The upcoming Blackberry Bold 9900 and 9930 signify a huge leap for RIM; A company that until this point, has failed to capture the wider interest of the smartphone market. With the intruduction of the Bold 9900/9930, they hope to appeal to consumers by blending BlackBerry utilitarianism with dashing good looks and every feature including the kitchen sink. The phone was just made official at RIM's annual conference BlackBerry World in Orlando.
Where BlackBerries are traditionally modestly powered to preserve battery live , this one packs a 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor to power its 2.8-inch VGA touchscreen with a 287dpi pixel density (just a smidgen below the Retina Display). On the back is a five megapixel camera that also shoots HD video and inside is 8GB of internal storage with the option to expand via a MicroSD card slot. Also included is NFC circuitry which will hopefelly see wider implementation in the future. At 10.5mm it's RIM's thinnest handset yet, featuring a stainless steel circumference and a fiberglass back, while up front of course is the full Bold QWERTY keyboard that the BlackBerry users out there will know and love. The 9900 supports HSPA+ connectivity for theoretical 21.1Mbps speeds which will no doubt be advertised as 4G by the American carriers, while the 9930 is the world variant, adding dual-band CDMA and quad-band GSM to the mix, and both do 802.11a/b/g/n along with Bluetooth 2.1. Both, quite naturally, include the new BlackBerry 7 OS , including a faster browser and voice-activated search. Release has been pegged at Q2 for some time now, but recent rumors suggesting it would see a June-July launch have been pushed back to August.
Being entirely partial to BlackBerry myself, I can hardly wait for this phone! I've been reading every article, rumor and forum post I could find waiting for it to be officially announced... I even called Bell last month to negotiate my contract renewal in anticipation of its release. So, to the Android and iPhone fanboys... What do you think?
