It’s been reported in the past that the much anticipated and rumored BlackBerry 8330 will be the convergent device for all of the features we long to have for our Curve devices – GPS and Wi-Fi under the hood. Well, unfortunately, it seems that new information has surfaced that leads us to believe that we will not receive GPS in the Curve series.
With our newly obtained information, it appears the BlackBerry 8330 will be another World Edition device that will eventually find it’s way to CDMA carriers, such as Verizon, Sprint and Telus. If and when it actually finds it’s way to market, this will likely be the third CDMA+GSM hybrid device from Research In Motion, joining the 8830 and 8130 (unreleased) with this world-traveler functionality.
While this news may upset some of you waiting for the 8330 to touch down on your favorite GSM carrier, this may come as a blessing in disguise for Verizon and Sprint/Nextel customers who have been foaming at the bit for a camera-enabled full-QWERTY high-speed BlackBerry device (admittedly, I ran out of hyphenated phrases).
This news also irons out a rather confusing naming scheme convention that was presented with the oddity of having the 8330 as the Platinum Edition GSM device within the Curve line. For the 8000 series line, the naming convention is as follows:
81xx: SureType consumer device; camera-enabled
83xx: QWERTY consumer device; camera-enabled
88xx: QWERTY business device; no camera, GPS-enabled
xx00: GSM device
xx10: GSM device; step-sibling upgrade of xx00 (Pearl and Curve only)
xx20: GSM+Wi-Fi device
xx30: CDMA/EVDO+GSM device
Mix and match as needed, although this doesn’t take into account carriers who disable features, such as Verizon and their hard-nosed approach to free GPS functionality.
To recap, if you’re a current GSM customer (AT&T, T-Mobile, Rogers, Vodafone, etc) who wants a Curve and GPS, you won’t see this feature functionality – get the Curve/8300 (with the exception of T-Mobile customers). If you’re a T-Mobile customer and want a Curve, wait a few months and get the UMA/GAN-enabled 8320 when it’s available. If you’re a CDMA customer (Verizon, Sprint/Nextel, Telus, Alltel, etc), you will now have a decision to make – get an 8830, which is available already, or wait for the 8130 Pearl (SureType-QWERTY) and 8330 Curve (full-QWERTY).
Until next time…
