From May 5 to 7 in Orlando Florida, RIM will will be hosting Wireless Enterprise Symposium or WES. While BGR will be there on the floor for the entire convention bringing you the latest BlackBerry news as it happens, we thought we’d give you all a little bit of a taste of what we know/believe is to come.
First off, expect to see the 8900 Curve make an appearance courtesy AT&T. As many people on AT&T who are running unlocked 8900s by now already know, the official AT&T service books have been pushed out which means that AT&T is doing the final prep work for launch. More notable and more exciting will be the official acknowledgment of the BlackBerry 9630 codenamed Niagara.
As you know from our feature review of the device, the BlackBerry 9630 blends the size and styling of the 8900 Curve and Storm with the heavenly keypad from the Bold all the while features a gorgeous 480×360 display, 3.2 megapixel camera, GPS, OS 4.7.1 and last but not least the lovable combination of dual-band 1xRTT/EV-DO from the CDMA side, quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and the single and lonely 2100MHz band of UMTS/HSDPA from the GSM side. Happy, you boys and girls of red?
As far as a release date goes, we’ve heard Canadian CDMA carrier/s will get it as early as late May, early June and Verizon would be launching around the June/July timeframe. We were told a while back RIM was utterly disappointed with the Bold fiasco (announcing in May and shipping in 2012 on AT&T) but we’re guessing they haven’t learned their lesson yet.
BES 5.0 also looks to be a lock as the “gold code” is now being tested which means that RIM has gotten to the point where its just about ready for release to those whose lives revolve around port 3101. And keeping with the number 5.0, there is some talk that RIM is finally going to be up front about the existence of OS 5.0 despite the fact that we’ve been tinkering with it for longer than the Bold has been around with AT&T.
Now this next two are a bit sketchy, but a long time ago we told you that RIM wasn’t going to be embarrassed again by releasing a device like the Bold running on the outgoing 3G technology at a time when everyone in the World is holding their breath in anticipation of LTE. So with that in mind, we’ve been told that there is a possibility that RIM might take the wraps off of their work with an LTE device, or better yet show one off on stage or behind glass enclosures. We can’t say for sure this is going to happen, but we are comforted by the fact that RIM has indeed already begun trials of its LTE device. As for the second iffy rumor, it’s bound to happen at some point in time — though not necessarily at WES — so we’re just throwing it in here as a bonus. Apparently RIM is going to be releasing a device or two with processors that top off at 1GHz sometime within the next 9-12 months. Again, don’t hold us to this, but the whispers are getting louder and louder.
iWhat?
