How many new BlackBerrys did RIM release yesterday? Two? Five? Seven? I've heard all three numbers bandied around the office today, and the confusion shows one of the ways mobile manufacturers like to pump up their product lines.
Let's take a look at RIM's press releases from yesterday.
The headline is, "Research In Motion Introduces New BlackBerry 7 Smartphones" (you can RIM's official pics in the slideshow below). That led to someone asking me, "did RIM introduce seven new BlackBerrys yesterday?" Well, of course not: "7" is the version number of the operating system. But before you laugh at the misreading, remember that a recent poll showed a significant number of iPhone 4 owners think that the phone has 4G, because, well, it has a 4 in it. (It's a 3G phone.)
So then you get to the second line: "RIM today announced plans to launch 5 new BlackBerry smartphones based on the BlackBerry 7 Operating System."
Okay. Five phones, right?
Not so much.
Two of those phones are the BlackBerry 9900/9930, which were announced in May at BlackBerry World. These are not new phones. The news is that they have specific carrier partners now, not that the phones are new.
So now we're down to three.
The "three" new phones are the BlackBerry Torch 9810 for AT&T and the BlackBerry Torch 9850/9860 for AT&T, Sprint, and U.S. Cellular.
But are the 9850 and 9860 different phones? That depends. RIM only provides one spec sheet for the two phones, and the only variation is in their radio layouts: one is GSM while the other is CDMA. (Of course, RIM also provides one spec sheet for the 9800 and 9810, which have pretty major differences between them.)
This "how many models" question comes up pretty often in the world of cell phones. LG released its Optimus One smartphone in CDMA and GSM versions as the Optimus T, U, S, M, C, Phoenix and Vortex. Some of these devices were physically identical, but they were tuned for specific carriers and came with their bloatware. At what point does that make them different phones?
This question isn't just trivia. It impacts how consumers see and compare devices. If the 9850 and 9860 are "the same phone," then the difference between them is primarily the network: you're comparing the experience on AT&T versus Sprint. If they're "different phones," one handset may very well be better than the other.
We've been treating every carrier variation of a phone as a different phone, because carrier bloatware seems to play a role in performance. The BlackBerry 8530s for Sprint, Verizon, Virgin, and MetroPCS are very similar hardware, but the consumer experience is different on each one. Yet many people would say that all of those are one product.
I'm not really reaching a conclusion here; just riffing. Would you consider carrier software variants of phones to be different models, with different strengths? How about devices that are the same except for the radio? Tell us in the comments below.