After the first pricing for the BlackBerry Storm on Vodafone was released this morning, and later shown to be for the expensive Irish market, details on the UK costs of the RIM touchscreen device have now been announced. In keeping with the competitive UK market, the handset will be available on November 11th from free on select price plans, with 12, 18 and 24 month contracts are available. The cheapest monthly tariff is £15 ($24) on an 18-month contract with no included minutes but unlimited SMS; the Storm is priced at £300 ($486). The cheapest monthly contract with a free Storm is £35 (24-months, 600 inclusive minutes & unlimited SMS, mobile internet and email).
Full UK BlackBerry Storm Vodafone price plan details after the cut
That means the cheapest cost-of-ownership for a BlackBerry Storm in the UK is £570 on the 18-month, £15 plan, though that doesn’t get you unlimited internet and email access. The cheapest way to get inclusive unlimited SMS, internet and email is the 18-month, £40 plan which gets you a free Storm and 600 inclusive minutes. That works out to £720.
Verizon are yet to announce their pricing. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything from the US carrier. Full UK pricing plan details in the gallery below.
Relevant Entries on SlashGear
Written by Chris Davies on October 31st, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on BlackBerry and RIM and SMARTPHONE and Verizon and archive and carriers and vodafone.
The BlackBerry Storm has had its moment of glory in the shape of some pleasantly positive reviews, but while impressing in the hand and on the tech sheet is one thing, doing the same on your monthly statement is quite another. Vodafone have revealed their European pricing for the touchscreen RIM smartphone, and it’s certainly not cheap. The lowest of the four monthly plans, Perfect Choice Access 100 at €49.99 ($64), gets you the Storm for €109.99 ($141) but a mere 100 minutes and 100 text messages included, together with just 1GB of BlackBerry email.
Ramp up through Perfect Choice Access 200, 400 and 600 and the messages and included minutes increase accordingly; the price also climbs dramatically, at €64.99 ($83), €84.99 ($109) and €99.99 ($128) respectively. At least that gets you a cheaper handset, with the Storm itself priced at €64.99, €69.99 (which I think is an error and should be more like €59.99) and €49.99; no free option, which will surprise and frustrate many European users. All subscribers also get mobile TV access and ten music track downloads. Extra data over and above the included 1GB is priced at €2 per megabyte.
That means the cheapest way to get a BlackBerry Storm on Vodafone in Europe will cost €1,309.75 ($1,678)over what’s presumably a 24-month contract. Ouch, or, as Engadget say, “yes, seriously”. Verizon are yet to announce their pricing plans.
Incidentally, The BGR has done some digging with their sources at Verizon and confirmed that yes, it’s that carrier’s fault that the BlackBerry Storm has neither tri-band HSDPA nor WiFi. Begin penning angry letters now.
Relevant Entries on SlashGear
Written by Chris Davies on October 31st, 2008 with no comments.
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Aigo, makers of the USB drive paperclip, has released a PMP called Aigo Vodafone McLaren Mercedes MP5 player or if you don’t have all day to say that, the MP5-MK3510.
The device sports a 4.3 inch display with 480 × 272 px, FM tuner, image viewer, integrated ebook reader and supports RM, RMVB, AVI, FLV, DAT, MPG, MPEG and MP3, WMA, FLAC, APE with BBE and SRS file formats. As far as battery life, it will give you 4 hours of continuous video playback or 10 hours for audio.
This one’s obviously geared toward race fans who like brand names. No word on price yet.
[zol]
Written by Conner Flynn on October 26th, 2008 with no comments.
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Vodafone UK will begin selling their mobile broadband services with a bundled Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook starting tomorrow. You’ll have two packages that you can choose from – a 1GB mobile broadband service with a two year contract for £25 a month or a 2GB service also with a 2 yr service agreement for £30 a month. Both packages come with a free Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook with a built-in modem.
[Check it out via NetbookTech]
Technorati Tags: Vodafone UK, Dell Inspiron Mini 9
Written by flung on October 13th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Dell and Dell Inspiron Mini 9 and Netbooks and Wireless Networks and vodafone and vodafone uk.
Laptops big and small have monopolized the headlines this week, with the most anticipation being Apple’s upcoming MacBook event on Tuesday October 14th. SlashGear will be live-blogging the whole thing, so join us at http://Live.SlashGear.com at 10am PST. Meanwhile the ‘Brick’ rumors of what Steve Jobs might be announcing keep on coming: we’ve seen water-jet cutting systems, $800 price-points and several purported photo leaks. Of course, Apple are saying nothing until Tuesday; they’re too busy blaming NVIDIA for a spate of MacBook graphics failures.
Netbooks, meanwhile, had their share of attention, with Dell’s E Slim 12.1-incher breaking cover, Raon Digital adding SSDs to its Everun Note, Acer promising integrated WiMAX in the Aspire One sometime next year and ASUS suggesting a touchscreen Eee PC will rock their stand at CES 2009. Right now, it’s the ASUS S101 that’s getting all the attention, but that could change once MSI’s business-focused U120 with 3.5G and sober styling hits the shelves.
In mobile devices, the BlackBerry Storm was finally announced for Verizon Wireless and Vodafone; check out our review roundup for all the details, then drool over the idea of the “Super BlackBerry” RIM are already working on. We also had the first user-review of the T-Mobile G1, the debut of Google’s Android platform, at our sibling blog AndroidCommunity. It was almost enough to cheer us up from the news that HTC won’t be bringing the stunning Touch HD to the US, citing engineering delays with the relevant 3G bands.
3G isn’t an issue for Sprint, though, as the carrier officially launched its 4G XOHM WiMAX network in Baltimore this week. As well as all the details on pricing and network cards, SlashGear also brought you the latest WiMAX-integrated laptops from Lenovo, Acer, ASUS and Toshiba.
Finally, in reviews this week, SlashGear looked at PhoneTag’s voice recognition voicemail service, Ergotron’s Neo-Flex dual-lift LCD stand, and Sleek Audio’s SA6 in-ear monitor earphones.
Make sure to join us on Tuesday morning for the Apple MacBook event Live Blog: remember, that address is http://Live.SlashGear.com/
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Written by Chris Davies on October 12th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Acer and Android and Apple and BlackBerry and Feature and Google and HTC and Lenovo and SSD and Sleek Audio and T-Mobile and Toshiba and Verizon and Week in Review and WiMAX and archive and asus and carriers and msi and netbook and raon digital and vodafone and xohm.
Research in Motion took off the wraps from its first ever touch screen enabled Blackberry device. Blackberry Storm will be available by December from Verizon Wireless in US and Vodafone doing the honors for Europe, India, Australia and New Zealand.
The American Storm will have EV-DO Rev. A to suffice the internet needs while Vodafone users can benefit from 3G and EDGE in the supported countries. RIM touts Storm as world’s first “clickable” touch-screen that responds much like a physical keyboard with support for multi-touch gestures. The built-in accelerometer allows its touch screen interface to automatically switch between landscape mode and portrait mode as the user rotates the handset to reveal a Suretype keyboard in portrait or a full-fledged QWERTY in landscape.
Full Specifications:
Network Quad-Band: 850/900/1800/1900MHz GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks Single-Band: 2100 MHz UMTS/HSPA networks; Dual-Band: 800/1900 MHz CDMA/EVDO Rev A networks
Size (L x W x D) 4.4” x 2.4” x 0.55”
Weight (battery included) 155g or 5.46oz
Display High-resolution 480 X 360 pixel color display, Transmissive TFT LCD, supports over 65,000 colors
Camera 3.2 MP camera, flash, auto focus
Memory 128 MB RAM memory, 1 GB eMMC
Expandable Memory MicroSD located under battery door cover
Battery 1400 mAhr removable/rechargeable cryptographic lithium cell
Battery Life CDMA: 15 days standby, 6 hours of talk time
GSM: 15 days standby, 6 hours of talk time
User Interface Intuitive Touch Screen
Navigation Touch Screen Navigation, with ClickThrough for user selection
Keyboard On screen keyboard – portrait SureType and Multi-tap, QWERTY landscape
Voice Input/Output Integrated speaker and microphone, hands-free headset capable,
Bluetooth headset capable, integrated hands-free speakerphone
Ringtones 32 polyphonic – MIDI, MP3
GPS Stand-alone and Assisted GPS. Preloaded with BlackBerry® Maps.
Media Player Video format support: MPEG4 H.263, MPEG4 Part 2 Simple Profile, H.264 (encoding and decoding 30fps), WMV
Audio Format Support: MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, WMA ProPlus
Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
Headset 3.5mm stereo headset capable
Product Page
Press Release
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Written by Kunal Gangar on October 8th, 2008 with no comments.
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So I’m sitting at home, watching my Tuesday night TV shows, when all of a sudden.. I see this strange Verizon Wireless BlackBerry commercial depicting some handset that has the screen face down on a table-top. A hand reaches over to turn the handset over and then the commercial fades to black.. preventing us, the now drawn in viewer, from seeing this phone on the big TV screen.
ARGH.. what a tease!
Yes - that was indeed the BlackBerry Storm (I’ll try and get that commercial up on YouTube but I’m sure someone already has it up there by now). While the entire world already knew the Storm was coming, Research in Motion and Verizon Wireless decided that today was a good day to officially announce the phone.
Now before I get into my typical bulleted list of features and specs, I do want to focus on one of the major innovations of the Storm - the new “clickable” touch-screen. According to PC Magazine’s preview of the unit,
“The touch screen feels surreal; it’s like nothing I’ve ever tried before. ”
Basically, touching the screen causes the screen to actually depress. Press down and release the screen and you’ll actually hear a click - just as if you were pressing a key on a keyboard or a button on the mouse. From all that I’ve read, it’s a bit weird to use - especially since you’re not used to it on a touch-screen display. But.. if RIM was looking to create something that would make it stand apart from the iPhone, it looks like it sure did.
The display also supports your usual array of finger gesture motions such as multi-touches, taps, slides, etc. Yes, there’s a built-in accelerometer which allows the handset to easily rotate between portrait and landscape view depending upon the orientation of the handset.
OK.. with that said, let’s move to the feature set of the phone shall we?
- Full HTML web browser with support for file downloading, streaming audio and video (RTSP) and RSS support
- Personal and corporate email support
- SMS, MMS, IM messaging
- BlackBerry Internet Service, BlackBerry Unite!, BlackBerry Professional Software and BlackBerry Enterprise Server support
- Preloaded DataViz Documents to Go allows users to edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files directly on the handset
- 3.2 megapixel camera with variable zoom, auto focus and a powerful flash that also provides continuous lighting when recording video
- Built-in GPS supports location-based applications and services, as well as geotagging of photos
- 1 GB of onboard memory storage and a microSD/SDHD memory card slot that supports up to 16 GB of additional storage
- Media player that can play movies smoothly in full-screen mode, display pictures and slideshows quickly and manage an entire music collection; playlists can be created directly on the handset and there’s an equalizer with 11 preset filters – including “Lounge,” “Jazz” and “Hip Hop” – for customized audio ranges when using wired headphones or external speakers
- A 3.5 mm stereo headset jack, support for Bluetooth® stereo audio profile (A2DP/AVRCP) and dedicated volume controls
- Sleek, elegant design with contoured corners, stainless steel back and chrome accents surrounding its large (3.25″) glass lens; its exceptional 480 x 360 resolution at 184 ppi is crisp and bright with eye-pleasing clarity
- An ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts backlighting for ideal screen viewing and an accelerometer that allows customers to view applications in either portrait or landscape mode by simply rotating the handset
- Removable and rechargeable 1400 mAhr battery that provides approximately six hours of talk time on 3G networks and 15 days of standby time
Here are the main specs of the phone..
Touch Screen Navigation, with ClickThrough for user selection - On-screen keyboard; portrait SureType, and Multi-Tap, QWERTY landscape
- High resolution 480 x 360 pixel color display
- Built-in speakerphone
- 3.2 megapixel camera
- Integrated earpiece/ microphone
- 3.5 mm stereo headset
- Mono/stereo headset, hands-free, phone book access profile and serial port profile supported (Bluetooth® technology)
- Video format support: MPEG4 H.263, MPEG4 Part 2 Simple Profile, H.264, WMV
- Audio format support: MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, WMA ProPlus
- Measures 4.43 x 2.45 x 0.55 inches and weighs 5.5 oz
- For Verizon Wireless, it’ll be the Storm 9530 - 3G EV-DO Rev. A/CDMA technology – and (2100Mhz) UMTS/HSPA and quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM for global use
- For Vodafone, it’ll be the Storm 9500 - (2100Mhz) UMTS/HSPA and quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM networks.
- 15 day standby time and 5.5 hour talk time
- 1GB on board memory
You can read the rest of the full specs here.
Now as far as availability is concerned, there’s no exact date set in stone as of yet. The phone will supposedly be available this fall. Verizon Wireless has exclusive access to the phone in the U.S., while Vodafone will have access to it in Europe, India, Australia, and New Zealand.
Finally, here are some links that might be of interest to you - enjoy!
- From BusinessWeek - “Verizon Wireless, RIM Unleash a Storm“
“Early reviews of the Storm have been favorable. The onscreen keyboard is more tactile than the iPhone’s, making typing easier and more accurate. The Web browsing capability of the Storm marks an improvement over previous devices from Research In Motion, though it doesn’t quite match the elegance and utility of the iPhone’s Web browser and its pinchable touchscreen technology, says BusinessWeek Tech and You columnist Stephen Wildstrom. And the Storm is a truly global phone—the first to work on the high-speed wireless networks of both Verizon Wireless and Vodafone. “It should serve as Verizon’s strongest response to the iPhone yet,” says Ross Rubin, an NPD analyst.”
- From vnunet.com - “First Look: BlackBerry Storm“
“Overall, we were impressed with the BlackBerry Storm, and we look forward to getting one for a fuller evaluation in the near future.”
- From ZDNet - “RIM’s Storm: Why It Matters“
“In any case, RIM has a lot riding on the Storm launch. If the Storm flops, chances are good RIM will too.”
- From Macworld - “RIM launches touch-screen iPhone rival“
“As would be expected, the Storm is a 3G device, and users can surf the web by EV-DO Rev. A or HSPA (High Speed Packet Access), but there is no Wi-Fi.”
- Another ZDNet article - “Is the BlackBerry Storm touchscreen system better than the iPhone?“
“RIM’s “push-screen,” as I think it should properly be called, seems to bridge the gap between a true keyboard and a true touchscreen. Which is good for RIM’s keyboard-happy users, but by no means some groundbreaking new technology.”
- From CNET - “The BlackBerry Storm is no iPhone“
“Apple has help with every product it releases, but RIM doesn’t have that luxury. So no matter how great the Storm will be, it doesn’t matter.”
- Also from CNET - “Verizon officially debuts RIM BlackBerry Storm“
“Overall, I was impressed–nice design, feature rich. Again, the ClickThrough touch screen takes some getting used to, and I wonder how it will hold up over months of use. Performance wise, the device seemed snappy, but I also caught a couple of bugs.”
- and from PC Magazine -
“Could the Storm be the “iPhone for business?” RIM and Verizon fire directly at Apple with this attractive and innovative touch-screen BlackBerry.”
So the real question for me is.. will this make me drop my iPhone and go back to Verizon Wireless? Probably not.. at least not yet. There’s no Wi-Fi on the Storm which isn’t necessarily a deal killer considering how good Verizon’s 3G network is.. but it’s a bit odd nevertheless. I’d probably wait till version 2 comes out and then re-evaluate the phone.
[Check out the Verizon Wireless Press Release]
Technorati Tags: Research in Motion, BlackBerry Storm, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone
Written by flung on October 8th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on BlackBerry and BlackBerry Storm and Mobile Phones and Research in Motion and Smart Phones and Verizon Wireless and vodafone.
The UK carrier Vodafone has decided to release the BlackBerry Storm 9500 smartphone. Sadly, there is no word on the release date and pricing info at this time. The smartphone offers a 3.25 inch touch screen display at 460 x 360 resolution, a 3.2MP camera with autofocus and flash, automatic screen rotation, 128MB RAM, 1GB internal memory, a microSDHC memory card slot and HSPA connectivity. Just remember that the BlackBerry Storm 9500 doesn’t have Wi-Fi connectivity. [SlashGear]
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Written by Joe Gadget on October 8th, 2008 with no comments.
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