Research in Motion Leaks New BlackBerry OS

Make no mistake about it, it's never accidental these days. Crackberry.com reports that the latest, hottest BlackBerry operating system (OS) has "leaked" out of the Research in Motion (RIM) enclave in Waterloo, Ontario. Like RIM didn't make it available deliberately in order to get a lot of free field testing done? Anyway, there's a version for the BlackBerry Curve and the BlackBerry Bold (which of course already work brilliantly well with their current OS versions). Business users are well advised to wait until the uber-geeks out there have downloaded, tested and pronounced these beta OS versions safe before messing with their own BlackBerry's. Amazon.com has a bunch of Curves and a bunch of Bolds.

Palm's last stand?

Last week Elevation Partners, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based private equity firm was generous enough to give Palm another $100 million dollar cash infusion. This was in addition to the $325 million that they gave earlier last year bringing their equity stake to over 25% ownership of the company. Palm has been struggling lately as sales of the Treo device have been tanking - shrinking 13% last quarter and reported a net lost of $506 million. Palm is basically at the mercy of the cellphone carriers who ultimately decide which devices that they will be carrying. Apple's iPhone and various Blackberry models in the cellphone space are a tough act to follow so all eyes are on January's CES show in which Palm is to debut their new OS named Nova. The one bright spot that Palm has is the current user base of approximately 8 million Treo users that the new OS could be targeted to. Does the Treo interest you? Check out these Palm devices.

Blackberry Curve 8900 Launches in UK and Canada

The latest and greatest Blackberry has launched in the UK today via T-mobile. The GSM unit launched in Canada last week on the Rogers network. I managed to play with a demo unit last week and I must say that I'm very impressed and it is a nice update to the Curve series. It is a cross between the old Curve and the new Bold. More information can be found at blackberry.com

Dell To Produce Smartphone

GigaOM are reporting that Dell are looking to produce their own Smartphone. In an interview with Michael Dell, they discussed all sorts of tech, from smartphones, MID's and his management of Dell.

Meizu CEBIT Booth Briefly Shut Down

German Police have closed down the Meizu Booth at CEBIT, early assumptions were that the cause was an Apple led dispute over the Familiar UI. It turns out that the closure is due to the use of an unlicensed MP3 codec, which constitutes a Patent violation and this resulted in the seizure of the offending products by the German Police. The booth was later open for action but without the offending media player. The Phone however was on display after the booth reopened.