RIM Announces BlackBerry 7 OS 129
adeelarshad82 writes "RIM announced two new BlackBerry phones with high-res touchscreens, 1.2GHz processors and a new OS that offers better graphics than BlackBerries had before. The new BlackBerry 7 OS brings the 'liquid graphics' ability and offers '60 frames per second performance with instant UI action/response.' What's unfortunate about the new OS is that rather than being entirely new, BlackBerry 7 is just an upgrade to the existing BlackBerry 6 OS."
Stock shows no change (Score:4, Insightful)
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There isn't anything there alright, it's a polished version of their old OS, which is years behind iOS and Android.
Bottom line is that Blackberry used to have good penetration into the consumer market, and now the only reason they have any revenue at all is the business space.
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it's a polished version of their old OS, which is years behind iOS and Android.
It's easier to polish a turd when it's old and dried up.
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Minor devil's advocate here:
RIM has one thing that is top notch -- security. Android still isn't there when it comes to keeping data confidential. There are third party apps which *support* encryption, but only do so if the Exchange server mandates it.
If BlackberryOS can do this, I wish Google can do the same with Android. It would be as simple as having a key which is stored in some NVRAM that isn't part of the filesystem which is XOR-ed with the user's PIN. Then the internal filesystem for the user da
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Re:Stock shows no change (Score:4, Insightful)
RIM *is* getting left behind, but let's be honest here. Countries where RIM lets the government read the emails are countries where everybody who provides email lets the government read the emails. RIM got headlines for being the last holdout.
Re:Stock shows no change (Score:4, Insightful)
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RIM doesn't have the private keys to decrypt the data you send through their infrastructure. They could provide it encrypted and the encyption could be cracked given a long enough timeline, but the whole point is that it is end to end secure.
This is like saying all your encrypted traffic going over ATT's backbone is arbitrarily viewable. Sure, the raw data could be, but the contents aren't.
This isn't hotmail or google where your data is sitting on their servers. Not sure why you are modded up for an unin
Correction (Score:3)
RIM doesn't have the private keys to decrypt the data you send through their infrastructure.
Not always true.
If your handset is using BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server), then RIM can't easily read your email. Each BES installation has its own private keys.
If your handset is using BIS (Blackberry Internet Service), then your mail can be decrypted by the service provider just fine. Most consumer Blackberry plans are BIS.
Access to BIS messaging is what Saudi Arabia et al. were after. I'm guessing they got it.
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You can't seriously believe that privacy-neutral states like US or UK do not have a backdoor into RIM infrastructure.
Yes, I seriously believe that the US government does not have a back door into RIM's infrastructure. They do not need a back door. With a simple "national security" letter, US government agents waltz right through the front door, take what they want, and prevent anyone from saying anything about it.
Reality is so much more boring than a good conspiracy theory.
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Lets be honest here, RIM lets all governments read user emails, it's just that in some countries it gets more publicity than in others. You can't seriously believe that privacy-neutral states like US or UK do not have a backdoor into RIM infrastructure.
And why precisely shouldn't the government read user emails if necessary?
Your right to privacy is over-ridden by questions of national security every time.
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The question isn't "why shouldn't the government read user e-mails if necessary".
The question is "why is there such a presupposition of necessity that a 'national security letter' forbidding the service provider from even acknowledging its use can be so easily (ab)used to access the private communications of citizens"?
The Fourth Amendment describes the right of The People to be "secure ... in their papers and effects" and requires not only a warrant supported by probable cause, but also specificity of what'
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What RIM cannot do is provide any government access to secured email that's attached to BES. And that's where governments like India keep repeatedly making threats -- but can't force RIM to do the impossible. (That is: obtain the private keys for each server running BES and use them to somehow provide email details to
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Only BIS users -- RIM can't hand the keys over for BES users because they don't have the keys.
Still, RIM only made the news because foreign governments could ALREADY read everyone else's emails, just not BB users.
HA they got all the bad press because they were TOO secure.
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Unless you're in a country where RIM let's the government read the emails.
But they don't do that at all, don't spread FUD, do some research before you make rubbish posts like that. The emails are encrypted using the company's BES encryption key, which RIM doesn't have, however they can identify the source and destination of emails and this is the information they give to the government who can then subpoena the company for the unencrypted information.
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Security at the expense of usability is not a feature I want.
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Security at the expense of usability is not a feature I want.
You're in luck! You can get best-in-class security *and* best-in-class messaging (read: great usability) by switching to BlackBerry.
Palm Deja Vu (Score:2)
I know -- it's so frighteningly like Palm -- even down to making a crippled version of whatever was hot at the time (a netbook for Palm; a tablet for RIM) that only work if tied to a phone of theirs.
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There isn't anything there alright, it's a polished version of their old OS, which is years behind iOS and Android.
Bottom line is that Blackberry used to have good penetration into the consumer market, and now the only reason they have any revenue at all is the business space.
Blackberry phones sell very well in the UK to teenagers and others who do a lot of texting, as they have a proper keyboard.
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The big problem is the PlayBook. First, it doesn't ship with any messaging/calendaring components - if you want those, you need to link it with a BlackBerry.
The second problem is, Blackberry Link only works with OS6 devices. If you're stuck with an OS5/OS4 device with no OS upgrade options (not available/corporate won't do it), a Playbook is
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a Playbook is nothing more than a web browser that can do Flash, but is otherwise just a toy.
My Android tablet is basically just used as a web browser that can do Flash, why does that make it a toy? Word processing, programming, spreadsheets, graphics editing or whatever, I do on a real computer anyway.
Why did they buy QNX? (Score:3)
They bought a good OS and now they are sticking with the old garbage. Sounds like internal politics is killing RIMs only way forward.
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Now you are just being unfair. They are also going to put it on smartphones that no one will care about.
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Re:Why did they buy QNX? (Score:4, Informative)
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To be fair (ish) QNX on the Playbook isn't really ready for prime time yet. It's better to wait until they've got those bugs ironed out before they risk their phone platform on it.
Now, why QNX on the Playbook is so bad, that's another question altogether. Maybe RIM thinks Apple has a patent on well designed UIs and APIs, and aren't risking a patent battle.
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What a waste of QNX :( It is an otherwise very good and lean hard-realtime OS.
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Older readers may remember the excellent QNX Demo Disk, an OS on a bootable floppy complete with windowing system, file browser, editor, and a proper web browser:
http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html [toastytech.com]
http://qnx.projektas.lt/qnxdemo/qnx_demo_disk.htm [projektas.lt]
Who needs live CDs?
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The core of the PlayBook's OS isn't bad at all. It actually works really well and feels quite solid. The problem is that the software stack layered on top of it is mostly incomplete at this stage. That stuff all takes time to build from scratch, and they didn't take the approach of throwing a boatload of money to a team hiding behind locked doors for a few years to do it.
Migration takes time (Score:1)
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Porting all from BlackBerry OS 6/7 to QNX will not happen overnight, so it will take time to go from BBOS 5/6/7 in the phones, and QNX in the playbook to a unified stack in phones and tablets...
Let's just hope that RIM does not go bankrupt before they finish the port.
SOP (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>BlackBerry 7 is just an upgrade to the existing BlackBerry 6 OS
[Windows] 7 is just an upgrade to the existing [Windows] 6/vista OS
[Mac 10.]7 is just an upgrade to the existing [Mac 10.]6 OS
Reviewers should no longer be shocked. It's standard operating procedure.
Re:SOP (Score:5, Insightful)
It is when the company just bought a new OS.
RIM bought QNX, everyone expected them to move their platform to that. BlackBerry OS is terrible, loads all apps at boot, etc.
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It is when the company just bought a new OS.
RIM bought QNX, everyone expected them to move their platform to that. BlackBerry OS is terrible, loads all apps at boot, etc.
Actually it verifies the signatures of all apps at boot. The only ones loaded at boot are the ones developed to have boot-time load components...
Having used the PlayBook, I do hope to see that OS on their phones in the very near future though, and will likely be sitting out the OS7 upgrades until that's available.
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More like "free" is better than having to pay $200 to get windows.
Who actually pays $200 for Windows? Most people get it bundled with an OEM computer where the OEM is probably paying 20-30 bucks because of a volume license.
Some linuxes, like puppy, run in only 0.06 gig of RAM so no need to waste money upgrading perfectly-good hardware.
Sure as long as you have almost no applications installed and are doing next to nothing with your computer. Seriously, you can dumpster-dive core2duo systems with multiple gigs of RAM so trying to dust off some crappy 15 year old computer to run puppy linux on it is a waste of time.
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Some linuxes, like puppy, run in only 0.06 gig of RAM so no need to waste money upgrading perfectly-good hardware.
Sure as long as you have almost no applications installed and are doing next to nothing with your computer.
I can install a zillion LXC virtualized containers on my $100 desktop from surpluscomputers. Well, I've never tried more than 10 or so Debian clients so I don't know. If each virtualized linux costs me a couple dozen megs I'm all good. If each virtualized Win7 costs me a gig and $200 then I'm not all good.
Having a dozen or so virtualized hosts in a box is as much fun as a barrel of monkeys.
You put your quagga on each virtual host, link the virtual hosts using weird arrays of virtual bridges, and go BGP i
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> Who actually pays $200 for Windows?
Well, anyone who wants to upgrade from Home Starvation edition, or wants to (or is forced to) upgrade to the next major release.
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>>>>>Some linuxes, like puppy, run in only 0.06 gig of RAM
>>
>>Sure as long as you have almost no applications installed and are doing next to nothing with your computer.
Clearly you've never tried Puppy Linux.
It runs inside RAM (no hard drive thrashing)
and so too do the programs.
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The /. MOTD seems to be stuck at that one.
Re:SOP (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd like to think RIM have a chance now that they're finally making some noteworthy changes to the hardware, but it's also entirely possible they're simply too late to the latest-generation smartphone party. If they managed to switch to the QNX platform on their phone devices I bet the investors would be much happier.
I really wonder, though, if they won't just cease making phones and tablets altogether and roll full Android support into BES for corporate environments. Better do it before Google makes a corporate management platform, though! :)
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I have to say.
I used to have till recently a Blackberry 8330 on the Sprint network.
About 6 month ago I moved to a Sprint Evo phone.
I have 4G at home and at work so it seemed like a good move.
Overall I am happy and love all the geeky shit I can do on my Evo.
I do sometimes still miss the 8330 though.
The charge lasted forever.
I dropped on concrete hard enough that the battery came out at least 50 times.
I dropped on concrete hard enough that the battery and the SD card came out over 10 times.
It always worked. A
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I dropped on concrete hard enough that the battery came out at least 50 times.
I dropped on concrete hard enough that the battery and the SD card came out over 10 times.
You're the reason we can't have nice things. Please start taking care of your stuff.
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Was BB OS 6 a huge, completely new codebase from OS 5? Because OS 5 was warmed over OS4, which looked outdated when it was released in 2007(?). That's at minimum, 4 years of crufty code. IIRC, OS4 is just warmed over OS3. The huge problem with Blackberry devices is that they're running on the mobile phone equivalent of Windows ME. People, companies and everything in between have moved on. It sucks that you probably have a sizable investment in RIM stock, but this day was long coming. You should have sold al
In related news... (Score:5, Funny)
In related ancient technology news:
Gak the Caveman has updated his stone axe. The bindings are now made from hemp rather than mammoth tendon.
Grogg from the Urrg tribe has discovered a new method of tanning hides. This will help in those dark, dank caves!
Bleaaaa, leader of the Mmagb community, has found a method of creating fire by rubbing two stick together.
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COMMENT FAIL
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Gak the Caveman has updated his stone axe. The bindings are now made from hemp rather than mammoth tendon.
What a stupid idea - no doubt the tendon would be tougher and wear better. Not to mention the hemp could be put to ... better ... use. I'd ask what they were smoking when they came up with it, but it's pretty obvious what they weren't smoking in any case...
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Probably because the Mmagb community filed a patent on that process of creating fire.
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Just think of the aftermarket opportunities for replacement bindings!
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Circling the drain (Score:2)
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are android and ios Office and Outlook integration implementations tight enough to render BB's edge in those fields irrelevant? I know I can view docx, xlsx, and a few other formats on my iOS devices, but I imagined BB would have some sort of edge there. I also thought that BES would have an edge over vanilla Exchange connections over SSL. Huh.
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Sheesh when was the last time you did some word editing on a phone... the office integration is moot, good file viewers with some editing capabilities are available for all platforms, as for outlook not even windows phone 7 has outlook integration anymore if you need it there are sync programs for every platform. The only thing where blackberry really still has an edge to some degree is the exchange connectivity and that keeps them afloat businesswise.
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are android and ios Office and Outlook integration implementations tight enough to render BB's edge in those fields irrelevant?
In my opinion, BB's got no edge in those fields.
BB requires a BES if you want to sync your calendar wirelessly. Yes, BES Express is now free. You still need a box to install it on, and it's still another piece of software to maintain.
Droid will do a wireless calendar sync right out of the box. No extra hardware or software.
I don't have an iOS device, but I'm told that they sync up just as easily as the Droid does.
And as far as Office support goes... It works. I've opened plenty of Office 2007 and 2010
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Do enough people outside of the Enterprise world care?
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Casual users do not care about BES servers, Office file viewers, security and remote wipes.
They want Angry Birds.
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Casual users do not care about BES servers, Office file viewers, security and remote wipes.
They want Angry Birds.
Conversely, enterprise users don't care about Angry Birds.
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my old job subsidized my private phone with a healthy discount from AT&T as part of our perks.
I got Angry Birds and Enterprise support from Apple. I just wanted to know if RIM's got any legs to stand on anymore.
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It is not a new idea, but I think RIM needs to get over the handheld manufacturing business and build a solid mail client app (iOS and Android) for their BES server.
They will make money on the app without any doubt, however, retaining the revenue on BES clients will be priceless.
More and more corporate users are leaving their BlackBerry devices at home because their personal phones are more sexy even though their company pays their BES licences. One day these corporate clients decide the stop paying for BES
take off your android/apple colored glasses (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither iOS nor Android have rendered RIM product(s) irrelevant, and won't for a while. Stop spreading untruth.
There's one area in which iOS/Android cannot even touch the BlackBerry - security.
Of course, you know all that. And choose to ignore it and spread your FUD.
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Everything since then is basically a rehash of the same clunky keyboard and joystick interface.
They have optical trackpads, and before that trackballs, it's hardly 'clunky' given it's pretty much the same interaction method as you get with any desktop or laptop. Not everyone wants to be pawing over the screen to get things done.
Yeah, they have some sort of touch technology, all crammed into a tiny little screen because they have to make room for the physical keyboard at the bottom.
did you consider that not everyone wants a virtual keyboard?
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did you consider that not everyone wants a virtual keyboard?
+1 +1! With my Torch keyboard I can fairly trivially beat swype's "world record for typing on a touchscreen", and I won't even pretend to be a demon typist.
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The only people who get excited about new BBs are those in the enterprise world. That's about it. And that market is quickly shrinking and becoming saturated.
Take another look with your glasses on... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's one area in which iOS/Android cannot even touch the BlackBerry - security.
You're right. Google nor Apple, to my knowledge, has yet to sell me on "unbreakable" encryption and then turned around and made a deal with a foreign government to provide the tools to break said unbreakable encryption. Yep, my DroidX can't touch that. Well, I can call using RedPhone [whispersys.com], and completely encrypt my voice calls, use Orbot (Tor) to anonymize and onion route my phone's communications, and I can use any number of private crypto messengers.
Oh wait, did I mention that the folks at Whispersys.com (makers of RedPhone) also make WhisperCore 0.2? From the link: "Device and data security for Android. WhisperCore integrates with the underlying Android OS to protect everything you keep on your phone. This initial beta tech-demo features full disk encryption and basic platform management tools for Nexus S phones. WhisperCore presents a simple and unobstrusive interface to users, while providing powerful security and management APIs for developers."
So... what were you saying about BlackBerry faux-security again?
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You're right. Google nor Apple, to my knowledge, has yet to sell me on "unbreakable" encryption and then turned around and made a deal with a foreign government to provide the tools to break said unbreakable encryption.
Wow, what an impressive fail post!
You know that only BIS users were affected by RIM giving in, right? BES users still enjoy unrivaled security, as they have come to expect.
Even funnier -- the only reason RIM was under pressure (and made the news) is that foreign governments could read everyone else's communications -- just not BB users! (As I've already pointed out, they STILL can't touch BES users.)
So... what were you saying about BlackBerry security again?
That's what I thought. Pathetic.
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The problem is that the BlackBerry users would love to use Android or iOS devices.
I see plenty of corporate users all over the US switching to iOS/Android phones even though it is not endorsed by IT.
Granted that BlackBerry email is more secure but for how much longer?
RIM needs a solution that can keep them relevant, and it is not a new BlackBerry Bold with shiny new BB OS7, it is an iPhone or a (RIM) Android device with a BES client app.
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Question 1: How many Blackberry owners do you see listening to an iPod?
Question 2: How many iPhone owners do you see with a Blackberry?
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not wasting mod points on AC.
why? it's the comment that's of value, not the author.
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Seriously, when was the last time you talked to anyone who excited to go get a new blackberry?
My wife. She's had it for 3 years next month and it's been very dependable. I would prefer her jump to a 'droid, but all her friends have Blackberries and it's the BBM she loves.
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I hate them but I will grant they are dependable. Worthless pieces of shit for getting anything done at work, but no matter how many times I drop mine on the pavement, hoping it will quit so I can try and get something else, it keeps working. Kind of like that old ugly car. You hate it and want to get something better when it finally dies, but it unfortunately keeps on running. If that is all they have to recommend them then their business will eventually die.
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A colleague of mine had an iPhone but as she's one of the clumsiest people on earth the flimsy poser toy couldn't keep up with her. The Blackberry she has now seems to be pretty much bulletproof. I don't get this "RIM are dead". I see more people with Blackberries here in the UK than with iPhones. Or is this just another 'they're not doing well in the US so they're dead' a la Nokia.
"Just an upgrade" (Score:3, Insightful)
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I never use "Favorites", "Media", "Downloads", "Frequent" trays ever.
I don't use downloads, but I find the other trays very convenient. I agree that it would be nice if you could configure them in the default theme.
That said, if you really hate the trays, just install a theme that doesn't use them. There are plenty to choose from.
Unfortunate (?) (Score:5, Insightful)
What's unfortunate about the new OS is that rather than being entirely new, BlackBerry 7 is just an upgrade to the existing BlackBerry 6 OS.
Yeah, I was looking forward to replacing all my apps and app developers must have been really looking forward to supporting two different sets of APIs. Given the hate for "forward" Android fragmentation (i.e. apps that require Android >= X.Y) I can't imagine how much fury would befall RIM if they "backwards" fragmented by making an entirely-new OS.
I'm not saying that total-rewrites are always wrong but they have to be damn well justified (WinMo6.5 comes to mind) because they incur a huge cost on both the rewriters and the entire ecosystem. Those asking for an 'entirely new' OS need to be careful what they wish for.
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No offence, but do you even write for mobile devices?
I write code for both Android and BBOS, and I have to say that supporting Android's "fragmentation" included 0 work from me.. I've tested it on about 10 devices (including the Xoom, oddly enough) and it worked correctly in all of them with no changes.
I am also developing an app for BBOS4.6 (yes, an old version, to try and get some good exposure), and it does not work the same AT ALL in 4.7, 5.0 and 6.0. Each version has glitches, even different devices (i
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give me some attention!! (Score:1)
Too fast (Score:1)
Blackberry and wi-fi (Score:1)