Research in Motion has been telling CES 2012 attendees all about this update and also publicized a press release which lists every little detail, you can find full details out via this link, in this article we will highlight some of the most exciting features and improvements the PlayBook will soon offer.

Once installed you will have access to a new unified inbox which brings personal email, work email, and messages from social messaging sites to one central hub, also the email client will feature tabbed functionality which will enhance multitasking capabilities. When composing emails you will also have access to more fonts, formatting tools and much more, another great improvement allows you to search the inboxes of multiple email accounts easily, the final change to the email client will allow you to set email signatures and ut-of-office messages and directly from the PlayBook.

RIM has also been very busy in regards to social networking functionality, OS 2.0 will feature a built-in calendar app which collates information from social networking sites, also social networking accounts will tie into your contact lists, which means that when you check a contact you will see the usual email addresses, telephone numbers, home addresses etc along with recent status updates, conversations and social accounts.

Typing on the PlayBook’s virtual keyboard is great, but it’s no replacement for a physical QWERTY keyboard, the good news is that OS 2.0 will allow you to use your BlackBerry smartphone as a wireless remote for your PlayBook, this allows you to plug your tablet into a HDTV and use your smartphone to control it whilst sitting on your comfy sofa – as you probably guessed you will also be able to use your BlackBerry’s physical QWERTY keyboard to compose messages and documents on your PlayBook – neat eh? On the whole we can expect much more from the BlackBerry Bridge feature to make it a more seamless experience.

Other things which OS 2.0 will bring include updates to Documents To Go to enhance functionality, better enterprise manageability and an overhaul to the Print To Go application. One thing which we are delighted to hear is that when you access BlackBerry App World on your PlayBook running OS 2.0 there will be lots of new applications primarily developed for the PlayBook, also there will be the ability to rent movies and TV shows in certain regions.

One area where we think RIM’s products can be a little clunky when compared to the competition is web browsing, well the good news is that we have been promised an enhanced browsing experience which includes a new “reading view” feature to eliminate clutter from the page.

As you can see BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 is quite exciting, we don’t know exactly what date it will arrive on, but it is scheduled for February 2012 – when we hear more we will keep you posted, for now you should check out PCWorld’s hands on with OS 2.0.

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The Bold 9900 and Bold 9930 have been available from multiple carriers for a while now, so we are quite surprised to see AT&T still promoting its release, in our opinion there is a lot more interest surrounding the iPhone 4S and Galaxy Nexus – that said for enterprise users BlackBerry OS is far more suited to their needs than iOS and Android.

If you head over to CrackBerry you will see that a November 6th release is expected, AT&T’s entire tweet can be seen below, as you can see no solid indication as to when it will arrive was given.

The BlackBerry® Bold (TM) 9900 is coming soon! Stay tuned.

One thing which some of CrackBerry’s readers have pointed out is the fact that RIM has previously suggested that QNX will replace BlackBerry 7, in fact we have recently started hearing details about BBX, surely this is reason enough to skip any BlackBerry 7 smartphone and wait until the next-generation of BlackBerry smartphones? Let’s face it, RIM will probably unveil its new platform at CES 2011 which is roughly 3 months away.

We have also heard that the first batch of QNX-based BlackBerry smartphones will be touch-only, so if you are considering buying the Bold 990 for its physical QWERTY keyboard it may be a wise decision, you never know it could be a year before a QWERTY smartphone arrives with QNX.

Are you waiting for the AT&T BlackBerry Bold 9900 release?

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When I got the Bold 9700 it ran OS 5.0 and this was pretty intuitive when compared to the Symbian OS-based Nokia smartphones which I had in the past, however the update to OS 6.0 really unlocked its true potential (and showed its limitations). Now that I have turned the Bold 9700 off for the last-ever time I thought I would share my top 5 apps available from BlackBerry App World.

QuickPull 5

Sometimes simple apps are the best, and that’s why I regard QuickPull 5 as one of my top 5 favorite apps for BlackBerry. This app is completely free and it allows you to reboot your BlackBerry very easily, what’s best is that you can easily schedule reboots, which is great as a restart frees up memory and clears your device’s caches – which in-turn increases performance. I schedule a restart every morning before my working day and the amount of memory it frees is noticeable.

Daily Crossword

Finding a good game for BlackBerry smartphones isn’t always easy, however one game which I have had installed since the beginning is Daily Crossword. The app is pretty self-explanatory, but what I like about it the most is the fact that each crossword is challenging and the app itself works very well with the optical trackpad sensor and QWERTY keyboard – each day a new crossword arrives, which means I tend to do a crossword each night before bed.

Opera

BlackBerry OS 5.0 and OS 6.0 both feature a pretty impressive default browser, but if you use the web more than the average user you will find it quite basic in terms of intuitively – that’s why I recommend Opera to BlackBerry users, not only does it feature web compression technology to increase page load speeds etc, but it has a great layout and the speed dial home page allows for very quick and easy navigation to your most frequently visited web sites.

crunchSMS

I ignored the great reviews which crunchSMS received for a long time, but then I thought I would try it out and I never looked back. It gives your SMS conversations a new-look thanks to speech bubbles, but best of all when you receive a message it shows up on your home screen – which saves a lot of time and effort and allows you to quickly reply. The right-hand side of the image below shows this in more detail.

ESPN Goals

A few months ago an app showed up at BlackBerry App World which sounded too good to be true for football fans (soccer) – this is ESPN Goals and it allows you to watch highlights from English Premier League matches quickly after they happen. It works over 3G pretty quickly, but that’s because the video quality isn’t amazing, but still it is great if you want to catch up with all of the latest action from the EPL.

Other Great Apps

The above apps are my favorites, but there are some other which shouldn’t be overlooked. The early Facebook and Twitter apps were way behind similar apps for other platform, but the last few releases have brought them up to standard, that said the Bold 9700′s display size and resolution does restrict things quite massively. If you like the ESPN Goals app you should also check out the Sky Sport Football Score Centre, some other apps which I have found handy include Google Maps, Uptime, Tube Map, One Touch Flashlight, ScreenShot, Bubble Burst Free and Hotel Tycoon – all of which can be found at the BlackBerry App World.

What other apps would you like to see added to this article?

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As you are probably aware RIM’s latest barrages of smartphone all feature NFC technology, however up until now the close proximity communications technology has not been utilized, things are progressing though as we can confirm that BlackBerry Tag is the name of of RIM’s NFC implementation. Developers will be happy to hear that a BlackBerry Tag API will be released, which means apps will be able to boast NFC features.

Currently it is thought that Tag will be used to share contact info, documents, photos, videos, music and URLs by just tapping two BlackBerry smartphones together, we can’t wait to see what innovative ways developers use NFC – if you have any ideas let us know in the comments section at the bottom of this post. Here is what a Research in Motion representive had to say about BlackBerry Tag (sourced from SlashGear):

“BlackBerry Tag is an exciting and innovative feature that makes sharing contact information and multimedia content effortless and seamless,” and added “BlackBerry Tag opens a new dimension to the BlackBerry platform that is powerful, simple and intuitive and we think it will be welcomed by both users and developers.”

So far RIM devices which boast a built-in NFC chip are the BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930, Blackberry Curve 9350/9360/9370 and BlackBerry Torch 9810/9860, it is thought that all new devices (which run BlackBerry 7) will all boast this tech, so we think it will really start to take off very soon. Update: The Torch 9810 and 9850 do not support NFC Technology.

When the API will be released to developers is currently unknown, but at least we know that it is on the way, if it becomes popular it will be interesting to see if the next iPhone boasts NFC.

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Nothing has been officially confirmed by Research in Motion or Verizon, however a leaked photo (sourced from vzbuzz) is doing its rounds on the web which appears to show Verizon’s inventory system showing BlackBerry Torch 9850 launch information, it clearly says “The Blackberry Torch 9850 will launch to direct fulfillment only on September 8, 2011. All channel launch will be on September 15, 2011″.

At first glance this looks great, but it could in fact turn out to be fake, in fact if you look closely it clearly states that the Launch Date is 9/8/2010 – this suggests that there has either been a typo or the image has been photoshopped. What do you think?

You can see full tech specs for this BlackBerry here, we are excited to see that RIM has seen the light and added a decent touch-smartphone to its list of offerings – we just wonder how the user experience will compare to the touch-centric Android, WP7 and iOS devices. Even before it hits Verizon the specs will not blow you away when compared to the competition, for a BlackBerry the single-core 1.2 GHz processor, 768 MB RAM and 4GB of internal storage sound great – but many smartphones readily available offer dual-core 1GHz+ processors, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage – could this be the 9850′s downfall? Or will Verizon take this into the account with the price? We can’t wait to find out.

If Verizon’s network does not interest you the Torch 9850 will be coming to Sprint, it has been confirmed that Sprint will sell you the 9850 for $149.99 when you agree a two-year agreement, this price does take into account a $50 mail-in rebate – we wonder how much Verizon will charge.

When we hear official pricing and release date information for the Verizon BlackBerry Torch 9850 we will keep you posted, how much are you willing to pay?

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The Curve 9350 is by no means one of RIM’s most impressive smartphone offerings, but it will give consumers a great social networking experience thanks to a great physical QWERTY keyboard and an intuitive user experience (thanks to BlackBerry 7) for a cheap price, not only this but it boasts NFC support.

According to the official press release Sprint will begin offering the Curve 9350 from September 9, customers will have to pay just $79.99 (excluding taxes) when agreeing a two-year deal, this price is available to both new customers and people who are eligible for an upgrade, it also takes in to account a $50 mail-in rebate. We are also told that some Sprint customers could pick up the 9350 for as little as $49.99, again this takes into account a mail-in rebate.

So what do you get for your money? Well as previously mentioned you get a more fluid and intuitive user experience thanks to BlackBerry 7, also we can confirm that you will have WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR support and NFC at your disposal. In terms of tech specs we can confirm that you get a 2GB microSD card as standard (support for 32GB), 512MB RAM, a 5 megapixel camera with HD video capture and an 800MHz processor – the display doesn’t boast touchscreen functionality but it does measure in at 2.44-inches and outputs at a resolution of 480 x 360. When compared to previous Curve smartphones it has much better internals, yet manages to come in thinner and lighter than its predecessors.

In terms of key features Sprint are keen to promote its DataViz Docs To Go Premium suite which allows your to edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, also BlackBerry Bridge is supported which means you can link it up to the PlayBook, finally as you would expect you have full access to BlackBerry App World and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

You can find out even more about the BlackBerry Curve 9350 over at BlackBerry.com, we think it will be a very popular mid-end device for those who love Facebook and Twitter etc, however the 800MHz processor may hold it back in terms of multimedia capabilities.

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Currently we do not how much this smartphone will cost or when it will arrive, however we can confirm that it is slimmer and sleeker than its predecessor and in terms of tech specs it features an 800MHz processor, a 5 megapixel camera, a great physical QWERTY keyboard, and a “high-density” 2.8-inch display. We can also confirm that it boasts NFC and runs RIM’s BlackBerry 7 operating system.

This is a great device for social networking and we think that it will be one of Three’s cheaper offerings, therefore we expect it to become pretty popular – especially for youngsters who like using BBM, Facebook and Twitter etc, the 5 megapixel camera is far superior to the 9300′s 2MP sensor and on the whole the handset should run a lot faster and smoother.

Despite the fact that the new Curve is more advanced than its predecessor it has shaved off 2.9mm in terms of thickness and 5 grams in weight, other measurements look pretty much identical, which means that the physical QWERTY keyboard should be well-spaced and easy to use.

Given the fact that the other smartphones mentioned in the first paragraph of this post feature touchscreen displays and 1.2GHz processors the 9360 will be seen as a mid-end device, you can find out even more details about it over at BlackBerry.com.

Below we have embedded Three UK’s promotional video where they talk about the Curve 9360 in some detail, will you buy the new Curve? We must admit we like the look of it, but have heard that a touch-only Curve is on its way!

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As previously stated the Bold 9900 will be available from T-Mobile USA on the last day of August, as you probably guessed it does not come cheaply in fact even after a $50 mail-in rebate it will cost you $299.99 as part of a two-year deal. T-Mobile does not mention NFC anywhere in the press release, which suggests that a software block is currently hampering this neat new feature (you can read more about this here), perhaps a future software update will change this..

After checking out T-Mobile USA’s current list of smartphone offerings we have to say that the $299.99 price tag seems very high, perhaps this price will receive an online discount as we would prefer to save $100 and buy the HTC Sensation 4G or the myTouch 4G Slide instead – that said we love the Bold 9900, but its price could be its downfall.

We must admit we are quite surprised by the difference in price between the Bold 9900 and the Torch 9810, soon you will be able to buy the Torch 9810 from AT&T for just $50 as part of a two-year deal – in terms of tech specs the Torch 9810 has a larger touchscreen display than the Bold 9900 and it outputs at a higher resolution, you get the same 1.2GHz processor and 5 megapixel camera as the Bold 9990, which makes us wonder why the Bold 9900 is so much more expensive.

You can find out more about the upcoming release over at IntoMobile, we think that Marinperez’s comment sums things up “Beautiful device but too expensive” – do you agree?

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Both the BlackBerry Torch 9850 and the BlackBerry Bold 9930 are headed to Sprint, the 9850 will cost $149.99 with a two-year agreement and takes into account a $50 mail-in rebate, as for the 9930 this will cost you $249.99 and there is no mention of a mail-in rebate – if you are an existing Sprint customer who is due an upgrade you should be eligible for the same deals.

In terms of agreements you will require a $10 Premium Data add-on charge and one of Sprint’s Everything Data plans, these start at just $69.99 per month, according to CrackBerry when you compare Sprint’s plans to Verizon’s unlimited talk, text and 2GB of web plan it is $39.99 per month cheaper (for Sprint customers), if you compare the pricing to Verizon’s 450-minute plan with unlimited text and 2GB web you save $9.99 per month, which shows just how competitive Sprint’s prices are.

Both of these new smartphones are well-worth checking out as they are massive jump for Research in Motion, the Torch 9850 is an all-touch smartphone with a 3.7-inch capacitive touchscreen display, we see this as a rival to iPhone-like smartphones and with a 5 megapixel camera, a 1.2GHz processor and Liquid Graphics the $149.99 price tag sounds appealing. The Bold 9930 is more like previous BlackBerry smartphones, imagine taking the BlackBerry Bold 9700, improving its physical keyboard, giving it a touch-screen display, NFC, a thinner design and much better processing power and the device you are left with is the Bold 9900!

As you would expect these BlackBerrys are packed full with features, you can add up to 10 business and personal email accounts and there is support for BlackBerry Enterprise Server, you can edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents using DataViz Docs To Go Premium also if you are a BlackBerry PlayBook owner you can link it to your shiny new BlackBerry using BlackBerry Bridge. There is a lot more to talk about so if you are interested check out this link for 9930 info and this link for 9850 info.

Will you buy either of these smartphones from Sprint? If so, which will you choose?

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You can find out all about the AT&T BlackBerry Torch 9810 here, if you wish you can submit your email address via the link to sign up for email updates, however we think we already have all the details which will be of interest. Let’s start with the release date, according to CrackBerry it will hit AT&T on August 21 – we assume that this means it will be available in-store and online from this date, however this has not been clarified.

Now let’s talk about what has gotten us really excited, its price, as with most AT&T smartphones you will have to agree a two-year contract, once you do this you pay just $49.99 – we think anyone who has been interested in the Torch 9810 will find it hard to ignore just how fair this price is, especially as it is AT&T’s first 4G BlackBerry smartphone (we will let you decide whether HSPA+ really is 4G).

Currently AT&T are selling the original BlackBerry Torch 9800 for $49.99, we think that AT&T will either discontinue or reduce the price of this 3G smartphone as it is far inferior to the new BlackBerry 7-powered 9810. Even if AT&T give you the 9800 for free as part of a two-year deal we think that you would be much better of forking out the $49.99 for the 9810, we are sure that you won’t be disappointed.

It will be interesting to see how the BlackBerry Torch 9810 sells when compared to more expensive high-end Android devices out there – I know what I would buy, how about you?

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