VZW is shooting for late August/September for the Thunder to compete with the iphone during back to school and x-mas sales.

VZW is suppose to release their Blackberry Bold version in January of 2009.

that's all I got

Before:

After:

While trying to resolve my data connection issues between the TomTom 720 and my Blackberry 8320 Curve, I ran across the beta release of the 4.5 OS from RIM. (since it is probably not authorized by RIM, I won't host it here but it took about 30 secs to find on the interwebs)

first two things I checked, video recording and youtube playback.

IT WORKS!!!!

now we just need to upgrade the BES so I can get full HTML emails.

new email design

video recorder interface

ABOUT

The image capture doesn't display the video but once I clicked the video link it started streaming in the media player.

it also appears that the cursor is now 8 directional or at least deals better with diagonal scrolling.

another sweet improvement

The color background to keep your dirty jokes from your personal account from being forwarded to your boss, are no longer the seizure inducing stripes but a solid color around the text fields

Not that I found any hidden GPS chips or anything else special but hopefully this may help someone when they are replacing their case.