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Troubled BlackBerry announces 9720 old-school Qwerty

As BlackBerry desperately searches for a buyer, it's only gone and launched the new BlackBerry 9720 smart phone.

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Richard Trenholm Former Movie and TV Senior Editor
Richard Trenholm was CNET's film and TV editor, covering the big screen, small screen and streaming. A member of the Film Critic's Circle, he's covered technology and culture from London's tech scene to Europe's refugee camps to the Sundance film festival.
Expertise Films, TV, Movies, Television, Technology
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Richard Trenholm
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The folks at BlackBerry may be in trouble, but they do have a great sense of timing. As the Canadian company desperately searches for a buyer, it's only gone and launched the new BlackBerry 9720.

The 9720 is a brand-new phone, but it's running the ageing BlackBerry 7 operating system, a far cry from the BB10 software found on BlackBerry's most recent phones.

The 9720 boasts a dedicated BBM key to quickly start chatting with your friends and family. It sports a 2.8-inch touchscreen displaying 214 pixels per inch, with a Qwerty keyboard beneath, and inside a modest 806MHz processor with 512MB of RAM.

The 9720 will be available in black, blue, pink, purple and white. It'll go on sale in the coming weeks just about everywhere, except the US.

At least, we hope so: BlackBerry revealed yesterday that it's looking for a partnership or buyout that will save the ailing smart phone firm. And we don't want to tempt fate, but BlackBerry's current troubles put an ominous spin on the boilerplate legalese at the bottom of their press releases, which states, "readers should not place undue reliance on BlackBerry's forward-looking statements." Gulp.

Can the 9720 help dig BlackBerry out of trouble? Tell me your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook wall.