by Robb Dunewood on December 26, 2008 · 6 comments
In an apparent effort to even make BlackBerry devices slimmer than the BlackBerry Pearl, RIM has patented a keyboard configuration that is… Well, it is about the weirdest thing I’ve seen come out of Waterloo in quite some time.
From the diagram it looks like this a modified SureType QWWERTY keyboard that you must flip out the sides to get the full SureType Keyboard…
It doesnt’ make much sense to me either. I personally am a big fan of SureType, however, if you are going to have to reconfigure your keyboard, why not reconfigure to a full QWERTY keyboard.
RIM, I am telling you… Just come out with a BlackBerry Slider.
[Via CellPassion]
You know that cool little feature that allows the iPhone to tell if you are holding it in straight up or on it’s side? Well, that is because of a little motion sensing device called an accelerometer.
Word on the street is that Research in Motion has a new patent filling describing such a device that can determine if you are holding your BlackBerry in landscape or portrait orientation? The “word” is in Italian and the “street” is in Italy so we we’ve translated a bit of the article for you.
The patent in question is a system that will allow Blackberry understand the orientation (horizontal or vertical), adapting human interface accordingly. The system operates in a manner very similar to the orientation sensor iPhone and iPod Touch, but the simple variation of the vision of content, in the case of Rim could also implement a change in the function.
As BlackBerry Cool pointed out, the FCC database doesn’t list this filing yet, so, we will leave this in the rumor mill category. With all the talk of slide-out keyboards and accelerometers, it sounds like some really interesting BlackBerry designs will be coming out…
[Source]
It appears that an interesting new patent by Research In Motion is circulating the internet this morning – oddly enough it’s to do with locking down device cameras. It was big milestone when RIM first released the BlackBerry Pearl, and in doing so broke the traditional corporate mould of “cameras are not secure in certain work environments”. We all slept easy however when the IT policies on our BlackBerry Servers allowed us to lock out the ability to use to device cameras and memory cards.
Because we have the ability to action these security enhancements remotely from the BES, there’s been some confusion as to what this new patent represents. Let’s look at the patent more closely – this proposes that you have a removable key that physically locks in to the side of a BlackBerry, and when inserted the camera is prevented from working. This seems simple enough, but when we can achieve the same result remotely using the BES server IT policies, why would we want something physical that is bound to get lost or break in the process? It could be aimed at businesses that have BIS users, but generally camera paranoia only comes with huge corporate entities, so it’s unlikely RIM would physically build something to service such a small niche. Time will tell, and we’ll keep you posted.
