HomeResearch in Motion (RIM) has officially announced the release of its latest smartphone at the Engadget Germany event last week. This comes after the world had gotten wind of T-Mobile's preemptive announcement in the US earlier that it is carrying its first 3G Blackberry smartphone with the Blackberry Bold 9700 code named Onyx.
It was earlier said to get a SIM-free price of $599, but now with AT&T likewise marketing it, the price is $199 after a mailed-in rebate. Across the Atlantic, Vodafone UK already has the Bold 9700 on its website available for pre-order as early as mid-October with a delivery date starting on the 28th of October. It's free under a 2-year 35 monthly plan that offers 600 minutes, unlimited texts, free mail and internet browsing. Now that's a real bargain.
Getting it Right This Time
After a stint in the speculative online rumour communities under the Onyx name, the new Blackberry smartphone, at least in the US, is equipped for voice over WiFi and will make use of T-Mobile's HotSpot@Home service where its subscribers can enjoy the usual corporate mail, visual voicemail and the new UMA WiFi voice calls. The same UMA feature is expected to be offered elsewhere in networks that can support voice over WiFi.
Updated Features
- It's a quad-band 2G GSM/GPRS/EDGE on the 2G network and a twin-band UMTS/HSDPA/ HSUPA on 3G for that guarantees fast surfing and downloading over the net.
- In contrast with the trackball on earlier Blackberry smartphones, the new Blackberry Bold 9700 gets a touch-sensitive trackpad similarly used in the Curve 8520. This, in addition to a more tactile sculpted QWERTY keyboard on a trendy body measuring 109 mm x 60 mm x 14.1 mm that weighs only 122 grams
- RIM improved on the earlier 2.5' light sensing display with a few vertical resolution lines to give it sharper edge on its new 480 x 360 resolution and a more updated OS 5.0 right out of the box.
- Imaging is updated with a larger 3.2 megapixel camera with LED flash, variable digital zoom and video recording. Photo geo tagging is supported by its built-in GPS. Multimedia features get a boost with access to the Rogers urMusic app that allows users free downloading of music files as was like LiveNation concerts through the Wireless Box Office ticketing services courtesy of Rogers. There are the usual competent media players for audio, video and image files that can be synchronized with iTunes and Windows Media Player on your desktop for both PC and MACs. There's a 3.5mm headphone jack for your high fidelity headsets.
Internal memory is a modest 256 MB of Flash memory and a 1GB internal storage which gets microSDHC support for up to 16 GB and 32 GB once they become available.
