AT&T announced today that the BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone from RIM will be available for AT&T consumer and business customers in the coming weeks. The new phone (specs) builds on the success of the original Bold, introduced nearly one year ago.
The phone combines black and chrome accents in a design that house a 2.44-inch display with a half-VGA resolution. The smartphone features a 624 MHz processor with 256MB RAM, 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus and A-GPS to provide faster location fix in support of AT&T Navigator with real-time traffic data.
The new BlackBerry smartphone also features a touch-sensitive trackpad instead of the previous trackball for quick access to e-mail, messages, apps and more. It'll also come preloaded with AT&T Visual Voicemail at no extra cost.
AT&T users of the new BlackBerry can also connect the phone to AT&T's Wi-Fi network with more than 20,000 hotspots - including approximately 7,000 Starbucks locations. When traveling outside the U.S., the BlackBerry Bold 9700 connects to voice networks in more than 215 countries and data networks in more than 185 countries.
The phone promises a talk time of up to 6 hours, and the phone lets users run multiple e-mail accounts whether they are corporate or personal. The phone also affords power users the ability to edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files and runs BlackBerry OS 5.0, which supports BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0, making it possible for users to add follow-up flags to emails, manage Microsoft Exchange mail folders, forward appointments and view calendar attachments. It can also be used as a 3G modem for a laptop computer with an additional data plan.
The smartphone will be available on AT&T in the coming weeks for $300 with a two-year contract. A $100 mail-in rebate will be given when signing up for a qualifying plan. The T-Mobile BlackBerry Bold 9700 will cost less, only $200 with a contract agreement. In addition, T-Mobile's BlackBerry Bold 9700 will have UMA capabilities, which will let the phone place calls over a Wi-Fi network, and hand these calls over to the cellular network as needed. This represents the first 3G device in T-Mobile's portfolio to support their @Home, UMA service.
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