Op Ed- Why ‘FlipBerry’ 8220 Sunk and ‘FlipBerry’ 9670 Will Swim

I’m going to write an Open Editorial on why one ‘FlipBerry’ BlackBerry model plunged and another similar ‘FlipBerry’ will swim. The first BlackBerry is the Pearl 8220 and the other is the Style 9670. The 8220 has sunken to the bottom, while the freshly casted 9670 is floating, and will continue to swim. Hit the More button for the editorial >>

A few days ago I got a hold of my mothers old Pearl FlipBerry 8220 which has left me with this neutral feeling. No lie, the device is a BlackBerry so it is solid. However, it’s lacking in several departments. Looking at and handling the device, you expect no less. A strong sturdy built handset with a flash camera, dual screen, back lit keypad, led notifier, SD card slot and such. Heck, my mother’s device even passed the ultimate BlackBerry “Test”. It fell into water, a toilet to be exact. 24 hours later and a bag of dry rice, the 8220 was back up running.

At first, I heard no complaints about the device. It wasn’t until half a year later that the problems started to happen. As soon as I got a hold of the device, I then dealt with the issues myself. Extremely poor battery life, which is a rarity for a BlackBerry device. Excessive, automatic reboots. You know on elder devices, all of a sudden the phone would reboot by itself without you having to pull the battery. This and other small problems quickly became irritable, so something had to be done.

I decided to update the OS from the one installed. Come to find out, the 8220 runs 4.6.0.180 or so. After looking around for the latest OS I realized this thing doesn’t go beyond 4.6. It doesn’t even get 4.7 and 5.0 seems unreachable unless you are a BBHybrids VIP member, so they say.  Anyways, the latest “official” release that was spotted is at v4.6.0.344 released by Zain Kuwait. I now know why this Pearl 8220 has sunk to the bottom. It was a very bad idea to release a handset under a reputable ‘Pearl” line with no solid future.

Meanwhile, a few years later a new “FlipBerry” surfaced but codename: Style 9670. Unlike the Pearl 8220 with a strong brand name, theStyle’ needed some convincing to do. Launching with an official BlackBerry 6 OS, 512 MB RAM, 5 MP camera, Bluetooth 2.1, 8 GB memory card, full qwerty keyboard and more, the new FlipBerry fits right into the competition with the Torch 9800 and Bold 97XX as being the top BlackBerry device to be released. This device delivers right out the box. The Liasion has gotten up close and personal with a Style 9670 and produced multiple videos showing off the gorgeous flip phone from RIM.

So in sum, It was a very bad idea to release a BlackBerry under a reputable ‘Pearl” line with no solid future. The lack of software updates has left this device to sink deep and lost in algae, meanwhile the Style 9670 is floating at the top with the big sharks as it’s keeping up with evolution of BlackBerry. Check below for videos of the Style so you can get an idea of what it looks like. Hope you enjoyed my opinion. What is yours? Don’t forget to share on Twitter and like on Facebook!

Style external notifications video
BlackBerry Bold vs Style Webkit Browser Comparison Video
BBE Presents:BlackBerry Bold/Style Hardware Comparison Video
BlackBerry Style 9670 Hardware Review

*PS. If you want to know what happened my mom’s 8220, it got junked and she’s now a proud owner of a Pearl White BlackBerry 6 equipped Bold 97xx.