With WES 2010, this has been a huge week for BlackBerry. Last week in the days leading up to the event, many rumors arose and left us guessing. Thankfully, all of these rumors are now put to bed. Read on for this week in BlackBerry.

New Devices:

To kick of the week RIM officially announced the Pearl 9100 and Bold 9650 smartphones. This came as no surprise to us BlackBerry addicts but it’s always nice to hear or see an official announcement. Shortly after, Sprint, Rogers and Telus followed suit and announced the devices they will be carrying.

RIM Officially Announces The Bold 9650 Smartphone

Rogers and Telus Both Officially Announce The Blackberry Pearl 9100

BlackBerry 6:

At WES, Mike Lararidis officially announced Blackberry 6 will be released next quarter! Later, an announcement was made that the only two current devices to get BlackBerry 6 are the Bold 9700 and Storm 2. This was exactly what I predicted in last week’s roundup. I’m sure there are plenty of people with older devices that are not happy about this, but RIM’s reasons go deeper than trying to make people upgrade their devices. BlackBerry 6 is a big step up from OS’s 4.6 & 5.0 and RIM will only put BlackBerry 6 out for devices that have the hardware to handle it.

On Tuesday at WES, RIM played a BlackBerry 6 video teaser. This video is a must watch, touting the all new user experience complete with the WebKit browser.

Super Apps:

This week at WES, the BlackBerry Partners Fund announced their 3rd annual developer challenge which will focus on Super Apps. Mike Lazaridis went into more detail about Super Apps as well. Click here to read my article.

The Future of BlackBerry:

At WES, Mike Lazaridis gave another keynote speech regarding where BlackBerry now stands and where it is going from here. Lazaridis spoke on stats, BlackBerry 6, Super Apps, BBM, new devices, the Webkit browser and more. Towards the end of his speech, Lazaridis introduced ‘Will I Am’ to briefly speak on BlackBerry. Click here to read GuruDaniel’s article and watch the videos of the keynote speech.

Leaks:

OS 5.0.0.591 leaked for the Storm 9530 on Monday as well. There have been very few 5.0 leaks within the last month or so. I hope this is all a sign that we will see some BlackBerry 6 leaks soon.

Conclusion:

I have loved all of my BlackBerry devices and have been happy with the improvements they have made over the past few years. I’ve grown accustomed to the BlackBerry interface, and for me, nothing else will suffice. After watching this weeks WES videos, I am confident that BlackBerry is moving to the next level by drastically “changing how people live, work, and play.” Lazaridis has also stated that BlackBerry 6 is “fresh yet familiar.” In my opinion, it doesn’t get any better than that.

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