According to BGR’s sources, RIM’s been playing with fire, “strong-arming several carriers, essentially forcing them to approve devices they normally would not move through the Technical Acceptance phase.” That explains a lot, doesn’t it BlackBerry owners?
As you know, manufacturers do their own internal testing on devices and software updates, and once they deem them suitable for commercial use, it then gets passed to the hands of carriers. Often the carrier decides not to push an update through – as Android owners know all too well – but sometimes buggy or just plain unfinished builds go live. Having owned several BlackBerrys over the years, I know all too well the pains of random bugs, and judging by many of the comments I’ve seen on Gizmodo from our readers, you do as well.
BGR’s report hasn’t been confirmed by RIM or any carriers, but the intel was passed to them by a “very reliable source at a major carrier.” One of the handsets RIM has forced this carrier to push through unfinished is supposedly the Bold 9900 – a phone which as yet hasn’t gone on sale, and probably wouldn’t if the carrier felt they could stop it.
So why aren’t the carriers standing up to RIM, if this is indeed true? And why does RIM want to sabotage its business like this, when its future is already looking shaky? [BGR]