RIM's Blackberry Bold makes South Korean debut
By Darren Murph 
posted Dec 17th 2008 11:08AM
posted Dec 17th 2008 11:08AM
It's a good day to be in South Korea. While your evil neighbor to the north has likely been importing BlackBerrys of all flavors for years now, it has remained essentially impossible to own anything other than an LG or Samsung handset in your own nation. Today, that changes. RIM and SK Telecom have finally come together to launch the BlackBerry Bold, with sales expected to begin before the end of the year. There is a catch, however: as of now, "only corporate customers will be allowed to sign up for service." Thankfully, the rule requiring cellular devices to "carry special software adapted to South Korea's wireless internet platform" will be axed on April 1st of next year (no joke!), which should open things up quite nicely for mere mortals. Dare we say it's party time?
I wonder what modiifcations were made for the South Korean market, if any. I had actually thought SK Telecom was CDMA-based, so this is a bit of a surprise.
SK has two UMTS networks (I should know, I've roamed on them with my Sony Ericsson!) and IIRC they've announced they're shutting down the CDMA network.
There are differences though, they don't seem to use SIM cards. Dunno if they're built-in to the devices or how that works.
They definitely use SIM cards. You've probably only seen phones that are still on the old CDMA network.
My sister went to Korea last year and when she got a cell she needed what they call a "USIM" (universal sim??) In any case, it's a SIM nonetheless.
I know this is sort of unrelated but any info on Blackberry Niagara? Been suspiciously quiet.
Engadget is saying about the WIPI as a mobile application plaform, standardized and mandataed for every personal cellphone by Korean government years ago, which finally go away April next year.
does this mean I can finally type in Korean on my blackberry now???? plz?
You can already type in korean and all other asian languages on blackberry. Just need to install the 'east asian' device software. Download it from rim and install with desktop manager.