photo credit: AT&T’s LG Thrive Pre-Paid Droid

AT&T is the last of the cell phone service providers to offer a Droid Smartphone in their pre-paid lineup. Beginning April 17th, AT&T is offering the LG Thrive for $180. The Thrive is a mid-range Droid, running on the Android OS 2.2 (Froyo). It only has a 3.2 megapixel camera and 160 MB of memory, although it can be expanded to 32 GB with a MicroSD card. The customers will have to pay pretty dearly for using this phone however. Customers can choose the “Smartphone 10 cents per minute” plan or “Smartphone $2 USD per day for unlimited talk and text” plan. Their choices for data plans range from $5 for 10 MB to $25 for 500 MB. There is no contract, which is probably a good thing since customers may dump AT&T once they find out how poor the service coverage areas are.

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photo credit: RIM BlackBerry Theme Contest

A $500 AMEX card is up for grabs in the new RIM BlackBerry Retail Reps Theme Contest. Five winners will receive an AMEX gift card for $500 USD. The top winner’s theme will be developed as a BlackBerry theme and upon release, made exclusively available for 3 months to authorized retail salespeople. After 3 months, the winning theme will be made available on a non-exclusive basis in BlackBerry App World. Pretty sweet deal, or so it seems. However, royalties and income from the sales of the theme don’t actually go to the person submitting the theme idea. Hmmm…. Maybe not so sweet a deal.

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photo credit: BlackBerry Torch 2

BlackBerry should be renamed LeakBerry. Photos, videos and technical specifications have been “leaked” over and over in the past few weeks. Rumors are flying. There are now stories of four new RIM Smartphones (BlackBerry Bold Touch, Torch 2, Orlando, and Touch), all of which have new capacitive touch screens. Mostly they seem to be “re-made” versions of the Curve and Torch, although there is a touch only phone as well.

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photo credit:
JWoww Loses $100K BlackBerry

This last weekend, Jenni “JWoww” Farley lost her BlackBerry. Jenni was apparently shopping at a Lowe’s hardware store in Toms River, New Jersey with boyfriend Roger when she lost the cell phone. Jenni reported the missing BlackBerry to the police, claiming the phone is worth $100,000. Why is Jenni Farley’s BlackBerry worth $100,000? Is Jenni’s BlackBerry made of Platinum? Jenni claims it’s because of her fame. “Because of all my contacts,” she told Toms River police. According to an article written by Fabiana Santana, Actress Archives, “It’s those contacts - all stored in her Blackberry - she is worried will wind up in the wrong hands.”

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photo credit: New Twitter for BlackBerry

Today it’s official! Twitter for BlackBerry v1.1 is finally released. A select few were using the beta version, but the real McCoy was released today. According to a post by Kristy C., Inside BlackBerry, they have “made several changes to enhance the Twitter for BlackBerry Smartphone experience, like updated graphics that reflect the new look of the Twitter brand and a streamlined layout of the Add Photo and Add Location icons on the Home screen. The next time you Retweet something, it will appear in your Home timeline as ‘Retweeted by You’, to quickly alert you that your Retweet was sent successfully.”

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photo credit: Green Cell Phone Manufacturers

RIM BlackBerry scored the worst in GoodGuide’s list of green cell phone manufacturers. According to an article by Wendy Koch, USA Today, BlackBerry only earned a 3.3 rating, mostly for the company’s environmental record. Nokia took top honors, with Samsung coming in second. Apple’s iPhone also scored in the lower half of the manufacturers, again not because the material in the iPhone is toxic, but because Apple itself has problems with its “ethical policies and performance.” Nokia scored as the top green manufacturer. 26 of 30 of the top cell phones scored were made by Nokia, each scoring 7.7 or 7.6 out of a possible 10 points. Nokia C6 scored best overall. This is pretty impressive.

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photo credit: Confession App

Are you a Catholic needing to go to confession? There’s an app for that. Seriously though, it’s not actually an app to substitute for confession. (The Catholic Church is very clear on this issue.) It is an app for the iPhone that helps you figure out how you’ve sinned (as if you didn’t know) and formulate a confession. It’s called Confession: A Roman Catholic App, and was created by Little iApps with the help of two Catholic priests ($1.99). And it has been given the blessing of Bishop Kevin C. Rhodes of the Diocese of Fort Wayne - South Bend, Indiana.

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photo credit: Top Virtuous Cell Phones

Wonder what impact your cell phone has on the environment? GoodGuide has just published a report rating the top 5 “virtuous” cell phones. The ratings are based upon not only environmentally safe practices, but also takes into consideration the social attributes as well? “Social attributes?” you may ask. This rating has to do with the safety and labor policies of the company manufacturing the cell phones. GoodGuide ranks individual models and manufacturers on 3 levels: health, environment, and social attributes. 576 phone models were rated.

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photo credit: Universal Cell Phone Charger

Mobile phone users in the European Union will soon have universal chargers for many of their devices. According to an article by Don Reisinger, CNET.com, “DigitalEurope, the continent’s largest digital tech organization, has delivered a sample of a universal mobile phone charger to European Commission vice president Antonio Tajani. The EU said that the sample now paves the way for consumers to get their hands on devices that support the universal charger in the very near future.”

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photo credit: The Torch

RIM is doomed to fail regardless of the new BlackBerry Torch 9800 and the hopeful BlackPad. The newest electronic gadgets from BlackBerry will not be enough to keep the RIM ship afloat. The competition from the iPhone and the new Droids will spell failure for RIM. Read the rest of this entry »