Okay boys and girls, sorry there were no updates today, but we are prepping for CES and packing for the long drive to Vegas.  We leave tomorrow morning and I will be doing some posting as we drive (we have a long drive due to road closures).  So, we will see you guys tomorrow in Sin City!!!

Berry Reporter Crew

The Verizon/Alltel merger will finally be finished come Jan. 9th.  This will clench the win for Verizon being the America’s largest wireless carrier over AT&T.  The deal called for Verizon to pay $5.9 billion for Alltel’s private equity and taking on $22.2 billion in debt.  Verizon Wireless has received commitments from 8 financial institutions to provide $17 billion.  This merger will bring Verizon’s market share to a total of around 85.2 million customers.

via BlackBerry Cool

*Thomas Update: I was in the middle of posting this news when Steve beat me to it haha.  You’re getting fast in your old age.  As we reported last week, the rumored date for release was Feb. 18th.  This confirmed official date is a little more to our liking .   Just wanted to put my words in, that is all for now.  Thanks for the tip BES*.

The Official Release of the BlackBerry Curve 8900 is February 11, 2009 on T-Mobile– a full week ahead of what we reported before. Thanks to a tipster who sent this in, I believe we are one of the first to report on this.

Unify4Life is the maker of the AV Shadow for BlackBerry.  In short, AV Shadow is a universal remote control system that allows you to control your home audio video systems with your BlackBerry.  This year at CES 2009 they will be demoing their new product Garage Shadow.  Garage Shadow is  the newest coolest gadget from Unify4Life that allows you to open your garage door with your BlackBerry.   This is something I will defeintely be looking into.  My BlackBerry is always just way more handy when I’m in my car, than my garage door opener.  Plus, I don’t have to worry about my garage door opener getting stolen out of my car.

Check out the video and tell us what you think.

If you want more info on the AV Shadow, check out this link.

via CrackBerry

All right ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, CES 2009 is in 4 days and we are getting psyched for it!  This will be the first time I will get to attend the biggest electronics show of the year, but not my last.

Myself and Stephen will be there representing ourselves as Berry Reporter.  This is our first big event where we will get to meet some contacts and hopefully make some new blogger friends.  Oh yeah, we will also be covering the news haha.  We will be constantly posting live all day from the Jan 8th to the 11th, so make sure you get our feed, use Viigo, or just visit the site (p.s. the site is now mobile friendly, whoops forgot to mention that a week ago.  Vegas got the best of me last week, sorry).  Expect to see some stuff that aren’t BlackBerry, i.e. cool gadgets I find as well as non wireless stuff.  I will try and post up daily galleries of all the photos we shoot, just so you can spend your nights sifting through all that we see.

It should be a good week.  If anyone is in Vegas, whether it be for AVN or CES, and wants to meet up?  Shoot me an email at tmagsaysay@berryreporter.com or just use the contact form.

Let’s all say Happy Birthday to Stephen Hunter, the man that makes Berry Reporter possible.  He has been one of my best friends for over 15 years, and business partner for like 8.  We should all take a second to throw a comment his way!  I am still currently trying to get a hold of that SOB, so if you are reading this Steve, call me!

Ever wonder why you get less bars on your 2G BlackBerry (all except the Bold on AT&T) then you did before? While AT&T previously used the 850 MHZ band primarily (which offers far better signal strength and better reception indoors), they have moved it over to 1900 MHZ band and started to use the 850 MHZ band for 3G in some areas.

This can leave customers who are out of their 30 day return period, without the proper signal strength they used to get. According to OFB, Customer Care is advising customers to upgrade their phone to 3G phones at the customer’s expense or to terminate their AT&T service. One Custom Care Representative did offer a one-time $200 account credit, but I highly doubt that’s a normal occurrence.

Via Open for Business

So, Engadget picked up a new rumor that was bound to come out in the CDMA world sooner or later.  With Verizon still fresh on the Storm, they really have no room this quarter for a brand new device especially since the Storm was so delayed.  Sprint on the other hand just launched the 8350i iDEN, but we won’t count that because that is for a very specific market.  So it seems they would need a new BlackBerry for 2009 and it’s gotta be the Bold.  This CDMA version of the BlackBerry Bold will come with the model number 9030 just like all CDMA BlackBerries.  The Bold is the replacement for the timeless 8800 series, so it should be a World Edition and should be a decent replacement an awesome replacement.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the 8800 series, gorgeous phone, brilliant keyboard, nice size (I like big phones, harder to lose and easier to type on), but it is no Bold.  The issue, however, with the Bold is that it does have a pretty sweet camera.  Yeah and what’s wrong with that you may ask.  Well the 8800 series devices were made to be the business phone, you know the phone that lawyers and business people are all walking around with?  Well in the case of the lawyers, they cannot have any kind of camera in the court room.  Including camera phones, so either Sprint will have to have options on the camera, the laywers are out of luck, or they make a CDMA cameraless Bold.  I guess we will just have to wait and see.  Oh yeah, and maybe Sprint will get this one out on time.

via Engadget

A few weeks ago we told you that Seidio, the makers of the awesome BlackBerry extended life batteries, came out with the 1600mAh battery for the Storm.  Well it was only a matter of time when we knew they would drop the 2600mAh extended battery.  It’s finally here (well it starts shipping January 9th, but you can pre-order it now).  This bad boy boasts a 90% increase in battery life than the OEM Storm battery!!  That is wild, and in my opinion, necessary for power users.  The Storm is a magnificent device, but with any touch screen,  touch commands eat battery life like crazy.  Yes, just as the Seidio Bold 3500mAh battery has that terribly ugly replacement door to house the gigantic battery, unfortunately so does the Storm.  One of the immediate draw backs of this inconvenience is that when using the phone in landscape mode, it will be thicker on one side.  Other than that, this battery might save some of you Storm users life.  It costs $54.95, but is totally worth it if you always find yourself needing more battery life.  Again you may pre-order the battery today, but it will not ship until January 9th.

Go check it out at SeidioOnline

Mauricio over at BlackBerry Rocks told me about this great new site called YourShortcut.mobi.  Basically it is a website that has lists to tons of mobile friendly websites.  The cool thing about it is that it is still very new so there are new found  sites added to it all the time and it comes with a BlackBerry launcher icon.  There are tons of different categories for websites and I’m sure more will be added in the future.  Here they are:

• BLACKBERRY SITES
• NEWS SITES
• SPORTS SITES
• TRAVEL SITES
• WEATHER SITES
• TECHNOLOGY SITES
• ENTERTAINMENT SITES
• SHOPPING & SHIPPING SITES
• PHOTO ALBUMS SITES
• HEALTH AND WELLNESS SITES
• RESTAURANT & FOOD SITES
• INFORMATION SITES
• STOCK SITES
• BANKING SITES
• SEARCH ENGINE SITES
• KIDS & GAMES SITES
• COMMUNITIES SITES
• ASTRONOMY SITES

Its a pretty nifty little site for those who only like browsing mobile optimized websites.  So go to YourShortcut.mobi on your BlackBerry browser and download the launcher.

via BlackBerry Rocks