BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930 officially announced

Months and weeks of speculation have finally come to an end. RIM has officially unveiled the latest phone in their BlackBerry Bold line up – the Bold 9900/9930. Making a radical departure from the previous models, the new Bold features much beefier specs, and a whole lot of brand new features not present in current BlackBerry phones.

The Bold 9900/9930 will feature a touchscreen, but it will also keep the traditional QWERTY keyboard that BlackBerry phones are known for and RIM even claims that this is their best keyboard to date. It packs a 2.8″ 640 x 480 display, a 1.2GHz processor, 768MB of RAM, 8GB of storage (expandable to 32GB), 5megapixel rear camera with flash and HD video recording capabilities, Bluetooth, WiFi, and GPS. It will be available in GSM and CDMA flavors, with HSPA+ support on the GSM variant, and the phone will also pack NFC capabilities.

With an all new BlackBerry 7 OS (this phone will be the first BlackBerry device to launch with it), the Bold 9900/9930 is a worthy replacement for the current generation of BlackBerry Bold devices. RIM has also mentioned that their older phones won’t be able to upgrade to BB 7 OS – it’s only available to newer phones, it adds extra incentive for people to replace their current BB phones with this new one. No prices or territories have been announced, but the phone will be available in late summer 2011.