RIM BlackBerry Bold 9700 announced

Bonnie Cha | Oct 22, 2009

On Wednesday, Research In Motion unveiled its newest smartphone, the RIM BlackBerry Bold 9700. It will replace the original BlackBerry Bold 9000, which debuted in November 2008, and offers a sleeker design, double the Flash memory, and updated features.

The most noticeable difference is the smartphone's size. The Bold now measures 109 x 60 x 14.1mm and weighs 122g compared with the original Bold's 114 x 66 x 15mm and 136g. It's comparable in size to the RIM BlackBerry Tour 9630, and in fact, the two share the same 2.44-inch HVGA (480 x 360) display and have similar 35-key QWERTY keyboards.

However, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 replaces the trackball navigator with the touch-sensitive trackpad, which was first introduced on the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520. For those who fear change, you should rest easy knowing that we found transition from trackball to trackpad to be quite smooth, since the latter is extremely responsive.

The Bold 9700 is equipped with a 3.5mm headphone jack and features a slightly revamped leatherette back. Overall, RIM is hoping the sleeker design will appeal to both men and women, since the BlackBerry Bold skewed a bit more to the masculine side.

The BlackBerry Bold 9700 offers more than cosmetic changes, however. The smartphone is equipped with a next-generation 624MHz processor and has double the Flash memory at 256MB (expandable up to 32GB via the microSD slot). Like the recently announced BlackBerry Storm 2, the Bold will run BlackBerry OS 5.0, which brings such improvements as threaded text messaging and a faster browser and BlackBerry Maps application. The camera has also been upgraded from 2 megapixels to 3.2 megapixels.

The Bold 9700 is a quad-band GSM phone that also integrated Wi-Fi with UMA support, Bluetooth, GPS/A-GPS, and 3G support (UMTS/HSDPA 800/850/1900/2100; UMTS/HSDPA 900/1700/2100). RIM expects the BlackBerry Bold 9700 to be available from carriers worldwide starting in November.

Via CNET News

Filed under: Mobile Phones
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