They said RIM's BlackBerry 9000 would be formally announced on the 12th. They said it would be called the Bold. Photos suggested that it would be the sexiest thing to come out of Canada since Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. And they wuz right. Boy Genius says it'll be available this summer on AT&T 3G, with a T-Mobile 3G edition in the wings—the handset can handle 850/1900/2100Mhz for HSDPA/UMTS, plus T-Mo's 1700MHz band. Sascha at PC Mag is reporting a CDMA/EV-DO version as well.









Here's the rundown:
• Has 802.11a/b/g plus good GPS, typically a tradeoff with BBs
• GPS is enhanced and assisted, and the handset has better map rendering, says Laptop
• 480 x 320 resolution screen with 65,000 colors—Crave says "never seen a better-looking display"
• 624MHz Intel PXA270/Marvell Tavor PXA930 processor (reports differ), up from 312MHz
• Runs BlackBerry OS 4.6
• Keyboard has 8800-style "sculpted keys," says PC Mag, "but the rows are separated by curved barriers"
• 4.5" tall x 2.6" wide x 0.5" deep, weighing 4.7oz
• Side-loading MicroSD/SDHC slot for up to 16GB additional
• 2MP camera with flash
• Talk time of 5 hours, with standby of 13 days
• MP3, WMA, AAC, DivX4 and WMV3 codec support
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• "Pretty powerful speakers—none of that weak, tinny junk," says Crave
• 128MB of flash plus 1GB of onboard memory (with encryption)
• Black leather back panel that can be swapped for other color leather plates
• Pricing will be $300 to $500 says BGR, a pretty wide (and obvious) range; Crave narrows it to "$300 to $400"