Will the Blackberry 9000 ‘Apple Killer’ live up to it’s name?
The new Blackberry 9000 is known by a few names; it’s also called Blackberry Bold and most infamously the ‘AK’ (Apple Killer).
The latter was surely coined from within their own circle of followers since it’s not very likely to live up to it. This is mainly due to some blatant weaknesses caused by rigid adherence to unreasonable beliefs, such as the CEO of RIM and his aversion for touch screens.
It wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve even rigged the 9000 to scan and blacklist all fingerprints that come into contact with its screen. Although the display quality has gotten nothing but good reviews, it’s just too small. In fact, it’s one of the smallest of all smart-phones and a whole inch smaller than the iPhone. It seems that they could easily have removed a row of buttons (talk, end, scroll ball) by giving them touch screen support, this would allow the screen size to be increased quite easily. The full QWERTY keyboard turns out to be much more improved than the previous 8800 version, although it remains a little bulky and compromises the size of the display (as mentioned above).
If it’s interested in competing with the iPhone one of the first things to do would be to improve the camera, but according to the specs released, they stuck with 2 measly mega-pixels. The only noticeable advantage over the iPhone is that it includes 3G. So if the new iPhone is as near to being released as is suspected, it will leave the Blackberry with quite a bland taste in comparison. The Blackberry 9000 will be released sometime this summer as soon as it goes through carrier certification.
