Blackberry had plenty of small and big news this week with the announcement of the Apollo (Curve 9360) and their new touch screen endeavours to whet the appetites of Blackberry addicts. The newest mid-range RIM device seems the most interesting as it may no be as much of a heavy-hitter as it’s older brother (9850) but it still packs Blackberry OS 7.
Hands-on reports and a leaked tutorial show off the basic and unsurprising features of the phone such as: a more powerful touchpad (as seen in the tutorial), chrome trim around the edges and the standard micro-USB slot to make charging and connecting a bit easier. It has also been revealed that this model will feature a SIM card slot, which may mean that T-Mobile may be getting this device on their GSM networks sometime soon.
Next is some mighty exciting news, Sprint will be selling the new Bold 9930 this fall though with no official price announced. Considering the Bold 9900 will be selling for $300 on T-Mobile’s 4g network, the 9930 won’t be that much more. the 9930 does feature a nice heft of features like the 2.8″ capacitive touchpanel to make the BB 7 OS a little more sensible while keeping the touchpad intact, as well as the widest QWERTY keyboard for any RIM phone. In addition to that it will also come packed with NFC support is thrown in, as is a magnetometer for AR apps.
Finally, the successor to RIMs successful touch screen based phone has been detailed. The Torch 9850 is the CDMA counter-part to the already announced 9860(AT&T, Rogers, Telus and Bell) and will be making it’s way to the States this fall. It will be available through US Cellular and Sprint with an estimated price of $549 off contract. Much like the 9860 this Torch will include a 3.7-inch WVGA (800 x 480) touchpanel, BlackBerry 7 OS, a 5 megapixel “zero-shutter lag” camera, 720p movie mode, built-in GPS and a powerful 1.2GHz processor.
It seems that RIM is really trying to stay relevant in the touch screen era and finally ridding themselves of the archaic operating system for something a little more modern. We won’t know for sure how well any of the phones will fair until they are released, but I remain hopeful that the Canadian-based company can regain some lost grown to Android, despite them owning 48% of the market right now.
