Get your geek on

Given the spate of Android phones, 4G Apple iPhone leaks, and even laptop and PC manufacturer Dell entering the booming smartphone market (with the Windows 7 Phone OS, to boot) you'd think that the old guard would get wise to the act and come up with something better.

Yes, I'm talking about Nokia and Research In Motion (RIM). The former, it is safe to assume, will always have an edge in the lower end of the market and can, presumably, rest easy. One would think that's exactly what they're doing; what with the flop of the n97 and the x6 (the n900 has found a few takers with it's Maemo OS, but is still far too hefty), and the n8 is said to be riddled with speed issues even before it has been released - this comes with the much awaited third generation of Nokia's Symbian OS.

Research In Motion's (RIM) WES 2010 was expected to throw up a host of new generation phones. The Ontario based company has weathered the surge of rival smartphones since 2007 very well - managing to slightly increase it's share of the market and is currently hovering at about 20%. (The iPhone essentially ate away Microsoft's piece of the pie) With the Android OS now gaining popularity and seeing exponential growth in applications (and a v2.2 on the way), RIM was expected to launch a new breed of smartphone at it's annual conference. Fans and users - this author included - wildly speculated that there would be a new breed of Blackberry that would have a touchscreen and a landscape slide out qwerty keypad. Alas, this was not to be. Two products have been announced. The Pearl 3G is a poor man's 9700 and the Bold 9650 is a CDMA version of the same.

That being said, it is true that RIM had truly outdone themselves with the Bold 9700. There really is nothing much more they can pack onto a phone; nothing business related, anyway. In any case, the conference is only halfway through. While I will be waiting to see if there are any other new phones announced - which is very unlikely - I'm pretty sure that I will be joining the fray of Android toting nerds within, oh say, a month.