The Bold and the Beautiful: New Blackberry Announced

The cell phone industry is aiming for a big summer, what with the impending release of the long awaited and much salivated over 3G iPhone. But there's been a slew of announcements of new smartphones in recent weeks, with more on the horizon, as the competition tries to play catch-up. Research in Motion with its Blackberry line, still the biggest player in the smartphone market (at 40 percent market share, though down from 45 percent), today officially unveiled the rumored 9000-series Blackberry, dubbed the Bold.

At first glance, it doesn't look like that much of a radical departure and more an amalgam of the Curve and the 8800 series. Yeah, it's got a "stylish leather-like backplate" (according to the press release), but it's what's under the hood that makes the difference. The biggest news is that this is the first Blackberry to include 3G network connectivity. And it packs in both a GPS receiver and Wi-Fi, adding the corporate-friendly 802.11a variant to the usual 802.11b/g suspects. It also includes a 480 x 320-pixel screen (though at just 65K colors and no touchscreen capabilities). The Boy Genius Report says that we'll be seeing the Bold first make its mark at AT&T this summer, though a 1700 MHz 3G network-friendly version should also show up at T-Mobile at some unspecified point in the future. For more on the Bold, check out Wired's hands-on, first-look report and Gizmodo for a rundown of the main specs.

--Agen G.N. Schmitz