I don’t think too many people that have been following the rumors surrounding the BlackBerry Pearl 2 questioned if the CDMA version would have GPS and the GSM version Wi-Fi. The Sprint BlackBerry Pearl (8130) speck sheet that we posted last week didn’t, however, list GPS in its feature set.
If you were beginning to wonder if GPS would be a reality in the BlackBerry 8130, don’t worry, BlackBerryInsight has confirmed it… Sort of…
Someone over there noticed that Skylab MobileSystems added the BlackBerry 8130 to the compatibility list for for their GPS / mapping application Spot. This, of course, doesn’t truly confirm anything, however, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that that vendors get advanced knowledge of of what new BlackBerry devices will be capable of before the general public.
pretty sure i used spot on my old pearl with a bluetotth gps puck…
gps might be there on the 8130 Pearl, (as rumored) with Sprint, but we all know what verizon thinks about giving it’s customers the freedoms to use autonomous functions built into devices. If consumers must have cdma for whatever reason, and must have the 8130 Pearl, consumers better chose Sprint if they want full function of the 8130 Pearl.
That is, IF verizon even grants the 8130 Pearl worthy of operating on it’s proprietary network.
I will agree that it’s rather shameless for Verizon to go out of their way to actually disable GPS on the BB 8830. Any excuses they give to the contrary are just bullhockey.
The irony is that many customers are willing to pay for even a Verizon GPS service on the device, but VZW hasn’t even taken advantage of that opportunity yet. I wonder why? I wonder if it would make it too easy to hack and enable GPS without having to go through VZW. I wouldn’t think VZW would pass up an opportunity to make more money unless there wasn’t some other reason.
Doesn’t that say GPS under “positioning” in the spec sheet?