With all of the crazy BlackBerry 10 phone action on CrackBerry the past week, we haven't spent much time talking about BlackBerry 10 for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

During the official BlackBerry 10 launch event there was no mention of BlackBerry 10 for the PlayBook

Of course, there has not really been much to talk about here. During the official BlackBerry 10 launch event there was no mention of BlackBerry 10 for the PlayBook. When prodded during follow-up Q&A sessions with the press, BlackBerry did say BlackBerry 10 would come to the PlayBook "later this year."

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With all the BlackBerry 10 craziness the last few weeks (more so this week) it's easy to get lost in the shuffle. We've been non-stop posting all the BlackBerry 10, BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 stuff we can find and we won't be slowing down anytime soon -- we're all crazy excited for BlackBerry and what's in store for the coming months.

Kevin and Bla1ze are on a plane back to Toronto at the moment, so before he advises against it, I figured I'd drop this post in.

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Yesterday morning I stirred the pot on twitter when I made the following tweet...

When I get an email from someone that says "Sent from my iPad" I immediately conclude that person places little value on their time. Agree? 

At face value and given my position as Fearless Leader of CrackBerry Nation, I'll admit the tweet comes off as harsh and fanboy-ish. Yes, I'm ripping at the iPad in it. However, my remark is actually true for all tablets, hence this follow up post to fully explain my rationale. Furthermore, my tweet was specifically geared towards people using their tablets for business, rather than personal use. I guess sometimes 140 characters just isn't enough to illustrate a point...

I picked on the iPad yesterday because I literally had just received a long email from somebody we do business with -- whose services we pay plenty of $$$ for -- who sent the message from their iPad. When I opened the email, the first thing that jumped out at me was that signature, Sent from my iPad. Before even reading the email but just looking at the length of it, the *first* thought that went through my mind was clearly this person isn't working hard enough for us if they have the time to tap this message out on a tablet. 

Feel free to call me a jerk for thinking that, but I couldn't help it. That's literally the first thought that went through my mind. And reflecting on it, that's the the first thought that always goes through my mind when I receive a long email sent from a tablet. Speaking to a few of my colleagues that I work with, they completely agreed with my sentiment. And throwing it out on twitter, well over 50% of the people who replied back agreed as well. As for the ones who didn't agree with me, it turns out they're mainly the ones who have yet to change their tablet's default email signature! But after this editorial, maybe they will.

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The Mobile Nations World Tour continues...

People keep thinking my HTC One X (right) is a Galaxy S3 

The 2012 Olympic Games are coming to an end this weekend. Every spare moment I've had over the past two weeks I've turned on the tv to watch the awe-inspiring performances of some of the world's most amazing athletes. At the same time, I've also sat in front of the television in awe of Samsung. Without exception, every single time I have tuned into London 2012 action, I have also seen a commercial for the Samsung Galaxy S III (S3). I don't know what Samsung's marketing budget was for these games, but I'm guessing it was astronomical.

Whatever Samsung had to spend though, it seems to be working in terms of building recognition among "regular people" for their new Galaxy S3 phone. So much so in fact, that since the Olympics have started that people are even recognizing non-Galaxy S3 devices as the Galaxy S3. The prime example? My HTC One X has a serious case of mistaken identity for the S3.

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Throughout my 6+ years of working on CrackBerry, I have always been a stickler for doing things 100% by the book as far as BlackBerry-related vocabulary is concerned...

It's BlackBerry. Not Blackberry.

If you want to go plural, you have to write your sentence so you can say BlackBerry Smartphones. BlackBerrys is not technically by the book (you shouldn't modify a proper trademark), and BlackBerries... well, that's just plain wrong. The Smartphones thing is relatively new too. In the early years of CrackBerry they were actually referred to as BlackBerry Handheld Wireless Devices.

As for the company that makes BlackBerry Smartphones, their name is Research In Motion. Not Research in Motion. You need that capital I. If that's too long for you, you can abbreviate it to RIM (not RiM).

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It *should* mean those of you wanting a BlackBerry 10 phone with a physical keyboard won't have to wait as long relative to the release of the first full touchscreen model. 

The previous thinking was that the first BlackBerry 10 phone would launch later this year (October-ish) and that we'd see RIM follow up early in 2013 with a version featuring a physical keyboard. Remember, a physical keyboard BlackBerry 10 phone has been confirmed more than once now. 

With RIM delaying the launch of BlackBerry 10 until Q1 of 2013, it's really the first BlackBerry 10 phone that's most greatly impacted in terms of being delayed. For those of you who were waiting for a BlackBerry 10 phone with a keyboard, you were already waiting until next year. And looking at the latest supposed BlackBerry roadmap, assuming you believe it, it shows both the full touchscreen and physical keyboard versions launching in Q1.

Knowing that software is the bottleneck here, it makes sense that assuming things go as per RIM's plan, we'll see the time lag between these two phone model launches compress.

So there you have it. I'm a cup half full kind of guy, and that's the way you can look at this one. Now both full touch and physical keyboard people are in the waiting game together, and now the physical keyboard owners hopefully won't have to look at full touchscreen BB10 phones in envy for as long. 

We've had a hunch for a long time now that the first BlackBerry 10 phone to hit the market later this year will feature a full touchscreen design, lacking the physical keyboard that BlackBerry is traditionally known for. This was confirmed earlier this month at BlackBerry World, when we got our first preview of BlackBerry 10, running on a full touchscreen Dev Alpha device.

Some media outlets took the BlackBerry 10 touchscreen typing demonstration to mean that Research In Motion would be abandoning the physical keyboard on future phones.  CEO Thorsten Heins quickly squashed that misinformation the next day, when he confirmed during a press session that there would definitely be phones in the BlackBerry 10 portfolio that offer a physical keyboard.

Phew. This confirmation led to a big *sigh* of relief from CrackBerry Nation, including your's truly. Despite this good news, however, I've observed a lot of comments and discussions in the forums among users arguing that it's a mistake for BlackBerry 10 to launch with a full touchscreen device. For many BlackBerry users, it's precisely the love for the physical keyboard that has kept them from defecting to the competition, and it's these users who have been waiting the longest for a major operating system revamp to BlackBerry phones.

As of now we're not sure how long it will be after the launch of the first BlackBerry 10 phone before a variant with a physical keyboard will be released. For the sake of the BlackBerry faithful who want it, I hope that the wait will be a short one. But I will reason that RIM is absolutely making the right decision to launch a full touchscreen BlackBerry 10 phone first. Keep reading for my reasons why.

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Welcome to CrackBerry Kevin's Mock School of Smartphone Economic Theory. Today's class... the effects of iPhone sales on the US economy. Examine the two charts above. The chart on the left plots the USA Index of Economic Freedom from 2006 to 2012. The chart on the right plots iPhone sales in the USA from 2007 to 2012. Notice how ever since the iPhone went on sale in 2007 that the US economy has progressively gone downhill?

Sure, iPhone sales are great for the people who own shares of Apple's skyrocketing stock, but the overall result of Apple's success on the US economy is actually a net loss of hundreds of millions of distracted man-hours spent playing Angry Birds and Cut the Rope. More iPhones = Less Productivity = Economic Downturn. It's a scary correlation people, and if Apple's sales continue to grow, things *could* get worse.

The solution? I propose it's time for BlackBerry to make a comeback in the USA. Put productivity first, games second! Let's all buy BlackBerry 10 phones when they hit the market, get our priorities straight and get America back on track!!

Sources: Economics One, Asymco

Just the other week Kevin posted about his Porsche Design P'9981 BlackBerry and asked the community if RIM was to do any other partnerships with brands, who would you want to see them partner with. In the post, we showed off a hot looking Ferrari PlayBook concept. Now today in CrackBerry's forums, guess what photos showed up? That's right, a Ferrari BlackBerry, but in this case it's actually a Bold 9700.

This isn't a device we remember seeing before, and Google didn't have much to offer regarding it either. Obviously it's an older device, and still rocking OS5. Heck, we aren't even 100% sure that it's a legit BlackBerry, though it sure is pretty convincing. There are a ton more pictures of the device and the packaging in the forum thread at the link below, both from the person who claims to own this device, and an old eBay listing Bla1ze found online.  Go take a look, and let us know if you think it's legit and if it's a design you'd like to see on a newer device. 

More pictures/discussion on the Ferrari edition BlackBerry Bold 9700 

This is an editorial that's been in my head for a while now, and if you listened to my recent guest appearance on the Engadget Mobile Podcast you will have already heard a good chunk of it. With today being Valentine's Day and this article aimed at re-building the love for BlackBerry in the USA, the timing is right to publish it.

Long story short, I think Research In Motion formally needs to set up a BlackBerry USA division, complete with a newly appointed President of BlackBerry USA. Doing so will help RIM to better control the "BlackBerry" message within America and more importantly, help place a more clear distinction and barrier between BlackBerry USA, where sales are lagging and the brand isn't perceived so hot right now, and BlackBerry in the rest of the world, where the brand is still held in high regards.

Furthermore, as the company launches its new BlackBerry 10 phone line later this year, having a dedicated President of BlackBerry USA whose key role is to communicate with US media and Wall Street will help foster a stronger relationship with the company. I like RIM's new CEO Thorsten Heins a lot, but he can't spend all of his time doing interviews - he has to actually run the company. Unfortunately, through this transitional period and into the launch of BlackBerry 10, I think a lot of BlackBerry face time is needed in the USA. Having an extra well-positioned BlackBerry spokesperson to share the work load on the communications front will only help.

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While Research In Motion carries out the process of recruiting a new Chief Marketing Officer to the company, I've decided to temporarily fill the position by throwing some CrackBerry Kevin BlackBerry marketing logic into the ether. You know what they say - no time like the present. And with new CEO Thorsten Heins set to present his ideas for change to RIM's board in two weeks time, the sooner we get these ideas -- both big and small -- out there, the better. Let's kick things off today with what I feel is a long overdue name change.

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[ youtube video link for mobile viewing ]

When I saw Marco van Hylckama Vlieg wearing a BlackBerry PlayBook around his neck in his BlackBerry Rap video submission for CrackBerry Super Fanboy Contest I was INSPIRED. I just knew going to BlackBerry DevCon in San Francisco this year that I had to represent the loyal BlackBerry fans out there with a pimp'n PlayBook necklace of my own.

Turns out it was a great idea, and the PlayBook on a gold chain at DevCon got a ton of attention. Since debuting it on the blogs, I've been getting a bunch of requests from CrackBerry readers asking for the details on how I built my version. My motto is to give people what they want, so here it is... the Do It Yourself instructions so you can build your own pimp'n BlackBerry PlayBook necklace. Watch the video above and keep reading for written instructions. 

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Left Chart: PlayBook, BB6 & BB7 stats are reported under Safari
Right Chart: Drilling into Safari stats, PlayBook, BB6 & BB7 devices report as Safari / (not set)

SERIOUSLY. Given the "perceived" state of BlackBerry in the marketplace today, having to write a blog post like this makes me really, really upset. I'm going to assume it's an oversight by Research In Motion or the Torch Mobile team, but it's a big one in my opinion that needs to be addressed asap. 

I don't spend too much time looking at the nitty gritty details of our site analytics, but today I logged into Google Analytics as I wanted to take a look at how many users/what % of users are coming to CrackBerry on BlackBerry 7 Smartphones. Drilling down into the Visitor > Browser stats (top left image), I found no shortage of OS 5 and older devices being reported, but it seemed for the most part that there is a complete lack of BlackBerry 6 / 7 devices and the BlackBerry PlayBook. Essentially, all of RIM's newer phones that run WebKit. Not good.

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On the recent RIM earnings call one of the most unexpected things said by RIM's Founder and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis was this:

"Well, we've got a lot of planned announcements at DevCon in October, and we've got -- we'll be announcing our new development platform for QNX and our QNX-based phones. We'll be launching the development phones, so that people can start experiencing the QNX phones and the applications. So we've got a lot of things planned. At this point, we want to be careful not to give up too many of our secrets and specifications of the product and delivery dates. But we're very excited, and the fact that we've already got the development phones operating right now and we're testing them is a great sign" 

The announcement that QNX developer phones would be present at the BlackBerry Developers Conference next month definitely came as a surprise to me. And heck, I wouldn't doubt it came as a surprise to many a RIM employee as well (just like how Jim Balsillie said the PlayBook would get native email in 60 days...lol). This definitely is a new move for RIM. Typically new moves for RIM end up having a back story to them, and by piecing together various rumors and intel I think I have a pretty good hypothesis of what's happening here.

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With a Research In Motion earnings announcement and investors call happening later today (we'll be live blogging it at 5pm ET here on the CrackBerry blogs), per usual we're seeing the stories ramp up on the internet as analysts start voicing their predictions about how RIM is doing and what the future holds. I always like reading these stories. I talk to a lot of analysts on a regular basis (they reach out to me as they know I know my sh!t), so it's fun to see which ones say things that line up with my thinking, and which ones say things that I don't agree with (overall, I have a pretty solid track record for getting things right).

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OK. So I can't say for 100% certain that CrackBerry's RIMPIRE STRIKES BACK initiative is what inspired Canada's Future Shop to put RIM Strikes Back, BBM 6 is here on the cover of their latest issue of Cellshop, but I'm going say it did. Think about it. RIM isn't in the consumer facing brand that the average person knows.... BlackBerry is. So for Future Shop to decide to put RIM strikes back vs. BlackBerry strikes back must mean it was a conscious decision. A decision in recognition of CrackBerry, BlackBerry and our RIMPIRE STRIKES BACK movement.

Or maybe I'm crazy and it's coincidence. Either way, I love it. PURE AWESOME Future Shop! #RIMPIRE

Guess who's going to be giving one of the sessions at BlackBerry DevCon this year? I AM!! While it's not up in the session catalog just yet (should be there by the end of the week), I'll be on stage for a breakout session giving tips and tricks to BlackBerry developers in attendance on how to work with bloggers and the media to maximize the exposure of their app efforts. Here's the overview:

Session Title: Working with Bloggers and Media
Technical Level: General (Suitable for ALL devs, whether beginner or advanced!)
Type: Breakout Session

Abstract: Developers need to understand how they can leverage bloggers and social media to increase their success with very little cost. Learn from one of the best experts in the field, Kevin Michaluk, founder of CrackBerry.com on what the best tips and tricks are for engaging in this space.

Key Takeaways:

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Oh my stars, folks; someone got it right! The debate over which smartphone is better, BlackBerry or iPhone, has raged since the dawn of...well, the iPhone. In this video from The New York Times, assistant technology editor Sam Grobart, and Dealbreak editor Andrew Ross Sorkin finally have it out. Mano a mano, suits versus khakis, iPhone vs. BlackBerry.

The two swap smartphones (and their clothes transform, apparently to great surprise), and hilarity ensues. Well, no but the pair do come to a bit of a realization. The phones both have nice features and are great pieces of technology, but the borrowed devices just "weren't right for" them.

At CrackBerry.com, we're firm believers that there is no one smartphone perfect for each and every person. Kevin's Hierarchy of Smartphone Needs explains this in much greater detail (it's classic Kevin, but it's a good read).  The video up there gives a great demonstration of the hierarchy in action. The best smartphone is the one that best delivers what the user wants to do. Communication and security are the BlackBerry's forté, media and entertainment are the iPhone's.

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As a long-time BlackBerry enthusiast and proud Canadian, I want to see Research In Motion turn around the negative sentiment that is now stalking them in the media and gain back the sales momentum and brand popularity they have enjoyed in the past.

But should this challenge prove too difficult in the months ahead or simply take too long to execute in the face of an eroding market cap, what will become of RIM? I've pondered this question a lot in recent weeks from every conceivable angle, and it was sitting on a patio sipping my fourth pitcher of Sangria on Canada Day that I concluded Google will buy Research In Motion. It won't be Microsoft - they've made their bet on Windows Phone and Nokia (and the Steve Ballmer at BlackBerry World thing was little more than a PR stunt). It won't be Co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis buying back the company and going private again (though I'm sure they'd love to do that). It won't be any other company seriously stepping in with a bid. It'll be Google. Keep reading for my logical reasoning.

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Reflecting upon Thursday evening's RIM Q1 Results and earnings call, the pieces finally fell into place so we can more accurately tell the story of why it is taking so long for RIM to bring the BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930 and other next-generation BlackBerry Smartphones to market.

On the historic call, which featured both Co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis delivering the results commentary and tag teaming the Q&A period, the following was what Mike had to offer in regards to the lull in new BlackBerry phones:

We were already well down a development path to the next-generation BlackBerry handsets when we realized that in the US the features and performance arms race demanded that we upgrade the chipset and port BlackBerry to a higher-performance platform. This was an engineering change that affected hardware and software timelines and pushed out entry into carrier certification labs.

It's only two short sentences, but if you've followed the BlackBerry development path for a few years there's a lot you can gather from them. Specifically, Mike is saying that devices like the new BlackBerry Bold 9900 at their design inception were not originally intended to get the 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset that they are going to launch with. That makes sense considering we've been hearing about devices like Magnum and Onyx III since before that chipset even existed.

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Maybe it's just because I blog about BlackBerry so am continuously typing it out and worrying about post headlines and tagging articles and site organization and visitors easily finding information about the device they own quickly, but I'm finding it **really** annoying that RIM decided to abandon/ignore the unified naming convention on their upcoming touchscreen BlackBerry Bold to be both the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and BlackBerry Bold 9930 without adding in an extra word to the name that encompasses both new models.

With the BlackBerry Curve 3G and BlackBerry Pearl 3G, RIM did the right thing in my opinion - they made it clear to owners that they had a uniquely different device from previous generations, and gave it a name that refers to multiple devices within that generation of device (the Curve 3G 9300/9330 and Pearl 3G 9100/9105). But for the new Bold now, everytime I want to talk about it in a manner that talks about both the GSM and CDMA variants of the device, I need to refer to both the Bold 9900 and Bold 9930 (If I just say 9900, I'm technically excluding the 9930... though I could say Bold 9900 Series... but that's not really an official name either).

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Thought Piece: Connecting the dots after BlackBerry World 2011...

[ youtube video link for mobile viewing ]

With BlackBerry World 2011 now behind us, it's time to reflect upon all the news and things we saw. One of demos that really blew me away was of native email and PIM running on a BlackBerry PlayBook. Yes, we knew RIM said it was coming, but I was SHOCKED to actually see it in action. At first I honestly thought RIM was faking it. For the life of me I couldn't believe that RIM had already finished re-writing the email and PIM apps for QNX so they run natively on the PlayBook. Remember, these aren't just any old apps. These apps have to talk directly to RIM's Network Operation Center which means they have to be ROCK SOLID, just like native email and PIM on BlackBerry Smartphones today. We're talking secure and battle tested. These aren't just apps for RIM to quickly pump out and push live. Their reputation in business and enterprise rests on them.

Watching the video above I couldn't help but think how similar the native email and PIM experience on the BlackBerry PlayBook looked to that on a BlackBerry Smartphone. Then I had an ephinany. It looks like the same experience BECAUSE IT IS THE SAME EXPERIENCE. Instead of re-writing native email and PIM for the BlackBerry PlayBook, RIM is going to run the traditional BlackBerry OS on top of QNX via an emulator to power the native email and PIM experience. To the user the actual email and PIM apps will look good and feel 100% native and the performance should be totally fine as we see in the video, but in reality it'll actually be the traditional BlackBerry OS running behind the scenes to deliver this experience (as pointed out in the comments, jump to 1m11s in the video to see the BB6 styled radio off indicator in the app). You won't see the BBOS, but it'll be there. At least for now.

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I may not work for Research In Motion, QNX, The Astonishing Tribe or Teknision, but a good UI idea is a good UI idea regardless of where it comes from. And this is a GOOD IDEA and I hope RIM reads this and implements it asap on the BlackBerry PlayBook. 

Without contention, the least liked hardware feature of the BlackBerry PlayBook is the power button (see our BlackBerry PlayBook Review). It's tiny and can be tough to press, which isn't a great thing considering powering on and off the display from standby is something that gets done a lot on a tablet. 

The good news is that you can do a pretty good job avoiding the power button on the PlayBook, especially when waking the screen from standby, as there is a sweet built-in gesture you can use instead. All you need to do is swipe from bezel to bezel, either top to bottom or side to side with one finger and the display will automatically turn on. Brilliant! Not so brilliant though is powering off the PlayBook, which still requires either a tap of the power button or you can simply leave it on and let it time out to standby (which eats a bit into battery life and isn't useful if you're putting the PlayBook back into a case so want it immediately turned off).

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The PlayBook's web browser should pull up your Gmail just fine... until the day (hopefully soon)
that RIM rolls out the native email and PIM apps

There is no doubt in my mind that the single biggest point of confusion and concern amongst the uninformed surrounding the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is the sentiment that you need to own a BlackBerry Smartphone in order to use a BlackBerry PlayBook (in other words, the PlayBook is an accessory to a BlackBerry Smartphone, vs. a tablet device that can stand up on its own). I've had friends, readers and my next door neighbor raise this issue with me, and last week I even witnessed WSJ's Walt Mossberg relay this same notion/misunderstanding when he was a moderator on a panel discussion at CTIA.

The confusion arises from the fact that the BlackBerry PlayBook, which runs RIM's new QNX-based BlackBerry Tablet OS, will lack native/core email, BBM and PIM (contacts, calendar, etc.) support at launch (however you can still use the web browser to access email/calendar/etc. from the web and there is nothing stopping third party developers from building apps for these purposes). Because RIM built their reputation as a mobile email powerhouse and has always enjoyed a leadership position when it comes to mobile communications (think BBM, BES/BIS), I believe a lot of people have mistakingly took this to mean that RIM made the conscious decision to permanently leave these features off their tablet. I mean, if anybody should be able to implement solid email on a tablet, it's RIM, right? So if it's not there, it must be some sort of sinister tactic to want to try and convince people to buy both a new phone and tablet and use them together only as a package deal, right?

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[ youtube video link for mobile viewing ]

It was still launch day when the folks at SoundMan Car Audio custom mounted an Apple iPad 2 into the dashboard of a Ford F-150 (see video above). The end result is definitely impressive and it makes for an interesting argument, as our friends at TiPb pointed out...

The iPad 2 is the perfect car audio and entertainment system, the way these guys have installed it, complete with charging, video out to rear screens and the perfect fit and finish has really got us thinking. Car manufacturers really need to stop doing customised LCD panel audio and sat-nav systems and just adopt the iPad 2. This should be an extra in any good car manufacturer's price list! It makes so much sense and offers so much more. 

It's almost time for me to replace my old clunker, so I've been doing some browsing in my spare time and have to agree that I'm not really sold on the car manufacturer dashboard LCD audio/sat-nav systems that are shipping on most automobiles today (at least the ones I'm looking at). That's a somewhat dumb thing to say of course, as a lot of these systems are powered by QNX which is now owned by Research In Motion and forms the foundation of the BlackBerry Tablet OS, but there in lies the opportunity!

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Do you think RIM should expand BlackBerry Messenger to work on other platforms?online survey

I've had a lot of interesting conversations this week concerning Kik, the BBM-like cross platform instant messaging application available for iPhone, BlackBerry and Android. Kik is still pretty bare in features, but it's quick, uses data (not SMS) and like BlackBerry Messenger has Delivered and Read confirmation of messages. The majority of these Kik conversations have focused on two key points: one, Kik's amazing growth (upon release they went from 0 to a million users in 15 days and continue to grow) and two, the fact RIM kiked them out of App World and shut down their push service this week (see Kik's plea and RIM's official response).

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Well this is interesting. According to a recent SEC filing and report by Business Insider, the information has come forth that it wasn't just HP who was looking at buying Palm, but also other big players including Apple, Google and Research in Motion. It's always fun to hypothesize on what big companies should do and who should buy who, and on many a CrackBerry Podcast we had the discussion as to whether or not RIM should buy Palm. Heck, back at WES 2009 I was on a panel discussion called Bloggers Predict the Future and i said then RIM would gobble them up Pac Man style (watch the video above... skip to 21 minutes for me).

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That's it. I'm done with BlackBerry Messenger stress tests. Well, at least I'm done with them for a little while. Maybe I'll give it another go once we have a new device rocking BlackBerry 6 and a 1GB of memory (Storm3 perhaps?!). While the Sprint BlackBerry Bold 9650 we conducted this BBM stress test on did run a LOT smoother throughout the process than the Bold 9000 we did our original stress test on, at the end of the day the flood of thousands of contact requests, maxed out BBM contact list and hundreds of open chats seemed to be just a little more than the 9650 and the BlackBerry Operating System could handle. 

Below you'll find the video highlight reel of the BlackBerry Messenger madness. I chopped it down to 10 minutes from about 90 minutes of recorded footage (apologies for some of the blurry bits - learning to use a new camera and apparently don't know how yet). You'll see how I approved two thousand contacts, the device bricked and then how I persevered to max out the contact list yet again and tested out a broadcast message (didn't go so well) and contact list backup. It was fun and stressful all at once.

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If you added me before and it's pending, please delete it. 

* pin and barcode now removed... contacts pretty much full *

* Update 3: Backing up contacts went easy peasy this time around. Calling it quits on the BBM test for now... look for the final "aftermath" post later this week. *

* Update 2: Things have come back to life and I filled up the contacts. I did a broadcast message. The device locked up for five minutes (I guess while sending the data out to every contact??) and then it came back to live so I could use it again... though when I opened up BBM again everything was blank. Doing a battery pull then we'll test the contacts backup *

* Update: Man, I think this device might be toast now. In re-posting my pin and getting a quick flood of contacts, the device is locking up. I've had to do three battery pulls in a row. Not sure what's going on but it's not liking something. I've pulled my pin and barcode. Going to give it some time without being bombarded by BBM requests to see if it comes back to life. *

Finally.. an update to our BlackBerry Messenger Stress Test 2 that I started back on May 26th on my BlackBery Bold 9650! I've been slacking on posting an updating because... well... while things started out smooth, they then took a frustrating turn for the worse. I posted my device pin here to blogs and as somewhat expected, got flooded with requests. BlackBerry Messenger 5.0 caps out at around ~2000 contacts, so I maxed that out fairly quick. [side note:  If you added me as a contact and are still pending, please just delete me and don't take offense - I'd love to approve you, but unfortunately I'm still waiting for RIM to make me a CrackBerry Kevin version of BBM that has an "approve all pending requests" option and can take 10,000+ contacts before it caps out. ] The good news was/is that when I reached the maximum capacity of allowed contacts, the device itself was still running fine. With my BlackBerry Bold 9000, the device was completely unusable with so many contacts added - constant hourglassing and the device slowed to a crawl due to lack of memory. However, right after I posted an update to the original blog post saying that the Bold 9650 seemed to be managing a full BBM list quite nicely (still running fast and smooth), my device spontaneously rebooted and went into an endless reboot cycle (flash read error). Bricked. 

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Add me to your BlackBerry Messenger contacts! Scan my barcode below or add me via pin: 32181312

* Be sure to read the updates below!! *

It was back in October of 2009, upon the release of BlackBerry Messenger 5.0, that we had the whacky idea to put the new BBM 5.0 to a test to see just how many contacts and active conversations it could handle (see the original BBM Stress Test). For the test, I used my personal BlackBerry Bold 9000 which proved to be a bit of a disaster - with the Bold 9000 only shipping with 128MB of internal memory leaving around 30MB free for running apps, the device became completely unusable as we got slammed with over 10,000 BBM requests. With patience, I did manage to approve just over 2,000 contacts before the Max # of Contacts Reached message popped up but actually trying to use the device at that point resulted in the continuous appearance of the hourglass of death and/or javascript exception messages. In the end we proved BBM 5.0 could handle more than previous versions, but that the Bold 9000 crumbled under the demand of a hugggge list of contacts and pending requests. It was really the device we stress tested rather than BBM itself.

Enter the BlackBerry Messenger Stress Test part 2... This time around we're using the just-released BlackBerry Bold 9650 for the experiment. The newest Bold boasts 512MB of internal memory, leaving ~330MB of free application space. That's over 10x the free memory that the Bold 9000 had when we conducted our first BBM stress test. My hope with this test is that when we reach the max capacity of BlackBerry Messenger 5.0, that we're still able to fully use the device and carry on lots of conversations with our thousands of contacts. I'll be video taping the fun as it unfolds and update my twitter account (@crackberrykevin) on how things are going (recap video to come later). If you add me, I'll do my best to approve the contact request. 

Any bets on how this one will go?? That's it. Let's get it on. ADD ME. You can scan my barcode above or add me via my pin at 32181312. And spread the word. Let's see what this new BlackBerry Bold 9650 can really do!!

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