the 10th highest in radiation emission, and the Curve 8330 ranked fourth.

“The data is still conflicting and the science isn’t settled,” says Jane Houlihan, research director at EWG. “But there is enough evidence now that it makes sense for people to take personal action while the teams of scientists and health agencies sort through the data.”

One major suggestion is to use a headset rather than holding the handset to your ear. That’s a reasonable suggestion, and I see plenty of people every day seemingly talking to themselves, but really talking into a Bluetooth headset. Also, phones emit more radiation in low-signal areas. Those are the places you should really be using a headset. Or so they say.

AT&T pulls BlackBerry Bold visual voicemail
It was a happy day a few weeks ago when AT&T rolled out visual voicemail for the Bold. As I’ve said for over a year now, there’s no beating visual voicemail. The ability to sort through voicemails in a non-linear fashion is key. Anyway, it appears that AT&T has pulled the update due to a software issue. Engadget Mobile has the word from Ma Bell: “This week, AT&T and RIM discovered an issue in the most recent software update for the BlackBerry Bold, only affecting a small number of customers in a handful of markets. The issue may create call performance problems that can be corrected. We encourage any customer who believes they are experiencing this problem after installing the most recent update to call customer care for help.”

Here’s the letter to reps on the matter:

Skyfire raises some scratch for further development
One of the most anticipated BlackBerry apps in the works is the Skyfire mobile browser. There are plenty of complaints about the BlackBerry’s native browser, and even though they recently acquired a company with a WebKit-based browser, we’re still interested to check out Skyfire. Latest word is that they received $5 million funding, which will, among other things, allow them to grow the BlackBerry platform. Now we just have to exercise patience while they continue their alpha testing, and hope for a public beta at some point.

This post originated at BBGeeks.com – home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about Verizon BlackBerry.

BlackBerry News From The Wire for the Week of 9/7/2009

This post originated at BBGeeks.com – home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about Verizon BlackBerry.

BlackBerry News From The Wire for the Week of 9/7/2009