BlackBerry Bold 9700 Smartphone Announced

The new BlackBerry Bold 9700 will be in stores from both AT&T and T-Mobile in time for the holiday season. It will be the first 3G-powered BlackBerry smartphone available from T-Mobile, and also the first smartphone from Research In Motion (RIM) that includes built-in support for both 3G connectivity and voice calls over Wi-Fi.

The BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone includes support for 3G HSDPA networks around the world, a next-generation (624 MHz) processor, 256MB Flash memory, built-in GPS and Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g).

It also has a full-QWERTY keyboard, a touch-sensitive optical trackpad, 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, flash and video recording; and a music and video player. A hot-swappable microSD/SDHC memory card slot gives you additional storage for multimedia files. A 2GB memory card is included with support for 32GB cards.

The BlackBerry Bold 9700 will be available from both T-Mobile and AT&T in time for the holiday season. AT&T will be selling it for $199.99 (pay $299.99 and receive $100 mail-in-rebate.) Pricing from T-Mobile has not been announced.

- Katrin Verclas