# Touchscreen BlackBerry



## bjamin82 (Sep 4, 2007)

I don't know if anyone has seen this yet... but here you go... Looks pretty neat, except Exclusive to Verizon...










http://www.blackberrynews.com/2008/...berry-thunder-now-the-blackberry-9500-os-470/

http://www.intomobile.com/2008/05/13/rims-iphone-fighting-touchscreen-blackberry-9500-thunder.html

http://www.slashphone.com/rumor-blackberry-thunder-got-first-live-photo-leaked-14887


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## BubblePuppy (Nov 3, 2006)

Right now it is called the "Thunder". Unfortunatly RIM has delayed the release of the Bold to get this unit out sooner because of the release of the iphone3g.



bjamin82 said:


> I don't know if anyone has seen this yet... but here you go... Looks pretty neat, except Exclusive to Verizon...
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## spartanstew (Nov 16, 2005)

BubblePuppy said:


> Right now it is called the "Thunder".


I believe it's actually called the 9500.


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## Michael D'Angelo (Oct 21, 2006)

It looks like it will be a cool phone but I will be upgrading to the curve from my 8703e instead.

Then reason I have a blackberry is because of email (I think Blackberry is the best solution for email on a phone IMO). By not having a hard button key board it will not do me any good.


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## BubblePuppy (Nov 3, 2006)

Michael D'Angelo;1691987 said:


> It looks like it will be a cool phone but I will be upgrading to the curve from my 8703e instead.
> 
> Then reason I have a blackberry is because of email (I think Blackberry is the best solution for email on a phone IMO). By not having a hard button key board it will not do me any good.


I would wait for the Bold unless you don't have ATT. Even though I just got the Curve a couple of months ago I'm going to spring for the Bold when it comes out. The tiny keyboard keys of the Curve drive me a bit crazy. The Bold keys will be bigger. I use the delete and back space keys alot.


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## spartanstew (Nov 16, 2005)

Michael D'Angelo;1691987 said:


> Then reason I have a blackberry is because of email (I think Blackberry is the best solution for email on a phone IMO). By not having a hard button key board it will not do me any good.


Why can't you use the virtual keyboard?


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## Michael D'Angelo (Oct 21, 2006)

BubblePuppy said:


> I would wait for the Bold unless you don't have ATT. Even though I just got the Curve a couple of months ago I'm going to spring for the Bold when it comes out. The tiny keyboard keys of the Curve drive me a bit crazy. The Bold keys will be bigger. I use the delete and back space keys alot.


Verizon. I was a little worried about the keys being a little smaller than my 8703e but I was playing around with a curve last week and I think it will be ok for me.


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## Michael D'Angelo (Oct 21, 2006)

spartanstew said:


> Why can't you use the virtual keyboard?


If Verizon has it before I get the curve (my upgrade is less than 2 months from now) I will check it out first but touch screens are not as good as hard buttons IMO.


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## spartanstew (Nov 16, 2005)

I've only had my Pearl since January, so don't need to upgrade yet, but would consider upgrading to the 9500 (and giving the Pearl to my wife) if it's as nice as it sounds. I don't mind touchscreen keyboards for email and I rarely text.


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## Michael D'Angelo (Oct 21, 2006)

spartanstew said:


> I've only had my Pearl since January, so don't need to upgrade yet, but would consider upgrading to the 9500 (and giving the Pearl to my wife) if it's as nice as it sounds. I don't mind touchscreen keyboards for email and I rarely text.


How much do you email from a phone? Just wondering. I probably do about 20 emails a day on my blackberry. I think the touch screen will drive me nuts.


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## BubblePuppy (Nov 3, 2006)

Oh now that is way cool..keyboard in both portrait and landscape.



spartanstew said:


> Why can't you use the virtual keyboard?


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## spartanstew (Nov 16, 2005)

Michael D'Angelo;1692012 said:


> How much do you email from a phone? Just wondering. I probably do about 20 emails a day on my blackberry. I think the touch screen will drive me nuts.


Work and personal combined, at least 50 per day. Most of them are only 2 or 3 sentences though.


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## Michael D'Angelo (Oct 21, 2006)

spartanstew said:


> Work and personal combined, at least 50 per day. Most of them are only 2 or 3 sentences though.


ok...like I said I will check it out if available in time (BTW does anyone know when it will be available?). I just don't want to but the amount of money (also and idea how much?) out it is going to cost and hate it within a week.


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## BubblePuppy (Nov 3, 2006)

Michael D'Angelo;1692012 said:


> How much do you email from a phone? Just wondering. I probably do about 20 emails a day on my blackberry. *I think the touch screen will drive me nuts*.


I think the tiny keys of the Curve might do the same. I know I get a bit frustrated at the extra letters or wrong letter that I have to go back and correct. My fingernails aren't long enough for nail typing.:lol:


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## spartanstew (Nov 16, 2005)

BubblePuppy said:


> I think the tiny keys of the Curve might do the same. I know I get a bit frustrated at the extra letters or wrong letter that I have to go back and correct. My fingernails aren't long enough for nail typing.:lol:


I agree with BP. That's one of the reasons I went with the Pearl. Since it has 2 letters per key, the keys are actually larger than other BB's (and it only took me about 2 days to get used to the way it autotypes, which turned out to be very cool and much quicker than my old BB world edition). I think the touchscreen keys will be big also, but I guess we'll have to wait and find out for sure.

I couldn't find any info on a release date.


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## tcusta00 (Dec 31, 2007)

spartanstew said:


> I couldn't find any info on a release date.


Who knows where he got it from, but the second comment in the link from the blackberrynews story about says:
_
If this is due out in September, why has the production line not changed to this yet. the bold production line was going for months before it was announced&#8230; this isnt gonna happen in september_


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## spartanstew (Nov 16, 2005)

Saw that, but since he says both "due out in September" and "this isn't gonna happen in september" and I couldn't find any other conformation on crackberry or any of the other blackberry sites I know, I took that as nobody knows yet.


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## bjamin82 (Sep 4, 2007)

I do have ATT and personally will not switch to Verizon for the 9500. The Bold does seem to have a better keyboard than the Curve which is what I have now. I think for the person who really does use their BlackBerry for a corporate, away from computer email solution, the Bold would be a better choice.


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## bjamin82 (Sep 4, 2007)

Michael D'Angelo;1692012 said:


> How much do you email from a phone? Just wondering. I probably do about 20 emails a day on my blackberry. I think the touch screen will drive me nuts.


I happen to agree... I do at least 20 or so emails per day and I believe the touchscreen would drive me crazy. My wife has the iPhone and just typing a text message makes me want to throw the phone down... the gain of the touch screen is the other applications you would use... i.e. browsing web pages.


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## gregory (Jan 25, 2007)

I hate T-Mobile...their phones blow.


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## davemayo (Nov 17, 2005)

BubblePuppy said:


> I think the tiny keys of the Curve might do the same. I know I get a bit frustrated at the extra letters or wrong letter that I have to go back and correct. My fingernails aren't long enough for nail typing.:lol:


I had an 8800 but got rid of it for the Curve because the 8000's keys are too close together. The Curve is much better. I can fly on that thing. I probably type about 100 emails a day on it, even more if I'm on the road, which is pretty often. You should see the size of my thumbs. :eek2:


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

The company I just joined does not allow Blackberries. I solved that problem by writing a program to grab the E-mail via OWA (Outlook Web Access) and send it to my Blackberry.

I am very happy with my 8700 and the think I like the best about it is that the keyboard is NOT on the touchscreen.


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## bjamin82 (Sep 4, 2007)

Doug Brott said:


> The company I just joined does not allow Blackberries. I solved that problem by writing a program to grab the E-mail via OWA (Outlook Web Access) and send it to my Blackberry.
> 
> I am very happy with my 8700 and the think I like the best about it is that the keyboard is NOT on the touchscreen.


Doesn't allow Blackberries? Are they a treo shop? Or nothing at all?


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## SDizzle (Jan 1, 2007)

I have a Pearl with AT&T, and love the stacked keyboard, so the bold does not appeal to me at all. And a full touchscreen like the thunder will have also seems a bit unreliable for fast typing. I have a Harmony 1000 remote, and the damn touchscreen misfires all the time, if my BB did that during one of my 100 or so e-mails and texts a day, I would throw it out of the window!


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## Ira Lacher (Apr 24, 2002)

I switched to AT&T for the iPhone and while I do miss the integration of email with calendar, and lament the absence of a task manager, the iPhone's browser and graphics are worth the changeover. Adding Microsoft Exchange push email works for me, the texting is first-rate, and the graphic capabilities of the iPhone are unsurpassed. Unless the new BB has true Web browsing capability, I won't consider going back.


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

bjamin82 said:


> Doesn't allow Blackberries? Are they a treo shop? Or nothing at all?


Windows Mobile  - I could get it to work, but I was not a fan .. had to reboot my phone much too often and it was tough to use the model I had with one hand.


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

Ira Lacher said:


> Unless the new BB has true Web browsing capability, I won't consider going back.


That is certainly a limitation of the BB. I've decided that E-mail is more important to me and the BB does a great job with that. Plus, I'm happy with using it as a phone as well. The Wing that I had was probably better for web browsing than the BB but it didn't do a good job with the other stuff, IMHO.


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## Bardman (Apr 23, 2002)

Ira Lacher said:


> Unless the new BB has true Web browsing capability, I won't consider going back.


I'm running Opera on my 8830 WE blackberry and it works wonderfully!!


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## BubblePuppy (Nov 3, 2006)

Yes...I'm also using the mini-opera on my Blackberry curve and it runs great. I use it instead of the Blackberry browser. And mini-opera is free!


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## BubblePuppy (Nov 3, 2006)

As far as touch screen typing is concerned, I was in my local ATT store to get some accesories for my Curve and I played around with the iphone3gs touch screen key board.
I found it very easy to use and alot more accurate than my Curve's keybord. I could do all my typing with just my left thumb without any mispellings or duplicate letters and I could type alot faster than I can with my Curve keyboard plus the lettering is alot bigger which is good for these aging eyes.:lol: 
I would have considered changing to the iphone3g except that the phone aspect of it lacks some of the very basic phone features that I really use alot such as handsfree voice dialing (the Curve will voice dial without any training--just say call and the name and which phone to dial, mobile/home/work as you have it in the address book..very cool). And of course the lack of Email push without having to subscribe to mobileme.
Now with the Bold coming out in Sept and hopefully an unlocked Thunder being available sometime after release I will have some decisions to make albeit a bit expensive since I already have a two year contract on the Curve.


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## BubblePuppy (Nov 3, 2006)

I installed a very cool program on my Curve,RDM, that allows me to control my home computer from my Blackberry. Sort of like "PC Anywhere".


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## Ira Lacher (Apr 24, 2002)

Bardman said:


> I'm running Opera on my 8830 WE blackberry and it works wonderfully!!


Never could get Opera to work sufficiently well on my BB, either a Curve or before that the 8730. As long as I get emails pushed to my phone, I'm happy with the iPhone. (Although, admittedly, "happy" when applied to my phone usage lasts a couple of months.) I'm more PO'd about AT&T network at my house.


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