BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 are thinnest BB blowers yet

Prepare to be Bold over. It's the BlackBerry Bold 9900, the new smart phone from Research In Motion. The 9900 and its identical US cousin the 9930 introduce the new BlackBerry 7 software in the thinnest BB blower ever.

The new Bold is battened down in a brushed stainless steel frame with high-gloss, glass-weave backplate. How do you weave glass? Very carefully, we imagine. It sports the traditional BlackBerry Qwerty keyboard.

Research In Motion says this is the thinnest BlackBerry smart phone yet, measuring just 10.5mm. That's still thicker than the 9.3mm iPhone 4 and 9.2mm LG Optimus Black, but what's 1.2mm between friends?

The Bold 9900 and 9930 are the same phone, except the 9930 has a few extra Yank-friendly connection options. The phone packs a 1.2GHz processor. It boasts visuals RIM calls Liquid Graphics: 60 frames per second and 287dpi resolution in the 2.8-inch capacitive touchscreen. There's 8GB of memory for storing music, video and shots snapped with the 5-megapixel camera and 720p video camera.

The new phones are packed with next-generation technology we're not quite ready for here in Blighty: near-field communications (NFC), which pays for stuff with a wave of the phone, and 4G. Well, almost 4G: the phones support HSPA+, which is a step up from 3G but doesn't technically qualify as 4G.

The difference between the two phones is the type of phone networks they support. Both phones use HSPA+, but the 9930 also supports CDMA, EV-DO Rev. A, used in the US.

BlackBerry 7 is the latest version of RIM's software. It offers improved browsing, voice-activated searches and improved separation of your business bits from your personal pieces.