I personally, am a blackberry owner. So when i heard that Blackberry was going to introduce a flip phone, it blew my mind. Never has blackberry had such thing available to the public so this news is very intriguing to Blackberry users and non users alike. Research in Motion (RIM), the manufacturer of BlackBerry phones, is set to unveil a phone that folds in half, a departure from the slab-like design that has defined its products.
The long-rumoured phone will be called the BlackBerry Pearl Flip and will be available from T-Mobile USA and from overseas carriers later this year, at an undisclosed price. The "flip" or "clamshell" design, where the display and keyboard are separated by a hinge, is a popular one for conventional cellphones, particularly in the US. Jim Balsillie, co-chief executive of Rim, said 70% of handsets in the country have this shape.
"Bringing this form factor to the smart phone category is, we think, very special," Balsillie said. Smart phones expand the features of a regular phone with applications like web browsing and e-mail access, which is RIM's forte. The Flip is the successor to the BlackBerry Pearl, which launched two years ago. It has a standard "candybar" shape. Both models have 20 keys and double up some letters on each key, in contrast to the wider, more professionally orientated BlackBerries that have more keys and assign only one letter to each key.
RIM has done very well with the Pearl, which was its first entry into the consumer smart phone market. It turned the BlackBerry from an accessory for corporate e-mail slaves into a hot item for consumers who wanted a bit more from their phones. Figures from research firm IDC showed that RIM nabbed 54% of the US market for smart phones in the second quarter, though that figure was probably inflated because buyers looking at getting an iPhone from Apple were holding off in the quarter, waiting for a new model to arrive.
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