BlackBerry

Smartphones continue to be a changing category at the Consumer Electronics Show. Though they started out by taking a relatively low profile in the face of giant TVs and fancy Blu-ray players, over the past couple of years they've gone big.

In 2009, for example, the Palm Pre swept the show and just last January the Motorola Atrix 4G and the Xoom took three CNET Best of CES awards.

So what does the 2012 show hold? Considering that the industry never stands in one place for more than a week, it will be an exciting few days for mobile … Read more

As Research In Motion prepares to announce its third-quarter earnings later today, one of the company's investors is calling on it to start selling off parts of the business.

In a wide-ranging statement (PDF), Jaguar Financial, a frequently outspoken critic of RIM and its co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, said that the time has come for the company to dump its handset business, leverage its broad patent portfolio, and become a service provider.

"Jaguar believes that RIM should sell its handset business and monetize its patent portfolio, while retaining its service business under new leadership," the … Read more

With a thirst for intellectual skirmish and good-natured trash-talking, I rounded up two special guest hosts for this week's Dialed In: Antuan Goodwin, Android enthusiast and co-host of CNET's Android Atlas podcast; and Roger Cheng, a CNET News mobile reporter and newly-minted iPhone 4S fanboy. Oh yes, the epithets would fly...

But only in my head. It turns out, we CNET folk are far too polite to speak ill words about another's chosen operating system that we might one day regret. Never fear, we do join forces to dish dirty on Facebook (who wants a Facebook phone … Read more

Buying a cell phone as a holiday gift is a bit more complicated than buying a television or a camera. It's not that shopping for those products is easy--indeed, one TV can present you with a mind-boggling array of specs--but a cell phone also requires you to select a carrier and choose a service plan. (Also see my colleague Jessica Dolcourt's FAQ on picking the right mobile operating system.)

Those extra steps, combined with the staggering amount of choice in the mobile space, can confuse even cell phone fanatics. So if you're wondering where to start, don't feel bad.

Rest assured that CNET is here to help. With a little preparation, gift shopping for a cell phone can be a stress-free experience. If you keep in mind the following steps, the only pain may be to your pocketbook. … Read more

Research In Motion rolled out two more BlackBerrys today.

The BlackBerry Bold 9790 looks like a compact version of RIM's flagship Bold 9900 phone, while the all-touch-screen Curve 9380 looks like a slightly smaller version of the all-touch-screen Torch, and shares similarities with the original--and glitch-plagued--Storm.

CNET Asia was on the scene at the launch event in Jakarta, and got their hands on the new devices.… Read more

Research In Motion today unveiled two more BlackBerrys to its current lineup, continuing an impressive run of new product rollouts.

The company showed off the BlackBerry Bold 9790, which looks like a compact version of its flagship Bold 9900 phone, as well as the all-touch-screen Curve 9380, which looks like a slightly smaller version of the all-touch-screen Torch, and shares similarities with the original--and glitch-plagued--Storm.

The two phones augment an already plentiful lineup of BlackBerrys for RIM, which is hoping its revamped BlackBerry 7 operating system will at least draw in its more loyal customers. While the company is rolling … Read more

It's a sad day in the Dialed In studio, with our beloved Nicole announcing that she's leaving us to break new ground over at TWiT. Our hearts will go on, Celine Dione style, so make sure you watch to the end for our special tribute and two surprise guests. It also turns out, Stephen's quite the speechmaker.

But before then, Nicole and I break down the news of the week, including our take on the HTC Rezound, a Verizon super phone, a wacky phone concept, and our take on if you should wait to buy a 4G … Read more

We all know that RIM needs a new game plan to stay relevant in the super-smartphone age, and its name is BBX.

The forthcoming BBX operating system converges QNX, the OS behind the unsuccessful BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, and BlackBerry OS, which continues to run current BlackBerry smartphones.

Even when RIM announced its plan to develop BBX last month at the BlackBerry Developer Conference in San Francisco, it didn't tell us much else about it--what it'll really do, how it will look, and when it will launch. What we did know is that it'll succeed the BlackBerry PlayBook 2.0 software...and that RIM doesn't even own the rights to the name.

The design we see here in this leaked image, which could be of a BBX phone (or may not be), has a large, edgy design with an all-touch display and no keyboard. That tidbit is consistent with reports that BBX phones will eschew the physical keyboard for which RIM is so famous.

(Via The Verge)… Read more

The iconic BlackBerry Bold look may be going the way of the dinosaurs once Research In Motion introduces its line of next-generation smartphones.

BlackBerrys running on RIM's next-generation platform, dubbed BBX, will use the same screen aspect ratio as the PlayBook tablet, RIM said yesterday in PC Magazine. RIM's head of developer relations, Alec Saunders, said apps that run on the PlayBook will run on BBX phones.

The PlayBook runs at a 16:9 ratio, which PC Magazine points out hasn't been seen on other mobile devices. But it suggests the first BBX phone will eschew the … Read more