RIM Introduces New Smartphones, Technology

Research In Motion (RIM) has unveiled two new BlackBerry Bold smartphones. The high-performance BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 smartphones feature a stunning and iconic design that integrates an easy-to-use BlackBerry keyboard with a brilliant, high resolution, capacitive touch screen. These smartphones are built on a new platform powered by the BlackBerry 7 operating system.

“The new BlackBerry Bold smartphones and BlackBerry 7 OS are inspired by millions of customers around the world who want the ultimate combination of performance, functionality and style,” said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO, Research In Motion. “These fully-loaded and beautifully crafted smartphones offer a highly refined user experience with blazingly fast performance, a brilliant touch screen and an outstanding typing experience.”

These BlackBerry Bold smartphones are built on a new performance-driven platform featuring a 1.2 GHz processor, Liquid Graphics touch screen, and support for high speed 4G/HSPA+ wide area wireless networks. The new platform also provides support for 4G networks; the 9900 supports HSPA+ connectivity, and the 9930 supports CDMA EV-DO Rev. A and HSPA+ global roaming on GSM/UMTS networks.

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The BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 smartphones include built-in support for NFC (Near Field Communications), a new technology that will enable many rich and exciting experiences. Through NFC, users will be able to, for example, pair the BlackBerry Bold to an accessory or read information such as a web link from smart tags by simply tapping their BlackBerry Bold to an NFC tag (eg. Smart Poster).

The BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 smartphones feature a built-in compass (magnetometer) to support location-based services and augmented reality. APIs will allow third party developers to take advantage of the new functionality within their applications. The new smartphones will also include Wikitude, the leader in mobile augmented reality, which overlays contextual information on what the user sees through the smartphone’s camera viewfinder.

The new BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 smartphones support up to 720p HD video recording and playback. Users can easily share their videos directly from the smartphone or sync videos, as well as music and photos, to their computer using Media Sync in the BlackBerry Desktop Software.

The BlackBerry 7 OS is designed to power the new performance-driven BlackBerry Bold platform. It provides an easier and faster user experience with improved browsing, voice-activated searches, the ability to manage personal content separately from corporate content, as well as additional personal and productivity apps out of the box.

The BlackBerry Browser has been significantly enhanced in BlackBerry 7. In addition to the general performance gains of Liquid Graphics, which helps deliver faster rendering and seamless panning and zooming, the BlackBerry 7 browser includes a new JIT (just in time) JavaScript compiler to improve the load time speed of web pages. The new browser also includes support for additional HTML5 elements, such as HTML5 Video.

RIM is also advancing work-life balance on BlackBerry smartphones with BlackBerry Balance- new technology that makes possible the convenience of using a single BlackBerry smartphone for both work and personal purposes without compromising the security of company content and the privacy of personal content. RIM is introducing this technology in response to the growing trend by businesses to allow employees to use personal BlackBerry smartphones for work, or company-owned smartphones for personal, and the need by businesses to secure, manage and control confidential company or client information on these devices.

“BlackBerry Balance is a win-win for employers and employees,” said Jim Tobin, senior vice president, software and services at Research In Motion. “It’s a secure and cost-effective way for companies to keep employees connected and productive, while also allowing the flexibility for employees to carry a single phone.”

BlackBerry Balance presents a unified view of work and personal content on a BlackBerry smartphone while keeping the content separate and secure. The division between work and personal content is transparent to the user unless they try to perform actions prohibited by company policy. IT administrators can set policies via BlackBerry Enterprise Server or BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express. These policy settings can enable the following:

Secure access to business information while preventing the information from being copied into, sent from or used by personal applications like Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live Hotmail, Google Mail or Yahoo! Mail accounts.

• Business data or files created by business applications cannot be used by personal applications.

• If a user attempts an action that is prohibited by IT policy, a notification is displayed on the device.

• If an employee leaves the organisation, an administrator can remotely wipe business information from the device while leaving personal information intact.

• If a device is lost or stolen, an administrator can wipe all information from the device to help ensure that sensitive business information and the user’s personal information don’t fall into the wrong hands.

BlackBerry Balance is available only on BlackBerry devices and can be applied to employee- or company-owned smartphones. It is built into BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0.3 and BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express 5.0.3for Microsoft Exchange or IBM Lotus Domino. It also requires the latest version of BlackBerry 6 Device Software.