BlackBerry Bold 9900 Already For Sale In Canada? [Update]

Intrigued by the BlackBerry Bold 9900, with its new BBOS 7, but don't feel like waiting any longer before you get the chance to pick up one for yourself? Make for the Great White North, then, as the 9900 appears to be launching early, with reports coming from people who have been able to already buy of handsets, in addition to updated availability appearing on several websites.

Check out the site for a retailer like Best Buy, and you may find the Bold 9900 already listed as up for sale. The phone's page has its release date marked as today, August 9. Strangely, the page also states "this product is not available for shipping", and there's no mention of being able to pick it up in stores. Future Shop doesn't have the smartphone available for order online, but its site does make it look like it's for sale at retail locations. 

Rogers stores apparently have stocks of the Bold 9900 on-hand, but aren't supposed to be selling the handset just yet. A combination of luck and persistence might just pay off, though – Kevin from CrackBerry was able to snag the four 9900s pictured above. The rest of us will have to keep waiting, though for not very much longer now.

Update: Rogers will officially start selling both the Bold 9900 and Torch 9810 on August 10. 

Nokia Plans Halting Symbian, Feature Phone Sales In North America

Nokia recently confirmed that its plans for the N9 don't include countries like the US or the UK. It explained that its process for deciding which phones see releases in which areas is dependent partially upon what other devices it has or is planning to release there, considering what the repercussions for sales might be if it has multiple phones competing against each other. What we didn't realize at the time is the full extent of this effort by Nokia to segregate sales of its phones; the company just revealed through the president of its US branch that North America is going WP7-only so far as Nokia is concerned, with no more sales of Symbian, S40, and feature phones.

When discussing the company's plans to transition from Symbian to Windows Phone 7 as its primary smartphone platform, Stephen Elop's comments about continued support for Symbian software had us thinking that the company was planning to continue releasing Symbian hardware for at least the next few years. That may be the case for some markets, but North America won't be among them.

The plan is to make North America the nexus of the company's future, and that means having laser-focus on Microsoft's platform. Anything else is a distraction; Nokia seems to realize that selling a bunch of mid-to-low-tier phones isn't going to keep the company afloat. As far as Windows Phone is concerned, Nokia will design hardware with the North American smartphone user in mind, and then export it to the rest of the world.

It's a bold move Nokia's planning to undertake, but it seems to full understand the stakes. As Nokia's Chris Weber said, "the reality is if we are not successful with Windows Phone, it doesn’t matter what we do." 

Nokia Spells It Out: No N9 Plans For US Nor UK

We've been wondering what Nokia's plans for the MeeGo-powered N9's release would be since seeing in late June a webpage the company had put up for users to request information on the N9's release in their countries. While a couple dozen made the cut, some very notable exceptions had us wondering if Nokia was planning a limited release of the N9, so as not to compete with its own plans for Windows Phone 7 hardware in those absent countries. Now the company has confirmed its intentions, stating unequivocally that it has no plans for a US nor UK release.

Responding to inquiries about plans for bringing the N9 to the US, the company explained, "Nokiatakes a market by market approach to product rollout, and each country makes its own decisions about which products to introduce from those available. Decisions are based on an assessment of existing and upcoming products that make up Nokia's extensive product portfolio and the best way in which to address local market opportunities." 

That sounds an awful lot to us like what we were thinking about the N9 staying off Nokia's WP7 turf. The good news is that the pentaband UMTS radio means that it will be capable of operation on many GSM carriers (why can't ALL smartphones have such equipment?), including both AT&T and T-Mobile in the States, should you choose to import the N9. 

Apple To Release iOS 5 Beta 6 On Wednesday, August 17th?

Knowing when Apple will release their beta versions of any iOS update, or any software update for that matter is close to impossible. Now it seems this time things have turned more close than impossible as some sources of 9To5Mac were able to predict this Saturday's release of iOS 5 Beta 5 after skimming through some code. These same sources are now confirming that this same code is now pointing to a release of iOS 5 Beta 6 this next Wednesday, August 17th.

We're not really sure what to expect on Beta 6, since Beta 5 was more of a bug fix release. Probably the only major enhancement was giving MobileMe users that are currently in the DeveloperProgram the opportunity to migrate their account with iCloud, and some leaks leading to enhancements in speech-to-text. What's most interesting about all this is noticing how Apple is approaching the updates on a schedule, and it makes us wonder why. Let's hope this means they're on a tight schedule to release the full OS sooner than we think. 

Will Google Debut Android Ice Cream Sandwich This October?

After months and months of rumors, we're finally starting to get a sense for what Apple's plans for its next iPhone launch may be, with a September/early October release feeling likely.Google's plans for Android have been a little harder to nail-down, and so far we have been looking for Ice Cream Sandwich to hit the scene sometime closer to the end of the year. A new rumor says that we may see ICS rushed out the door as early as October.

The relationship between Google and the tipster that offered this rumor isn't clear, but BGR says that he's someone with "knowledge of Google's Ice Cream Sandwich plans". According to him, Google's nervous with Apple's iPhone releaseoccurring so late this year, encroaching upon Google's end-of-year turf. The rumor says that Google doesn't want a situation where smartphone consumers have to decide between a new iPhone now, or waiting several months for a new ICS Android. As a result, it's supposedly looking to have the first ICS device available within weeks of the next iPhone. 

We're still not sure what hardware Google intends to launch ICS via, or who will be the manufacturer, so if we are looking at an October release for ICS (and presumably, the next Nexus), Google would need to start finalizing its plans, which will hopefully lead to some leaks, giving us a better idea of what to expect.