RIM's new Pearls and Curves: WiFi or GPS, not both
It seems RIM's going full force with the "you can't have your cake and eat it too" rule with its new batch of devices, even though we're pretty sure we could have our cake and eat it too -- if only RIM would let us. If a slide deck over on Pinstack turns out to be legit, the next-gen Pearl and the 8300 Curve's slightly newer cousins will be available in carriers' choices of WiFi or GPS variants, but for whatever reason, never both. We're guessing RIM has some fancy explanation about battery drain or engineering issues, but whatever -- we can think of plenty of devices that do both with aplomb, so we're not too happy about the whole mess. As the Curves go, the 8310 will do GPS while the 8320 will pack the 802.11b/g action, but the devices' internals are otherwise unchanged from the original. The Pearl 2 meanwhile has a more expansive list of updates from its predecessor, stepping up to a 2 megapixel camera, an honest-to-goodness 3.5mm headphone jack, and "new firm keypad technology" (yay!) among other things. In the Pearl's case, network determines the add-on feature: GSM gets WiFI (probably to make up for the agony of EDGE) while CDMA gets GPS. Look for all of these to hit well before the year's out.




















Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Donald @ Aug 10th 2007 1:02AM
They're selling to carriers and what do carriers want?
Answer - the device that means more $$$ for them.
Joe @ Aug 10th 2007 1:54AM
YES! everything I hated about the Pearl is improved. Does anyone know if the new ones will able to watch videos using full screen mode?
Michael BAutista @ Aug 10th 2007 3:22PM
If the Pearl 2 is still as sluggish on the interface as its predecessor, I'll pass. Nothing like waiting 45 seconds to view a picture!
jason.noel @ Aug 10th 2007 4:02PM
I thought the 88xx or whatever did WiFi and GPS?
Dave @ Nov 7th 2007 2:34PM
T-Mobile will be coming out with the 8820 which includes GPS and Wifi (UMA) in Jan of 08.