There is a new Bold in town – the BlackBerry 9790. Launched in Indonesia yesterday, the new Bold boasts next gen technology like Augmented Reality and Near Field Communications (NFC) on the BlackBerry 7 OS.
The 2.45″ Bold 9790 (480 X360 pix) is highly responsive to touch and is also keyboard ready – coming with the much loved QWERTY, optical trackpad, and a 1 GHz processor.
But this is no standard Bold – BB have embraced NFC, which will allow the smartphone make payments, pair accessories or read SmartPoster tags with a tap of the device.
And the Bold-er BlackBerry also come with Augmented Reality, allowing users to connect via apps – like the Wikitude AR application, which allows users find nearby BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) contacts in real-time, or get the story behind an interesting landmark nearby.
 This looks like a regular BlackBerry, but there’s more than meet the eye. |
Bold 9790 also comes with a 5MP camera, a flash, continuous auto focus, face detection, image stabilization, scene modes, 2x digital zoom and VGA video recording (640 x 480).
BlackBerry’s latest OS 7 delivers an enhanced browser that provides a significantly faster web experience, JIT (just in time) JavaScript compiler to improve the load time speed of web pages and it offers HTML5 performance for better gaming and multimedia.
And not to be left behind by the iPhone’s Siri – the Canadians have also enhanced Bold 9790 with voice-activated search, so users talk to their device for information.
It includes 8GB of onboard memory and an expandable memory card slot for up to 32 GB of additional storage.
The new BlackBerry also sports a narrow design that is easy to carry and exceptionally comfortable to hold.
The BlackBerry Curve 9380, announced yesterday, is the first all-touch smartphone in the Curve family, which comes with a “brilliant” 3.2″ high resolution display, 5MP camera with flash and video recording, and is NFC and AR ready as the Bold 9790.
This latest Bold and Curve punches comes as smartphone charts show BlackBerry trailing behind Android, Nokia and Apple in fourth place with 11% market share – selling 12.7 million units in Q3 2011, with analysts Gartner noting “lack of exciting new products on alternative operating systems such as RIM.”
“Continued pressure is impacting RIM’s performance” and its US marketshare reached its lowest point ever – dropping to a dismal 10%.
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| BB Curve 9380 and Bold 9790 |
The new smartphone will be available in Indonesia from 25th November but is to be unleashed in the US along with new and Curve 9380 soon.
However, BlackBerry Australia say they have no local availability info about the 9790 at present.
“Indonesia is an important market for RIM and we are very excited to introduce the new BlackBerry Bold 9790 smartphone here first,” said Gregory Wade, Regional Managing Director at RIM.
“The BlackBerry Bold 9790 combines a fluid touch display with the iconic BlackBerry keyboard in an impressively slim and stylish design. It’s powered by the new BlackBerry 7 operating system and delivers a truly outstanding mix of communications, multimedia, productivity and social connectivity features.”
