[C150J]

Hi guys -

Does anyone know if RIM intends on making a smaller Blackberry? I am familiar with all of the current models, but am looking for something the size of the old RIM 950... that would be excellent.


J.

[NJBlackBerry]

Since every new BlackBerry has a build in phone, I would be VERY surprised to see an 950 style BlackBerry ever again. That was a pager.

[PCW]

Having owned and used a RiM 850 and a Rim 950, I will tell you that they were not pagers, in the traditional sense of the term. Although sized similarily, they did not have true pager functionality. They were email devices, with very limited browsing and other capabilities (memo, calendar, tasklist, etc.).

In fact, because the 850 and 950 did not have traditional numeric paging capability, I continued to carry a real pager (from PageNet or Airtouch or SkyTel or whatever...) back in those days.

It would indeed be interesting to see RiM reintroduce a device in that size. I'm sure there would be a certain user segment out there that would have a need for a data only device, or to use it as a backup device on another carrier (other than your primary device's carrier).

[NJBlackBerry]

Thanks for the perspective. I had both the 850 and 950.
RIM got out of that business and has the mobile carriers sell devices for them. RIM has no interest in selling, maintaining and billing for BlackBerrys. They have the carriers do that. And the carriers pay a fee to RIM. The pager sized e-mail only BlackBerrys do not generate any income to the carriers. They are obsolete and will not be seen again.
My opinion.

[jibi]

the same business model possibly will be seen in the Wi-LAN/Wi-Fi RIM devices, which are the only devices RIM currently sells directly to qualifying customers, as well. it appears that RIM has the intention (not sure on the visibility) to release a UMS-capable device before 2007. i'm interested if this will be taking the place of the 7270 (and its as-of-yet-unreleased elder brother, the 8700w), or if this will simply be a Wi-Fi-capable model for carriers to release (considering the amount of money being poured into UMS, i'm sure that there was some pressure for RIM to release a capable model).

[NJBlackBerry]

I'm not sure how many 7270s RIM has sold. I've never even seen one outside of the demo I got years ago.