I got official word from Sprint that the BlackBerry Tour will be released by them on July 12th. It will be available on www.sprint.com, 1-800-Sprint1, and via their business sales team so everybody should be covered. Looks like the rumored July 20th date was wrong…

The BlackBerry Tour will sell for $199.99 with a new line or eligible upgrade with a 2 year contract after $50 instant rebate and $100 mail in rebate. Business customers may be able to get even more of a discount through their account managers.

Preorders are not available currently but you can sign up for more info at www.sprint.com/tour

One of the features RIM really needs is a simple photo editing tool. CropIt steps into that gap for a single purpose of cropping pictures. It does not let you resize them which sucks but for $1.99 I guess you cannot complain too much. They also have a cool feature for OS 4.6+ which lets you press down in the upper left corner and then drag to the point you wish to crop. On the other hand you can just use the poor mans crop tool that we mentioned a bit back.

From the description:

CropIt is the essential photo editing tool for the Blackberry. Crop your pictures to the perfect size and have only what you want in the frame with no unnecessary background. CropIt allows you to change your pictures around before uploading them to social networking sites such as Facebook or Flickr. Don’t want to bother with the zoom when you take a picture? Don’t worry about it, take wide angle shots and CropIt will help you get the picture you really want. All upgrades will be free once you purchase initially!

Features:

• Crop any picture on your phone
• Customized save location on your Device or Memory Card
• Save to JPEG or PNG
• Quick crop with keyboard shortcuts
• Undo your crop and try again
• Preview crop area before cropping
• Open pictures right from the picture browser

I read the description for HazMasterG3 for the first time and it sounded like Robocop in your pocket. Their press release is so riddled with acronyms and mentions explosives and BlackBerrys in the same sentence. That is just a recipe to get any guy hooked on reading more. It is even DHS approved whatever that means…

I cannot really tell exactly what this application does but supposedly it helps you decide what to do when you find chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high yield explosive (CBRNE) threats. From the screenshot on the right it just looks like it tells you how far away you need to be to avoid the blast but still I just can’t get over the picture of James Bond in my head blowing up the bad guys with his BlackBerry…

I just love how the screenshot shows the sample threat as a “beer keg.” Supposedly this is meant to help our troops in Iran and Afghanistan stay safe so more power to them.

Check out the press release at this link and let me know if you have any better luck at understanding what it does!

Looks like Verizon has put out the number for no contract (month to month) purchases of the BlackBerry Tour. It will be going for $489.99 with no contract.

The surprising number is that the phone is going for $269.99 with a 1 year contract compared to the $199.99 for a 2 year contract. Weird that a 1 year contract bumps it down over $200 but a second year only brings it down $70… Let me know if you notice anything else!

Check it out at http://estore.vzwshop.com/bbtour/

Thanks to Brett for sending this one in!

One of my main sticking points about Wi-Fi on my BlackBerry is that it kills the battery when it is not connected to an access point. Say you used it at home and when you leave your house it stays on. Your BlackBerry will keep on wasting battery life trying to scan for a new access point. Currently there are solutions that will turn Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on and off based on your location and cell phone tower but Wi-Fi Disabler has a simpler function.

Wi-Fi Disabler will just turn off your Wi-Fi connection a set number of seconds after it is disconnected from your router. That way you turn it on manually and it will turn off when you leave your house. Personally I wish it would also turn on when you get near your home cell tower but hopefully that will be added soon.

Right now the app is on sale for $2.49 which is a decent deal but the regular $3.95 is a bit pricey for this one trick wonder but hopefully the developer, Ozzy Productions, will either add some more location features or keep the lower price. Otherwise Location Profiler, which is way more powerful, is a better deal for $5.99.

Check it out at this link

We mentioned the launch of the BerryReview On Device App Store earlier last month and it has been quite successful. Some people were having issues such as blank screens and weird menu behaviors but that is supposedly fixed in this new version 1.04.

To make up for the issues some people experienced Mobihand is extending the 20% off discount until July 4th. The coupon code is APPSTORE and works from the app. They will also be running a bunch of top selling Deal Of The Day for 50% off like: PeekaWho Email SMS Alerts, Par 72 Golf II, and NextAction.

You can pickup the update directly from this link or just fire up the App Store if you already have it installed and click “Check For Updates.” If you are still having any issues please email customerservice@mobihand.com and they will help you.

Jason sent me an email about the latest Storm beta available for the very popular BeeJive IM application. The new version is an update to their previous limited beta. I know quite a few people purchased this app and are waiting for a version for their Storm. I am not sure what is taking BeeJive so long but at least they are working on it.

What’s new:

• file transfers via link, you can now transfer files to buddies on all IM accounts.
• updated push when idle settings, you can now choose an email to use for push notifications.
• clock fixed
• various other bug fixes & enhancements

They are still actively working on other reported bugs but they are asking that you report any bugs you still find. This version is intended for the Storm only so don’t install it on other devices. You need to uninstall the old version before installing this update to ensure you don’t run into any nasty issues.

You can pick it up OTA at: www.beejive.com/stormbeta

Tashanna let me know that Hutchison has released OS 4.5.0.161 for practically every GSM variant of the Pearl, Curve, & 8800. This is not as new as .163 for the 8310 but its the latest for all the rest.

Download @ BlackBerry.com

BlackBerry Handheld Software v4.5.0.254 (EastAsia)

Package Version: 4.5.0.254
Consisting of:

• Applications: 4.5.0.161
• Software Platform: 2.7.0.105

NOTE: Don’t forget to delete the vendor.xml file located in c:program files>common files>research in motion>apploader to install it on a different carriers device.

via BlackBerry Rocks