BlackBerry 9000/9XXX specs confirmed

We’ve been waiting on somone to leak some of the juicy details on RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry 9000/9XXX iPhone-fighting smartphone, and it looks like the blogosphere’s been blessed with a bit of BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) 9000 news. The BlackBerry 9000 has been speculated to be bringing US 3G support and a powerful processor to the touchscreen-battle, but whispers and hearsay indicate that HSDPA, let alone UMTS, is not in the cards for RIM’s iPhone-fighter. We’ll have to wait and see what kind of processing power this bugger packs.

We can tell you that the BlackBerry 9000/9XXX will be rocking a 480 x 320 display and will feature a full-QWERTY keyboard. It’s unclear whether the keyboard will be physical in nature or a touchscreen keyboard (like that on the iPhone). Connectivity will be comprised of a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900Mhz) radio and 802.11 a/b/g WiFi radio, but, again, 3G isn’t likel - we’d imagine Bluetooth is also packed in there somewhere.

The business-end of the BlackBerry 9000, the OS, will get bumped up to OS 4.3.2 - the new OS for virtually all future 8000-series devices.

Boy Genius likens the BlackBerry 9000 as the older-brother to the BlackBerry 8320, so expect the “9000″ to sport similar dimensions.

Now, the lack of 3G could be a deal killer. The iPhone can get by on the EDGE-only connection because the superb browser combined with an incredible UI and speedy CPU helps it make the most of its non-3G data speeds - we demonstrated that the browser, processor, and UI are the bottleneck, not the data connection. Will the BlackBerry 9000 be able to play on the same level - in terms of usability, web experience, and straight processing power - as the iPhone? Only time will tell. Fortunately, it won’t be long.

[Via: BGR]