BlackBerry Bold 9780 confirmed by T-Mobile, Vodafone pricing revealed
The new BlackBerry Bold 9780 will hit stores in time for Christmas, a refresh of last year's 9700 carrying many of the same features, but with a new OS and better camera.
The latest in the line of massively successful BlackBerry Bold smart phones is headed to the UK in time for the Christmas rush, according to a report on Electric Pig.
T-Mobile has apparently jumped the gun on RIM, stating that the BlackBerry Bold 9780 will arrive here by Christmas, free on £30 monthly contracts. The new Bold 9780 is a refresh of the 9700, running the new BlackBerry 6 OS and packing a 5-megapixel camera, upgraded from 3.2 megapixels. News of its imminent arrival suggests the specs leaked in August are correct, which means we should expect an LED flash, 512MB of memory and microSD support for up to 32GB.
According to the report, the BlackBerry Bold 9780 will retain the same Qwerty keyboard, trackpad, hard keys and media keys, as well as its 624MHz processor. The Bold has always done very well in the mobile phone market, so it's no surprise that RIM has stayed close to the template. As the saying goes -- if it ain't broke, don't fix it. It makes good business sense when you consider the limitations of the current software, even if it has had an upgrade.
As was the case with the BlackBerry Torch, it appears Vodafone's pricing for the Bold 9780 has also been leaked. Available in white and black, you could take home a Bold 9780 for £35 per month on a 2-year contract. This will include 900 minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB of Internet data. For more details, head to BBleaks.com.
RIM's attempt to go all fancy with the BlackBerry Torch 9800 was a let-down. Much of that was due to the limitations of the software and unresponsive touchscreen. With the BlackBerry Bold 9780, RIM is going back to basics, and why not?
The Bold series has a legion of fans, many of whom are not bothered about flash touchscreens with all their bells and whistles. Most of them simply want a device that does the job of communicating, and the Bold has always done that well. The Bold's fabulous Qwerty keyboard will always be a classic, in terms of both design and usability. With a refreshed OS in the BlackBerry 6 OS, we suspect the BlackBerry Bold 9780 will continue to do well.
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