Australians looking to get their fill of sleekly-styled BlackBerry goodness are going to be in for a treat, come September. Telstra has announced that they’ll be bringing the heralded BlackBerry Bold 9000 to their Aussie customer-base towards the end of September.
The BlackBerry Bold boasts a full QWERTY-keyboard that RIM is so darn good at designing, so text messaging fiends with a need to have push-email integrated in to their smartphone can text away to their heart’s content on a comfortable and reportedly quite usable keyboard.
Telstra’s launch window for the BlackBerry Bold essentially dashes any hopes that RIM had of getting their new flagship handset out in time to catch some summertime sunshine, but late September is a good compromise. RIM is also planning to unleash their 3G-toting BlackBerry Bold on a smattering of countries around the world over the next couple months, so all you non-Australians just sit tight – the BlackBerry Bold is coming. As for AT&T, all we know is that the Bold is coming before November 1.
More importantly, Telstra is planning to offer the BlackBerry Bold for free to its business customers. Of course, there’s likely to be a lengthy contract involved, but hey, if you wanna play, you gotta pay.
Here’s a quick run-down of the BlackBerry Bold 9000’s spec-sheet. Note the gem of the BlackBerry Bold feature-set – the tri-band HSDPA radio that should have the Bold cruising 3G networks the world over.
- Quad-band (850/900/1800/1900hz) GSM/EDGE
- Tri-band (850/1900/2100Mhz) 3G/HSDPA
- WiFi
- GPS
- 624MHz Intel PXA270/Marvell Tavor PXA930 CPU
- BlackBerry OS 4.6
- 480×320 pixels screen
- 2 megapixel camera with flash
- 5 hours of talk / 13 days of standby time
- 128MB of flash plus 1GB of onboard memory (with encryption)
- Standard 3.5mm headphone jack
- Size: 4.5×2.6×0.5 inches
- Weight: 4.7oz