A recent interview with Verizon Chief Marketing Officer Marni Walden provides some information on what the future holds for BlackBerry devices at Verizon Wireless. This interview confirms the upcoming arrival of three new RIM devices with the carrier later in the year.

For a while it seemed Big Red was relying heavily on RIM for it’s Blackberry devices, especially with the beginning of the Blackberry “Touch” and “Storm” series. However, since then things have gone quiet on the Blackberry front with the carrier, as they moved their focus almost entirely toward Android and the iPhone. But with this latest news, it seems they may be rekindling their partnership a bit.

The BGR interviewed Verizon Wireless CMO Marni Walden about these new devices and what she had to say was quite interesting. Much of their discussion was focused on 4G, Android, iPhone, and Windows 7,however they did eventually make their way into discussing Blackberry devices coming this year. Marni pretty well confirmed the launch of 3 new Blackberry devices this year.

Walden said, “RIM is still very, very important in the enterprise space. It does resonate in some of the consumer space as well, particularly with BBM. We’ll have three devices this year that we will bring to market with RIM. We’ll continue our partnership and it’ll be important for now going forward.”

Will one of them be a 4G LTE PlayBook?
Is there a CDMA Torch 2 coming to VZW?
The BlackBerry Bold 9930 is likely to be one of them.
What are your thoughts on the other two?
Hit up the full interview at BGR and let us know what you think.

source: BGR

RIM (Research in Motion) recently recalled around 1,000 Blackberry PlayBook tablets due to some devices having a defective build of the operating system. Most of these were unsold units and were at Staples stores thankfully, and not in the hands of consumers.

Some Staples stores were made aware of the issue sometime last week and were told to pull all the affected serial numbers off of their shelves. The few devices sold did cause those consumers to be unable to setup their new PlayBook. Were you one of those few users? Click here for the list of serial numbers affected.

Source:  Apple Insider via Engadget

Most of us have heard different rumors and positive/negative descriptions of the Blackberry Playbook lately. Amongst these reports, RBC Capital Markets General Manager Mike Abramsky said that the first day of PlayBook sales were indeed successful. He mentioned the sales likely exceeded analysts’ expectations stating that RIM may have moved about 50,000 PlayBook tablets on launch day alone, including pre-order sales.

The analyst and his team did heavy research to come up with the estimated number of around 50,000 sold at launch day. Believe it or not, most of the stores called actually sold out of the Playbook and some are still unable to stock their shelves. Best buy alone holds stock at 180 additional locations in 10 major U.S. cities. They have the 16GB PlayBook listed as unavailable at 13% of stores, while the 32GB model is listed as unavailable at 87% of stores and the 64GB model is listed as unavailable at 91% of the locations viewed.

Abramsky also noted that the PlayBook may have outperformed first-day sales of Motorola’s XOOM and even Samsung’s popular Galaxy Tab. He also believes that RIM is on track to sell 500,000 PlayBook tablets in its first quarter of availability. Does this surprise you or is it what you expected? Let us know what you think.

Several users who purchased one have said great things about it. They love how different the UI is, how fast and smooth it runs as well as how easy it is to hold. Others, maybe those who haven’t even played with one, have negative things to say about it. Did you get one for yourself? We want to know your opinions. Leave your comments in the box below.

Source: BGR

Rumors have recently been going around on what Sprint has planned for the CTIA convention this year and BGR has just been informed of what we like to call expected announcements. The three devices everyone is so excited about are the HTC Evo 3D, the HTC Evo View 4G and Sprint’s version of the Motorola XOOM.

Expected specifications of the HTC EVO 3D include a 4.3″ qHD 960 x 450-pixel Autostereoscopic 3D display, 4GB of RAM, 1GB ROM, 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm 8660 Snapdragon CPU, dual rear 5-megapixel cameras with a dedicated camera button, 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera and a 1730mAh battery. It is said to be running Android Gingerbread 2.3 with HTC Sense UI and has output 1080p video via HDMI and output 720p 3D content as well. Supposedly it will come stock will also be a Blockbuster 3D on demand app as well as YouTube 3D. We will see when the announcement gets here.

Expected specifications of the HTC EVO View include features very similar to the HTC Flyer tablet including a 7-inch 1024 x 600-pixel capacitive touch screen, an aluminium unibody design, HTC Scribe with optional pen support, the latest HTC Sense UI optimized for tablet devices, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, Android 2.3 Gingerbread and a 4000mAh battery and DLNA and HDMI-out support. Remember, specifications aren’t official but you can almost count on them being so.

As we mentioned in a previous article, Sprint is planning to launch their own XOOM tablet. See our previous article for more information.

Sources suggest that Sprint will be announcing quite a few more devices including a Samsung Rant 3, a 3G touch screen messaging device that’s eco friendly and features a solar rechargeable battery door. A BlackBerry PlayBook (Wi-Fi & WiMAX version) are also expected to be announced.

What do you think geeks? Will you get any of these? Is this what Sprint needs to gain back their reputation to the fullest? Do you think this will help? Let us know your thoughts?

Source: BGR

We’ve tried to keep our Geeks up to date on the tablets as much as possible, even the unreleased ones such as the Blackberry PlayBook. Here is a cool video of the PlayBook showing the tablets HTML5 and Flash video abilities.

The walkthrough demos several games, videos and websites that all use the aforementioned technologies. You can tell that the videos are very rich and clear when watching the clip. While playing videos there is no need to launch external players.

I’m sure with CES right around the corner you will find us sharing more information on the Playbook very soon. For now, let us know what your thoughts are on the Playbook having full flash capabilities at release date.

Source: BGR