BlackBerry OS7 announced for new Bold Touch 9900 moby

Interesting.
BB OS7 is what was originally going to be called OS6.1.
Rim apparently decided there were enough changes to call it OS7 (a recent marketing decision).
 
OS7 is superb and looks great, but it really isn't a completely new OS. It's exactly what Chris says, it's OS6.1, but because it has specific hardware requirements it made sense to effectively start over. It also means OS6 can still be developed and grow in parallel for devices that use it, or will soon be using it.

But it is very good, very slick, the new screens on the 9900/9930 have a great resolution and therefore DPI for such a small screen, making everything look slick, polished and very attractive, but without losing the Blackberry familiarity that existing customers - enterprise customers mainly - insist on.
 
any guessing on sim free price points for the 9900? looks like a must buy :)
 
Probably just under £500, there or thereabouts.
 
The big thing with OS7 is the ability to run both enterprise and consumer accounts in isolation so you can switch between the two. I'm wondering about how useful this would be though in the real world though as lost of corporates (mine included) bolt down the BlackBerry devices they hand out so personal email is not possible. This is not just on handhelds but also on desktop browsers, all access to Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail etc, is prohibited.

And the other side of the coin is that no consumer is going to want an expensive enterprise account so the isolation feature is of little use to them too.

I think RIM have quite a task on their hands; how do you make an OS more consumer friendly without losing your core business customers by making wholesale changes to the UI?
 
That's the whole point though... this will allow an company to allow personal mail accounts, personal applications and personal use, while still safeguarding against data leakage.

You effectively firewall the personal side of the device. You can't copy and paste from an enterprise App or mail account into a personal one, you can't download an attachment from an enterprise email and then attach it to your personal email, you can't do anything that allows access in any form to enterprise data from the personal side of the device. The same applies in reverse.

It's all controllable from BES, so you might want to be a bit more granular and allow some, all or none of this. But the entire point is giving companies the ability to allow employees personal use of their Blackberry without risk.

The thinking behind it is if you allow personal use, you're more likely to find your staff looking at work content at times they wouldn't ordinarily do so. If they pick it up late on a weekend evening to check their Hotmail and see a work email has landed, they may be inclined to do some work. That's increased productivity for free :)

I'm told this functionality will come to OS6 as well, but time will tell if that is true.
 
The 9900 looks interesting and may be the handset we've been waiting for to replace our 9000 bold.

Rizza
 
It's a lot closer to the 9000's keyboard than the Bold 9700 and 9780 are, that's for sure. I know a lot of people dearly missed the 9000 keyboard after moving away from it.
 
New Bold and surprisingly, the Torch 9860 slate look tasty :)

Can't say I'm excited about the Torch 2, it looks like a very slightly updated version of the original which had far too tiny keys to be usable as a BB and was stupidly heavy for a slider.

If the 9860 can nail the user experience with a decent virtual keyboard (the Torch one was awful), I'd even be tempted to get a touchscreen only BB :rolleyes:

As an aside, the one thing that I love about all BB's is the optical pad. More phones should have these for those of us who like to occasionally use touchsreen but prefer a virtual mouse.
 
i had a play with the 9900 & 9860 yesterday.
I think you'll be quite pleasantly surprised with the Virtual keyboard on the 9860.....very responsive and quick like the iphone 4 qwerty keyboard....My only complaint is that it seem slightly out of proportion. The handset seems a little to long and narrow and that the main 4 keys on the handset don't really feel solid.


New Bold and surprisingly, the Torch 9860 slate look tasty :)

Can't say I'm excited about the Torch 2, it looks like a very slightly updated version of the original which had far too tiny keys to be usable as a BB and was stupidly heavy for a slider.

If the 9860 can nail the user experience with a decent virtual keyboard (the Torch one was awful), I'd even be tempted to get a touchscreen only BB :rolleyes:

As an aside, the one thing that I love about all BB's is the optical pad. More phones should have these for those of us who like to occasionally use touchsreen but prefer a virtual mouse.
 
Torch 9810 is the best of the three imo. If I want a slate phone I'll go for android. Blackberry's are all about the keyboard and the 9810 is a nice design and looks very smart and has the all important spec increase. Not many other phones offer this sort of slider design in a top end smartphone except for the Pre. Blackberry handsets are pricey though, the original torch is still over £400.
 
They are no more pricey than their competitors though, to be fair. No high-end smartphones are cheap SIM-Free.
 
Just a quick look on Play, and I can buy a Nexus S for £300 or a Torch 9800 for £422. I think they both came out about the same time.
 
Android phones shed value quicker than any other because of the number of manufacturers releasing updated handsets. Even new S2's have sold on the classified ads here for £300-£320!

Rizza
 
Just a quick look on Play, and I can buy a Nexus S for £300 or a Torch 9800 for £422. I think they both came out about the same time.

The Torch 9800 isn't usually that expensive, even Amazon have it for £372. And as Rizza absolutely correctly says, Android handsets don't hold value at all. They are obsolete the moment they are released, as its replacement will already be near release, compared to the BlackBerry range which stay around for a lot longer as the top model.

The Nexus S is around 18 months old and has been superseded a dozen times. The Torch 9800 will be over two years old when replaced.

It's a big plus point for BlackBerry, IMO. They don't refresh their hardware every other week like HTC, Samsung etc so you know you have a current, supported and still developed for handset that accessory makers and software developers alike still feel obliged to cater for.

So for price comparisons, compare the price of the new Torch when it comes out to other new models released at the time. The next iPhone, Palm Pre 3, that sort of thing.
 
OK so brand new on day one there probably isn't much difference, but they're still expensive when you compare specs, and as you both agreed they are more expensive in the long term. The 9800 is not worth £372 right now.

The Nexus S is around 18 months old and has been superseded a dozen times. The Torch 9800 will be over two years old when replaced.

you sure about that?
 
In reality it's not been superseded as the top end pure android phone, that's going to be the Nexus Prime, but 4/5 dual core super phones have superseded it hardware wise...... Nonetheless I think we get the drift.

Rizza
 
still happy with my torch 9800 - not sure about upgrading to a touch-screen only BB handset - the qwerty pad is what attracted me to start with. are there any reasons to upgrade to a new torch handset (other than OS7)?
 
I got the 9900 on Thursday, it's impressive and ticks all the boxes expected of a blackberry, the web browser is significantly improved as well, no complaints so far.

Rizza
 
still happy with my torch 9800 - not sure about upgrading to a touch-screen only BB handset - the qwerty pad is what attracted me to start with. are there any reasons to upgrade to a new torch handset (other than OS7)?

There are reasons for sure - improved hardware and OS7 being the two key ones - but I would find it hard to justify any expense in doing so as it's not a huge jump in user experience.

The Bold 9780 to Bold 9900 is a more worthwhile upgrade since the form factor has been altered, but Torch-to-Torch isn't so worthwhile, IMO.

I got the 9900 on Thursday, it's impressive and ticks all the boxes expected of a blackberry, the web browser is significantly improved as well, no complaints so far.

Rizza

Always good to hear :)
 

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