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Here’s an interesting experiment for blackberry fans, try using any other modern smartphone for a few weeks then switch back to your (aka non-storm) blackberry. Befuddle yourself in amusement as you jab futilely at big fat OK buttons on the screen, get confused as you try and quickly pinch-zoom or flick your tumb over the screen to speedily scroll down a webpage. It doesn’t work. Which, once you are used to them, it feels crazy because natural gestures are just such a great and easier way to handle many common mobile iteractions from launching an app to using the web. Sure, after an iphone or any slide-out keyboard, the famed berry bold/curve keyboard is a joy when hammering out emails, but for everything else the device feels like a relic. Like last-decade’s keyboard and mouse interaction paradigm crammed into a form factor it doesn’t belong.

We’re on your side here RIM, at wirelessnorth we like to cheer for the home team. But c’mon now. Would it kill you to let us grab hold of the screen once in a while?

1. It’s slick, the interface is nice and shiny
2. There’s a good broad selection of apps
3. Damn the apps are kind of expensive ($14.99 for that game with 2 out of 5 stars?, $29 for the weather channel?? do they know I could just google the weather for free?)
4. Where are the trial versions? Did blackberry get the memo that most of the most successful iphone apps have a freeware or try before you buy version?
5. Godamn it’s slow if you are on EDGE
6. This old curve can’t actually install any apps because it’s memory is “full”
7. Basically, you curve is not really a smartphone any more
8. The app store is really for the Bold

So RIMs iphone killer is landing at Telus. Or rather, safer to say for now, Telus’ Instinct-killer. Almost certainly, the storm will be more appealing than Bells touchscreen pony the Samsung Instinct.

It feels like there’s a whole cottage industry now amongst the handset makers in giving the desperate CDMA carriers to market against the iPhone. RIM’s core market is North America (the last bastion of CDMA) and it’s not the first time they’ve done something special for that standard. For a while the only 3G blackberries were on Bell/Telus’s EVDO network.

As for iPhone-killing, comparable specs are one thing, but RIM’s storm has a long way to go to match the feverish zeitgeist of the iPhone, not to mention iTunes integration, the app developer base etc. Of course we wish the Waterlooers the best of luck.

Along that line, more news/rumor from RIM is that they will also be launching an app store. The bad news is, that rather than be centrally hosted, the app store is unique to each carrier. We don’t know the full details yet, but that doesn’t sound good for developers. Rather than Apple’s slow and inscrutable app approval process, you can now look forward to something of the same with every carrier. What joy. Now little Johnny, don’t go building any app that might disrupt a Carrier business model, whether that model be present, future or imaginary…

As Alec puts it:

The appeal of the AppStore is that it goes around the carrier. As a developer, the last thing I want is to go on bended knee to 180 carriers to ask them to carry my software. Been there, done that, got the rugburn.

We shall see how Telus handles it. In the meantime, good for Telus and RIM for bringing us more fun toys to play with and a little more competition. Feel free to send one or two by the WirelessNorth.ca headquarters for closer inspection…

The storm should be out in time for Christmas (that doesn’t sound soon), we have no idea on the pricing contracts. Sometimes Christmas is a time Telus likes to throw the other carriers a curve ball when it comes to special plans and pricing. Ask Santa for that.

UPDATE: Looks like Bell is getting the storm too, so no competitive scoop for Telus. Maybe Telus and the newly privatized Bell should just merge and get it over with?…

So what’s your take on the new blackberry flip phone? Last we saw the beastie, we worried it was downright fugly but the release version (on T-mobile, no doubt Rogers soon). Early reviews are fairly positive, it’s got two big screens and better keyboard/ball, wifi and a better browser etc. And it is supposed to be pretty cheap. Nonetheless there’s one glaring flaw: no 3G.

It’s 2008 RIM what’s the deal? We can theorize a few reasons, some better than the others. Form factor: they needed 2G to keep it thin and light. Battery life: RIM is famous for not including advanced features until they could do it without sacrificing day-long battery life. Cost: shaving 3G cuts the materials bill by a few dollars (think single digits, but it counts). Ignorance: EDGE and classic speed push email is pretty good to start with, as first-time smartphone users won’t know what they’re missing. Wifi is good enough: really? Market segmentation: if the low-end kickstart could do everything, why would anyone step up to the premium models? Timing: the 3G/EVDO version is coming next year.

Overall, it’s got enough under the hood that we think this launch will still do well for Canada’s home-team cellphone maker. But what’s your intuition? Are there really hoards of would-be smart phone users braying to lay their clammy hands on a flip phone factor? Is this the kickstart RIM needs to beat out the $199 iphone in the low end of the market? Or is this flipper-baby missing some too-important bits in your mind?

Less than encouraging signs these week from “Canada’s national cell phone” as RIM’s latest Bold launch is looking sadly timid. All signs point to RIM struggling with early manufacturing/delivery woes with the device, a not uncommon problem. Your guess is as good as ours as to which particular component or supplier might be at fault. Mark McQueen has the perspective from the heart of Toronto’s Bay street.

…One journalist observed that it wasn’t anywhere near as exciting as the iPhone launch. The truth is, BlackBerry customers aren’t lining up to buy them ’cause they aren’t in stock yet.

It looks like our August 12th scoop that the Bold will be “available in a couple” of weeks will pan out to be accurate in the end. Can you imagine Apple launching the iPod without product in stock? What a PR disaster that would’ve been…

The form factor feels very solid, much more so than the 8700. The screen is a bit shorter than one might expect, but the keyboard feels like bubblewrap when you tap a key. Not quite the squishy 8800 keys, but not really any better, either.

The fellow next to me and I agreed that it just didn’t feel right. Maybe it was this particular demo, and a real “suitable for ownership” model would feel more sure-footed. But I doubt it.

To get tens of thousands of white collar workers in Toronto, Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere to prematurely upgrade for several hundred dollars down, plus a 3 year plan extention, will likely take more than this hardware offering, I’m sad to say. It looks good, but doesn’t drive quite as well. At least based upon a quick “drive by”.

The sophisticated testing labs at WirelessNorth.ca stand ready for either RIM or Rogers to send us over a unit for our own thorough evaluation.

LINK: I [don’t] want my Bold on The Wellington Financial Blog

The sleek must-have wonderphone of just 18 months ago is now going cheap on ebay. Poor pearl we hardly knew ye. This year the little RIM that could has been overshadowed by the curve with it’s proper keyboard and of course by a certain apple device. As a result a fair number of used and second hand unlocked pearls you can find on ebay for only $100-$120. That’s a pretty great price for an unlocked smartphone with full bberry push email goodness. And it fits nice in your pocket.

Anyone out there still kicking around with say an old crufty old handset, it’s a cheap and cheerful way to get into the smart phone game.

Thanks to Michele for the tip.

further tips: second gen pearl’s (8120 vs 8100 is the gsm one) is a little better but also more scarce.

Jevon has been following this one for a week or two and has all the news over at StartupNorth.ca New $150 million Blackberry Fund, based in Canada.

These are exciting times for mobile developers in canda. Between this fund, other VC and Angels in the mobile space, and a number of Federal and Provincial funds/programs out there, there is a lot of backing available for mobile developers.

What do you want to build? or what’s the killer blackberry app you’ve been waiting for?

On the announcement of Wifi calling coming to Rogers, Martin asks “Great news! What about the Curve 8320?”. Don’t hold your breath.

As far as I know Rogers has expressed no signs of interest in the curve with wifi. As a RIM insider told WirelessNorth.ca, it’s been a hell of a job for them to convince any North American carrier to accept a handset with wifi. [notwithstanding that wifi-equiped nokias are plentiful in Europe and you can even buy skype plans for your n95 at hotspots all over london but we digress]. For Rogers, the pearl and home wifi calling would seem to be the comprimise.

The pearl is a consumer brand blackberry. This lets Rogers keep the wifi safely segmented to the consumer market and keep on gouging maximising return on corporate customers higher dependence and lower price sensitivity to blackberry voice and data rates.

What can you do about it? Put some Rogers stock in your RRSP. You’ll feel better about it.

ps. Don’t expect blackberry wifi from Bell or Telus either. For reasons unclear, the CDMA version of current blackberries come with GPS instead of wifi.

Take it for what it’s worth (and remember that RIM products go by more names than Apple’s iPhone) but it’s interesting to look at google trends in general as prediction markets of public interest.

Note too, the cultural and language differences. An established market, querty keyboards, and enterprise-friendly features make “blackberry” very much a North American and english-language darling.

But, for style or status concious euro-cats and developing world googlers, it’s iPhone mania all the way. According to one survey, awareness of the iPhone is as high as 68% in China.

It’s amazing to see the power of iPhone fever. And it’s a version 1.0 product. In order to protect the innocent it’s probably best I didn’t plot “windows mobile” on this chart. You could always try that for yourself.

Apple and RIM . Like Jr high sweethearts dancing a full arm’s lengths apart, but intent on trampling each other’s toes anyway, Apple announced today two kindof big things:

1. The iPhone is getting a mess of new enterprise features. Despite the hype though, remember that none of these software updates will help your iPhone magically sprout a Querty keyboard (One point still for the kids from Waterloo).
2. The apple software SDK

the crucial bit:

-The AppStore is going to be the exclusive way to distribute iPhone applications
-Your app will be updated over the air automatically
-If an app gets updated, the AppStore will “otomatically” tell you it has been updated
-Also built into iPhones, you can download it on your computer and transfer it too if you want, but we think most people will do it from the iPhone
-Just tap on it and it’s wirelessly downloaded to the iPhone using a cell network or WiFi
-Top 50, top downloads
-Categories for games, business, finance, health, lifestyle, music, etc.
-AppStore, put it on every single iPhone that everyone will have access to with the next release of the software
-Jobs: “Your dream is to get your app in front of every iPhone user. You can’t do that today, but we’re gonna solve that”
-Scott is back. “Once you have all of these amazing applications, how do you get them on your phone?” Back to Steve Jobs.

This is significant because:

• By pushing software SDK updates to phone (post sale), Apple is effectively reinventing it’s mobile platform (It’s truly a platform not just a device) with every new release
• The total package of the iPhone looks a lot different than it did just a year ago, but running on the exact same hardware.
• This is hugely disintermediating to the carriers as substantial and potentially valuable new services and content is being pushed directly to the consumer without their involvement, buy-in or pre-loaded bundling agreement.
• The carrier has been made a dumb pipe.
• Apple is charging 30%(!) of revenues to content providers
• 30% leaves a lot of incentive for mobile content/app/service vendors to seek out other ways monetize their content. But you might imagine that being on the apple deck of the apple mobile ap store could be a powerful distribution channel.
• Everything will also be available on the wifi iPod touch – which further bends the definition of mobile, and even more so cuts out the carriers.
• Note that iphone store will be “exclusive” distribution channel but that jailbroken phone users will still have other options (as many iphone users already install 3rd party apps today without apples permission)
• Spore runs on it. That’s neat.

The Apple iPhone is not yet officially available in Canada.

This announcement adds more weight to “post-June” as the likely date.

Most Canadians already know what an iPhone is. A surprising number use one already.