Remember that BlackBerry Thunder pre-sale we told you about a couple of days ago? Expansys, the site that had the Thunder up for pre-order, has issued a formal apology for the listing on its blog. Apparently, someone over at RIM got wind of the listing, (we wonder how) and ordered the company to take it down. Check the full text of the apology here:

“I have just received a call from a very irate PR guy at Blackberry to complain that we were breaking the embargo on the new Blackberry 9500 Thunder by listing it on the site for pre-order.

It was a big mistake on our part – sorry to RIM and sorry to anyone who got excited to think it was coming out soon – it’s still slated to come out towards the end of the year.”

What’s the matter RIM, feeling a little sensitive after a hard year of product leaks? We’re guessing this was a PR stunt, but that’s just our take on it.

[Thanks Bryan!]

Read

Expansys doesn’t seem to be in any rush to pull a seemingly large mistake from its UK and Irish sites, but we imagine they will soon enough. What exactly is the mistake you ask? Well a quick click on the read link will bring you to an Expansys page where you can pre-order the “BlackBerry 9500 Smartphone” aka BlackBerry Thunder. Beyond the fact that the image on their sites look like it was pulled off of the net and watermarked, we don’t see too many sites offering pre-orders on a phone that probably won’t drop for another four months. Either this is some kind of mistake and Expansys has jumped the gun, or this will be the first handset that Canadian messaging-master RIM launches a new handset in… the UK and Ireland. The specs listed on Expansys’ pre-order page seem odd, at least the little info that is there. 3G, quad-band GSM, OS 4.7 and so on. The site also adds Wi-Fi however, and makes no mention of a camera. No pricing info is up on the site and no hints are given in terms of their expected arrival date either. The BlackBerry 9500 is not listed for pre-order on Expansys’ US site.

UPDATE: Yep, Expansys pulls the Thunder pre-order pages from both the UK and Irish sites shortly after this post was published. Oops…

[via Electricpig]

Read