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It’s always good to see what other countries are doing and more importantly how they launch devices. Here in Canada we’ve seen the launch party for the BlackBerry Bold, Storm and 8350i.

Over in Shanghai, Nokia released the 5800 XpressMusic at its Flagshipstore at 5:80pm on February 21st. Check out this video of the launch party:

Hopefully us Canadians will see this device soon
(let’s just make sure all the reception issues are fixed by then)

RIM has officially named their application storefront the “BlackBerry App World“! (This just has a certain ring to it that they are looking to dominate and take Apple out of top spot).

As described on the info page “Coming soon! Find tons of great applications designed for your BlackBerry smartphone in one convenient place – BlackBerry App World. Personalize your BlackBerry smartphone with games, social networks, personal productivity applications and so much more. Message your best friend, track the stock market, or channel your inner rock god. Sign up for BlackBerry App World today and discover how to put more of your life on your BlackBerry smartphone.”

In addition, there are free apps available, but it looks like RIM has set the minimum price for paid apps to $3.69 ($2.99 USD) and has 9 tiered prices that sees the most expensive being $12.25 ($9.99 USD)… a great deal different that the Apple AppStore where the minimum is $0.99, but this could ensure RIM only sees valuable apps in the AppWorld.

What are your thought on this?

Check it out here and at CrackBerry

For all the people who have wanted to get themselves a BlackBerry Pearl 8230 Flip from TELUS, your days are coming closer and closer. They have just put the famous “Coming Soon” slogan on their website. This will be available in both Black and Pink.

Mat Bickley, a design manager within Nokia Design is featured in this short video where he outlines his role and how he takes current trends in fashion, art, movies and design to make their devices stand out. In addition, one of the key lines is how their research showed that “people express themselves through the things that they own”.

Currently focused on a physical product experience to create an “emotional connection with material objects of desire”. In the future they are going to focus on the “digital experience”. Check out the video here

This is far from groundbreaking news, nothing earth shattering here… but still good to keep eveyone informed about upcoming devices.

If you’re looking to get a new prepaid phone you might want to consider a beauty that’s coming to Rogers soon (before the end of Q1). According to the image that was sent to us, the Samsung s366 is a flip phone that will come loaded with a 1.3MP camera with video, music player, expandable memory to 4GB, Bluetooth, Quadband 850/900/1800/1900.

The price is to be announced but you can expect to pay somewhere around the $99.99 mark.

More soon. (Thanks Chadnan!)

Remember a month ago we wrote about a proposed Rogers 65 metre cell phone tower in Burlington? Rogers has officially dropped those plans due to massive amount of residents who criticized the plans. Karen Balbaa, site acquisition specialist with Rogers, has now confirmed with the cell tower “Has been withdrawn… We took into consideration all of the comments we received from the general public and we wanted to work with community. We felt it was in everyone’s best interest to look for another location that was not going to create so much opposition”.

Rogers still believes a new tower is needed to improve wireless coverage and are looking at possible locations north of the city.

Ottawa-based Vayyoo has released vPost, a BlackBerry app that allows users to take pictures, video, audio, text and GPS location and send this via email. This is currently available on the Bold, Curve and Pearl (Storm soon) and is currently available for $9.95 here with a 2-week trial. Check out the video below for a demonstration.

Shailesh Kaul, CEO of  Vayyoo says “vPost enables people to share their real-life experiences via multimedia emails almost instantaneously. The application takes just minutes to learn, and through email – which is the most popular mechanism of communication – users have the option of sharing their experiences with either one or more individuals, or with much larger audiences via social networks and blog sites.”

Kaul sees the new application adding value to BlackBerry users including:
- vacationers and sports enthusiasts looking to share their adventures,
- social consumers sharing once-in-a-lifetime moments with family and friends,
- journalists covering fast-breaking news stories,
- business executives undertaking site visits,
- medical professionals working in remote locations,
- real estate agents scouting out property for prospective clients, and
- traveling sales people wanting to connect with their head office and colleagues.

More info here

Another TELUS contest is on until the end of March… this time if you’re a TELUS customer you have a chance to meet Fall out Boy in person and score a couple tickets to see them live. All you have to do is text to win for these upcoming shows: Vancouver, BC – April 11 (Text ‘WINVAN’ to 5588); Toronto.ON – May 5 (Text ‘WINTOR’ to 5588); Montreal, QC– May 6 (Text ‘WINMTL’ to 5588)

Rogers Wireless has dumped $42 million to expand its GSM coverage in Northern Alberta. Steve Roberts, Vice President for Rogers in Alberta said “Wireless customers who work in Northern Alberta, travel across the
province, or live in the new coverage areas will find that they are now connected in more places than ever before. In addition… we have developed wireless applications that help companies increase efficiency”.

Even though Canadian gas prices have dropped almost by 40% in the last 3 months, it’s nice to see that  Petro-Canada is looking for more ways to make additional money rather than gum, chocolate bars etc…

Petro-Canada Mobility is a MNVO (mobile virtual network operator) that has been around since 2006 and operates on the Rogers Network. With all this said they have revamped their website and brought it up to the 21st century. It’s a cleaner and fresher look, nothing else is really new as they have the same Nokia devices available (Nokia 3555, Nokia 2760, Nokia 2630 and Nokia 1208), but they do have a promo going on that can save you $25 when you purchase the Nokia 2760 with $50 or $100 worth of airtime.

This is worth looking into if you’re into pre-paid phones.