BlackBerry Bold

 The BlackBerry Bold is a line of smartphones developed by Research in Motion. The family was launched in 2008 with the 9000 Model. In 2009 the form factor was shrunk with the 9700 and the Tour 9630. In 2010 RIM released the 9650 and 9780 refresh with OS 6.

 In 2011 came the 9788 and 9790 along with the current flagship - the 9900/9930 series. The 9900/9930 and 9790 are touchscreen smartphones, released in August and November 2011.

The Bold family is known for its distinctive form factor; efficient, finger-friendly QWERTY keyboard, typical BlackBerry messaging capabilities with a distinctive, more premium keyboard than the Curve series. The Bold series is usually more expensive and has more premium materials (e.g. leather, soft touch, carbon fiber, metal) unlike the curve (plastic, glossy), and has much better specs.

There are two basic form factors with the Bold line, the original larger size on the 9000 and 9900 Series and the "baby bold" form factor the other models have.

BlackBerry Maker RIM Hit With $147.2M Patent Judgment

A federal jury in San Francisco has found beleaguered Blackberry maker Research in Motion Ltd. liable for $147.2 million in damages for infringing on patents held by Mformation Technologies Inc.


Amar Thakur, a lawyer for Mformation, said Saturday that the verdict late Friday followed a three-week trial and a week of deliberations by an eight-person jury.


Mformation, of Edison, N.J., sued Research in Motion in October 2008, alleging that Canada-based RIM infringed on its 1999 invention for remotely managing wireless devices. Mformation's software allows companies to remotely access employee cell phones to do software upgrades, change passwords or to wipe data from phones that have been stolen.


Officials at RIM, which has been struggling with plummeting sales, a declining stock and other problems, did not provide a comment Saturday.


Thakur said the jury ruled that Research in Motion should pay his client $8 for each of the 18.4 million Blackberrys that were connected to the Blackberry Enterprise Server, from the day the lawsuit was filed until the time of the trial. That's a total of $147.2 million.


He said the software at issue is the heart of the business of Mformation, a privately held company with several hundred employees.


"We believe it's been fundamental to the success of Research in Motion," Thakur told The Associated Press.


The patent at issue was filed in 2001 and issued in 2005, he said.


RIM, of Waterloo, Ontario, has previously denied it did anything wrong.


RIM has seen its business crumble as it increasingly loses market share. Today's consumers want smartphones that go far beyond handling e-mail and phone calls, with built-in cameras and other cool functions.


Particularly telling is the plunge in the Blackberry's U.S. market share. It's dropped from 41 percent in 2007, the year the first iPhone came out, to below 4 percent in the first three months of this year, according to research firm IDC.


Meanwhile, RIM will miss a chance to bounce back because of repeated delays on its BlackBerry 10 operating software, which is intended to help Blackberrys catch up to rivals such as the iPhone and smartphones running Google's Android software. Not only will devices with the new Blackberry software miss the crucial holiday shopping season, they'll have even more competition when they do go on sale, including a new iPhone expected from Apple this fall.


Last month, RIM reported weaker than expected results. For the quarter that ended on June 2, it lost $518 million, or 99 cents a share. Even after excluding impairment charges, the loss was 37 cents per share. Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting a 3-cent per share loss. Revenue fell 43 percent to $2.8 billion, and RIM said it will be cutting 5,000 jobs, or 30 percent of its workforce.


The company's stock, which traded for more than $30 less than a year ago, has recently dropped below $8, near a nine-year low. On Friday, the stock dropped another 2.4 percent to close at $7.24

BBC Launches Olympics App for BlackBerry, iOS, Android

As the London Olympics draw near, the battle for audience attention is shaping up to be waged not on television but on the tiny screens of smartphones and tablets. Yesterday NBC announced its partnership with Adobe to roll out Olympics streaming apps for the Android and iOS platforms in the U.S. Today, the BBC has announced its own Olympics app for the two mobile platforms as well as BlackBerry devices.

The main function of the app will allow users to receive up to 24 live streams of Olympics coverage over Wi-Fi and 3G signals. Also included will be editorial text from BBC news commentators, dedicated pages for every athlete, country, and sport, schedule information, and a medals chart to allow users to keep track of the winners.

"We needed to ensure everyone could access our coverage," BBC News general manager Phil Fearnley said in a statement. "The BBC Sport Olympics app ensures that everything you need to keep up-to-date with the action is right there at your fingertips. Even when you're out of range of 3G or wireless, we'll still be able to deliver the latest news to you offline."

The "out of range" component Fearnley mentions refers to the app's automatic downloading of content for consumption when a user's device isn't connected to the Internet, a feature that can be disabled in order to save battery life or cut down on data charges. The iOS version of the app allows a user to customize the app to focus on one particular Olympic sport. Finally, there's also a social media component of the app that lets a user email or share stories directly from the app.

So far the app, which is a free download, has received high marks in Google Play, with some users saying the app is better than even the official London Olympics app.