BlackBerry Niagara EVDO phone coming soon

BlackBerry Niagara, the latest from the line of BlackBerry line of smartphones, is getting ready. The BlackBerry Niagara will be an EVDO device, which essentially means even if you get it in India – through Airtel/Vodafone/Tata Indicom/Reliance outlets or through a friendly cousin returning from US – you wont be able to use even a fraction of its potential, until the operators named above start offering EVDO services, which is a CDMA-based 3G technology.

Photo: Blackberry Niagara EVDO, Thanks to Boy Genius Report

BlackBerry Niagara may come come with a 3.2 Mega Pixel (MP) digital camera with flash, AGPS for satellite navigation extended ephemeris and standard Blackberry Maps. However, BlackBerry Maps are of no use in India; so forget that. BlackBerry Niagara will also have a media player which can play MP3/WMA/AAC+ files and a video player which can play DivX/WMV/XviD/3gp files. The BlackBerry Niagara will come with Bluetooth 2.0 and Bluetooth stereo audio. The browser will be able to display HTML pages, though support for javascript and Flash applications is still doubtful. The latest BlackBerry will sport Bluetooth v2.0, Bluetooth Stereo Audio via A2DP and phone will also have RSS feed support.

Research In Motion which makes the BlackBerry series of phones is also believed to be making a GSM variant of the Niagara, which was initially codenamed Blackberry javelin. Both Niagara and the BlackBerry Javelin will look rather like hybrids of the BlackBerry Curve and the BlackBerry Bold.

The BlackBerry Niagara will be bigger in size than the Curve, but smaller than the Bold. It is part of the BlackBerry 900 series. Blackberry has not yet announced the final price of the Niagara yet. It is not final whether the Niagara name will be retained, or whether it will be replaced by a different name by launch.

The BlackBerry Niagara falls in the “Large screen family” of BlackBerry smart phones. It will have a QWERTY keyboard like others in its class. The Niagara will come equipped with a 480X360 LCD screen. It will have a Qualcomm MSM7600 processor and run EVDO Rev A on its Blackberry 4.7 OS platform.

Blackberry has been trying to beat the slowing demand in the economy with an ever-more appealing range of phones for entertainment, business and personal navigation. The latest in the BlackBerry series, the touchcreen Storm has been a hit, like many of its predecessors. Research in Motion is believed to be gearing up for the launch of the BlackBerry Pluto and the BlackBerry Gemini, two more smartphones. Interestingly, RIM decided against launching any of its frontline phones at the Mobile World congress in Barcelona, Spain.

The sad part of the story is that none of the latest BlackBerry phones  – including the upcoming BlackBerry Niagara and the BlackBerry Javelin – can be used to their full potential in India. India still does not have a 3G wireless telecom format. The Government of India has gifted limited 3G spectrum to telecom companies MTNL and BSNL which the government itself owns. These two telecom companies, despite their large subscriber numbers, have not been keen to launch new 3G enabled wireless products in their networks, which has led to very low 3G adoption in India. Private telecom operators like Vodafone, Airtel, Reliance Communications, BPL and Idea Cellular have to compete for spectrum in an auction process, which is mired in controversy and court cases. Until the path to 3G is cleared and the spectrum sold to enterprising private sector players, there is little use buying fancy wireless gadgets capable of operating at high data speeds, but have to crawl and huff & puff through decrepit 2G standards.