Along with Nokia, RIM has been one of the major mobile phone producers that has taken a bit of a backseat in recent years as they have struggled to adapt to the newly emerging touchscreen market. While companies such as Samsung and HTC have successfully adapted to the new environment, BlackBerry have been trying in vain to stick to their guns. Their first attempts at touchscreen phones, such as the BlackBerry Storm, were not particularly well received. For the Storm it was largely due to the SurePress system used in the screen although another major factor has been BlackBerry’s operating system.
RIM is now set to release BlackBerry OS7 with three new phones, the Torch 9860, Torch 9810 and the Bold 9900. The new OS is a complete overhaul of previous versions and the first that is most befitting of the current smartphone market. The Torch 9860, with its full touchscreen design, will probably be the best handset to show off this new interface although it has also been expertly implemented on the latest BlackBerry Bold.
The Bold 9900 is physically quite faithful to the original design and so will be quite familiar to use for anyone who has owned one of the previous Bolds. It retains the smaller touch sensitive screen above an iconic QWERTY keyboard and so offers the best of both worlds – touchscreen fun with applications from BlackBerry App World and a fantastic means of typing with the physical keypad.
The Bold 9900 deals out all of the usual BlackBerry communications – BlackBerry Messenger, excellent email support and of course fantastic social networking integration, which is of utmost importance for a smartphone today. The new OS also offers a vastly improved web browsing experience thanks to the inclusion of HTML5 video support and a speedier JavaScript compiler.
The BlackBerry 9900 will also be one of the most powerful phones released by RIM to date, with a 1.2GHz processor and 768MB RAM at the helm. The camera on offer is also brought into the modern era with 5 megapixels and 720p video. On top of this the Bold has a potential for 40GB when used with microSD cards so it is also perfect for people who like a lot of entertainment on their smartphone, with an excellent music and video player on offer.
While the original Torch has been one of the most successful BlackBerry phones in recent years the Bold series has always been hugely popular with professional and entertainment centric users alike. With the Torch 9860 and 9810 being such fantastic phones it is possible that they will steal the thunder of the new Bold, although the new and vastly improved BlackBerry OS7 will surely make this the most successful Bold yet put up for sale. Although we will have to wait a little while longer to get the BlackBerry Bold 9900 on contract the phone is available to pre-order from various retailers and should become available around the same time as the two Torch handsets.