Hi

Looking at the 9700 on the Vodafone website and the software looks the same, but then on another forum i read that it might not be that different from the current models because there is a next generation of bb's coming.

Any idea?

Is it like cars where they have a facelift to freshen things up, and then bring out a complete new one?

Marley

The 9700 will come into the world with OS 5.0
So, it's a facelift, but good stuff.

Can't have revolution all the time. Revolution then a period of evolution then revolution again. That's how the tech cycle works. Look at the iPhone, iPhone 3G and 3GS. Its been evolutionary and feature adding. One of these days, they need another revolution when the platform itself becomes old.

Revolution for the Blackberry world came with the Bold and the Storm. Every other model that follows after that was evolutionary, and will be for a while.

What happens, in my opinion, is companies become complacent, Look at Motorola and now Nokia. They hate to change a winning formula and it was evolution after evolution and they're market share eroded. Motorola is now probably the most hyped phone since the original iphone with the two pending Android releases.

I think RIM could have done more with OS5 and the latest phones, for example, the 9700 really should have had a touch screen. The trackball is a dated interface and the trackpad, from the videos I've seen, isn't really better. Maybe a pressure sensitive device like the ThinkPad trackpoint would have been better so you can quickly scroll web pages as that's what consumers do as opposed to enterprise users getting mainly email on the device.

More than the other companies, I think RIM is in a tougher spot for phone and OS development. They need to keep the enterprise level security for which they are famous and yet open up enough of the device to give it the "flash" consumers what and the API developers need. I wouldn't be surprised to see OS6 be a corporate and consumer version.

Regards-Michael G