Steve Szikora from Brantford Ontario Canada received a $26,000 iPhone bill from Rogers and needless to say he was PISSED. The bill came after only 3 months of iPhone usage and was clearly a mistake. After trying to negotiate with the robots in customer service, he went to the local papers who in turn, got the attention of Elizabeth Hamilton, director of corporate communications. She wasn’t about to argue over something that was so obviously an epic fail. “There is no debate, there is an error on his bill. We would like to apologize to the customer and correct the error immediately” she said.
[Via mobilesyrup]
For a device that should be released any day now on Rogers, the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 sure does have a lot of price points floating around. The accidental Pearl Flip promotion published around CTIA by Rogers indicated $150 on a three-year contract, while MobileInCanada got their hands on a Rogers Christmas promotion which shows a $50 price point, something that we told you about waaay back in August.
Now, our boy Troy at BlackBerry News has some screen captures of the inventory system at Future Shop showing the Rogers BlackBerry Pearl at a $50 price point and $350 unsubsidized (no contract or upgrade price point). If the Rogers BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 doesn’t launch at $50, BlackBerry Cool recommends holding off a few weeks until it hits that magic $50 number.
(via BBNews)
Sometimes news can come from the craziest sources: internal leaks, html sniffing, etc. Sometimes all it takes is a direct phone call! After friend of the site RogersDude69 tipped us off that Rogers had given callcenter employees a specific script to read when customers ask about touch screen BlackBerrys (i.e., the BlackBerry Storm), we just had to call ourselves and see what was up.
The audio below confirms that Rogers will carry the BlackBerry Storm 9500, and that we’ll see it before Christmas (hopefully in November)! Apologies to the extremely helpful customer service rep who was the subject of my ruse.
Click to listen!
So that’s Verizon, Telus, Bell and Rogers in North America. Where are Sprint and AT&T?
Good news for Rogers BlackBerry Bold users who have had a myriad of issues with RIM’s new flagship device (I’m looking in your direction, Kevin). Rogers has officially released an OS update for the BlackBerry Bold which reportedly improves device stability, battery life, web browsing,dropped calls, and memory management. You can find the download link to OS 4.6.0.162 below, and make sure to check out our OS upgrade how to as well.
Rogers Bold OS 4.6.0.162 Upgrade
How To Upgrade your BlackBerry OS
We were probably a little hasty a few weeks ago in promoting the launch of RIM’s new BlackBerry Upgrades website… probably because OS 4.5 still wasn’t available for most people. However, it’s just come to our attention that OS 4.5 download links for the BlackBerry Curve 8310 and 8320 are now available. Click the link below to download and spread the word!
Rogers OS 4.5 BlackBerry 8310/8320
(via BlackBerry News)
After a few setbacks and delays (damn you, CTIA), the BlackBerry Cool Podcast is back! It’s also our 40th podcast, which is some sort of milestone, I guess, and a good place to implement changes. We’ve fiddled with the format a little, added some music and a new weekly podcast guest: Fake Ted Rogers. The BlackBerry Cool Podcast will also now be released on Mondays (apologies to all those who enjoy listening to podcasts while raking leaves on the weekend).
This week’s podcast is a bit of a catchup, as we discuss the major news of the past month: the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 and BlackBerry Storm, and Rogers new BES/BIS plans and BlackBerry Bold price drop. Coincidentally, we also discuss why RIM will never make a BlackBerry app store. Whoops. In fairness, the BlackBerry Application Center is the perfect compromise between what we said RIM needs and what they would never do, so give us partial credit. We also attempted to talk about RIM’s stock and the economy, but cut it because we had nothing significant to contribute on either subject.
Downloading/streaming options for the BlackBerry Cool Podcast can be found after the jump, as well as links to all the relevant news stories. Enjoy!
Special thanks to our new sponsor, Rove Mobile!
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Read the rest of BlackBerry Storm, Pearl Flip, Rogers Plans and Parties (BlackBerry Cool Podcast) (
What, you think we didn’t have one before today? While we’re still not sure when you’ll be able to walk into a Rogers store to actually buy the shiny new device like Simon did, today still marks the official launch of the BlackBerry Bold on Rogers. In honor of this special day, we’ve decided to post our exhaustive review, if only to whet your appetites.
And boy, has this day been a long time coming: three years in development, three months since its official announcement at WES 2008, and three times the hype of any other BlackBerry release. The first in RIM’s next generation lineup of smartphones, the BlackBerry Bold has been labeled everything from an enterprise company’s desperate push into the prosumer space to a true iPhone killer. Most of the BlackBerry faithful are just hoping that it turns out to be a worthy merger and evolution of the BlackBerry 8800 and Curve device lines. This review will settle the debate.
Be forewarned, our review of the BlackBerry Bold is fairly large. However, we’ve broken the review down into specific sections for quick and convenient access to the information you seek. Make sure to post a comment to let us know if there’s anything we’ve missed, anything else you want to know about, and whether or not you feel RIM’s new flagship device meets the hype.
Enough talk! Behold, the BlackBerry Bold.
Read the rest of The Ultimate BlackBerry Bold Review
Now that we know what both Rogers and AT&T are offering in terms of pricing and plans for the iPhone, it’s time to compare. Rogers has released 4 new iPhone 3G-specific plans and they are the following:
$60/month - 150 anytime minutes, 75 outgoing SMS, and 400 MB data
$75/months - 300 anytime minutes, 100 outgoing SMS, and 750 MB data
$100/month - 600 anytime minutes, 200 outgoing SMS, and 1 GB data
$115/month - 800 anytime minutes, 300 outgoing SMS, and 2 GB data
Now lets compare these rates with that of AT&T:
$69.99 - 450 anytime minutes, (+$5) 200 outgoing SMS, and unlimited data
$89.99 - 900 anytime minutes, (+$5) 200 outgoing SMS, and unlimited data
$109.99 - 1350 anytime minutes, (+$15) 1500 outgoing SMS, and unlimited data
$129.99 - Unlimited anytime minutes, (+$20) unlimited outgoing SMS, and unlimited data
There is definitely something wrong with Canadian telco’s in that we don’t have the competition to gain access to unlimited data plans. We are all fully aware of the fact that Rogers, Bell and Telus are all sitting together in a conference room and shaking hands on not offering “all you can eat” data plans because it will make them tons of money. The Canadian courts seriously need to step in and break up these behemoths in the hopes of fostering more competition.