After plenty of early hints, T-Mobile has announced their plans for RIM’s next entry-level smartphone, the Curve 9360. The Curve 9360 will be available for pre-sale to business customers starting today, and will hit stores starting September 28. A purple version will be hitting shelves on October 12, while the pricetag sits at a reasonable $79.99 on a two-year contract after rebates.
The BlackBerry Curve 9360 is a decent little number, if a simple iteration on the Curve 9300 launched last year. It runs OS 7 (which includes a new graphics rendering engine and voice-activated universal search), a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, 2.4-inch 360 x 480 display Unlike the version on Rogers, the T-Mobile’s BlackBerry Curve 9360 will not support near-field communications, though that may change with an OS update down the line. Fingers are crossed for mobile hotspot functions too. I’ve been using the 9360 for the last week or so, and the thing that strikes me most about it is its compact size; it’s very slim, and easily pocketable, but otherwise a pretty standard BlackBerry experience. Check out our hands-on impressions here, and keep an eye out for our review before the T-Mobile launch.
Sprint is also expected to launch the new Curve, only it’ll be launching sometime in October, and a Verizon launch sometime within the same launch window wouldn’t be surprising. From what we gather, AT&T may be a long ways off.
You can find the BlackBerry Curve 9360 in the T-Mobile online store over here.