BlackBerry reveals new Bold 9790 and Curve 9380 smartphones

15 Nov 2011

The new BlackBerry Bold 9790

Research in Motion has revealed two new smartphones based on its BlackBerry 7 operating system: the BlackBerry Bold 9790 and the BlackBerry Curve 9380.

The news comes as sightings of a mysterious device called the BlackBerry London, the first RIM smartphone to be powered by the forthcoming BBX OS has been spotted doing the rounds.

“We are very excited to expand the BlackBerry 7 portfolio with the new BlackBerry Bold 9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9380,” said Carlo Chiarello, senior vice-president, Handheld Product Management at Research In Motion.

“BlackBerry smartphones offer a uniquely refined mobile communications experience that people love and we think many customers will be thrilled by the faster performance, beautiful touch displays and compact designs available with these new BlackBerry 7-based models.”

The new BlackBerry 7 OS features improved browsing, voice-activated searches, and support for Augmented Reality and NFC (near field communications). It also includes the ability to manage personal content separately from corporate content, and comes with a variety of personal and productivity apps out of the box.

BlackBerry 7 also introduces an enhanced browser that provides a significantly faster, more fluid web-browsing experience.

BlackBerry Bold 9790

The new BlackBerry Bold 9790 smartphone combines a high-resolution and highly responsive touch display with a highly tactile keyboard and a precise optical trackpad.

With the BlackBerry 7 OS and 1 GHz processor, the BlackBerry Bold 9790 includes 8GB of on-board memory and an expandable memory card slot that supports up to 32GB of additional storage.

BlackBerry Curve 9380

The BlackBerry Curve 9380 is the first all-touch smartphone in the BlackBerry Curve family. It features a 3.2-inch high-resolution display and comes with pre-installed social networking apps, including BBM, Facebook, Twitter and Social Feeds apps.

It also features a 5-megapixel camera with flash and video recording, allowing users to easily capture and share moments with family, friends and colleagues.

The BlackBerry Bold 9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9380 smartphones will begin to be available from various carriers around the world over the coming weeks.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com