Billed as the ‘biggest Blackberry launch ever’ earlier today we brought you news of three new smartphones from RIM. Each devices runs the latest version of it’s operating system: Blackberry 7 OS, the Blackberry Bold 9900, Torch 9860 and the Torch 9810.
The Blackberry Bold comes in two versions, the Bold 9900 (for UMTS and GSM markets) and the 9930 (which is for CDMA markets), otherwise they are the same handset. We had some hands-on time with the handsets earlier and here are our pictures and first impressions.
Described as the thinnest Blackberry to date, the Bold 9900 is just 10.5mm deep and with a durable stainless steel frame, looks and feels like a high quality product. There’s a wide QWERTY keyboard with shaped and angled keys, which felt comfortable to type on. Along with 4x faster HSDPA speeds, it’s the first Blackberry handset to include NFC.
Powered by a 1.2Ghz processor, the screen includes Liquid Graphics a new feature to all Blackberry 7 OS handsets, designed to be smoother, more fluid and more responsive touchscreen experience. It certainly felt very quick to use, when opening applications and swapping through screens.
The Bold 9900 has a wider keyboard than the Torch 9810. Both handsets boast an overall improvement to the browsing experience, it’s designed to be 40% faster at loading pages and faster JavaScript performance – more than the iPhone 4 according to RIM. We weren’t able to do a side-by-side comparison, and the WiFi system was far from ideal, but it seems fairly quick.
Set for launch on August 18th, we should be getting a sample of the the Bold 9900 over the next few weeks, we’ll bring you a full review as soon as possible.
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