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When impassioned discussions of smartphone operating systems come up around the dinner table throughout the land (what, doesn’t EVERBODY discuss mobile tech at family dinners?), there is a certain awkward truth that no one likes to mention. Namely that the BlackBerry OS, once you’ve read all your emails, is crap for apps and web browsing. RIM has been admitting that lately and promising some solutions, including an “iPhone Quality” web browser by the end of the year. In our household we have been scoffing at that promise over brandy and cigars. There was no way RIM would be able to create and deploy such an application in just a few months. Scoff, scoff and double scoff.

However, it seems we scoffed too soon. Taking a page from Microsoft’s playbook, RIM decided to go with “If you can’t beat em, BUY em” and purchased Torch Mobile, makers of a well respected WebKit based mobile browser called Iris (as reviewed HERE by Marilyn in it’s WinMo version). No financial details of the sale have been disclosed.

Torch has the following to say on their website…

Torch Mobile is excited to announce that our company has been acquired by Research In Motion (RIM), one of the most renowned mobile technology companies in the world. Our team of developers will join RIM’s global organization and will now be focused on utilizing our WebKit-based mobile browser expertise to contribute to the ongoing enhancement of the BlackBerry® platform.

If you wish to get your hands on the Windows Mobile version of the Iris Browser, I suggest you download it HERE while the downloading is good…who knows how much longer it will be available for Windows Mobile.

Congrats to both Torch Mobile and RIM…he who scoffs last, scoffs best.

Zealot (476 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).