Research in Motion and Verizon Wireless officially announced the BlackBerry Curve 8530. The device will be available November 20th and will cost $99.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a 2-year activation. My guess is that the new BlackBerry Curve will pick up right where the old BlackBerry Curve left off and become a big seller for Verizon.
The big new feature in the BlackBerry Curve 8520 is most definitely the Wi-Fi and this device will be the first full QWERTY BlackBerry with Wi-Fi on Verizon’s network. For some strange reason RIM decided not to include a LED flash to go along with the digital camera, although it is only 2.0 mega pixels and probably really doesn’t matter that much.
The BlackBerry Curve 8530 is definitely geared towards consumers and will probably do very well with them because of the price and the success of it’s predecessor, the BlackBerry Curve 83xx, which happens to be the best selling BlackBerry device ever.
Check out a detailed list of BlackBerry Curve 8530 features after the jump:
- Easy-to-use, highly tactile, full QWERTY keyboard and touch-sensitive trackpad for reliable, responsive typing and navigation
- 256 MB flash memory and 528 MHz next generation processor for enhanced performance
- Supports voice-activated dialing and Bluetooth® (version 2.1), with support for hands-free headsets, car kits, stereo headsets and other Bluetooth peripherals
- 3G-enabled (EV-DO)
- Built-in Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g)
- GPS with support for location-based applications, including geotagging pictures and Verizon Wireless’ VZ NavigatorSM service
- 2.0 megapixel digital camera with zoom and video recording*
- Advanced media player for music, pictures and videos, with dedicated media keys and a 3.5 mm stereo headset jack, plus BlackBerry® Media Sync, which makes it easy to quickly sync music from your computer to the smartphone**
- Access to BlackBerry App World™, featuring a broad and growing catalog of third-party mobile applications developed specifically for BlackBerry® smartphones. Categories include games, entertainment, social networking and sharing, news and weather, productivity and much more
- Access to e-mail, messaging (IM, SMS, MMS) and popular social networking sites (including Facebook and MySpace)
- Rich multimedia capabilities, including dedicated media keys smoothly integrated along the top of the handset, giving customers an easy, convenient way to control their music and videos
- Support for BlackBerry services with access to up to 10 supported e-mail accounts, including most popular ISP e-mail accounts such as Yahoo! ®, Windows Live™ Hotmail®, AOL® and Gmail, and BlackBerry® Enterprise Server support, which provides advanced security and IT administration features for corporate deployments
- Expandable memory via hot swappable microSD™/SDHC memory card slot, supporting up to 16 GB cards today and expected to support next generation 32 GB cards when available
[Source]
Not very pro-consumer big red……
Verizon To Nearly Double Termination Fee
http://www.lockergnome.com/oztech/2009/11/04/verizon-to-nearly-double-termination-fee/
I’ve never quite understood why people who sign a contract which states that they are willing to pay a minimum monthly charge for a number of years in order to get a piece of hardware at a subsidized price have a problem with the company if they actually make them pay a penalty if the contract is broken.
If you don’t want to pay an EFT, don’t sign a contract stating that you will if you break your contract. Simply pay full price for the device up front.
I love my Blackberry Curve 8830 but I see no need to replace it until RIM replaces the web browser with something more capable. GPS is only useful if Verizon doesn’t cripple it for use with Google Maps and other apps.