My Cellphone My Terms

BlackBerry Bold 9800 Preview

The BlackBerry line of products are number 1 in North America based on current market shares. Recently this market share has been threatened by Apple and it’s iPhone products, despite its current issues and the Google’s Android products led by manufacturer HTC. One of the main reasons for this is that these new smartphones better target consumers and provide a richer cell phone experience – better browsing and social media interaction for example.

RIM is aware of this and will be providing an operating system upgrade this fall which will improve the smartphone experience for existing and new customers.  The web is alight with RIM’s next flag ship product – rumored to be the BlackBerry Bold 9800 slider phone.  One of the key features I like about RIM is its full QWERTY keyboard along with its trackpad functionality.  So how do you preserve the keyboard functionality which many BlackBerry users like and have grown accustomed to while providing a large screen and rich experience expected from today’s smartphones – you come out with a slider phone!

This allows the die hard users to use the keyboard and trackpad if needed to  respond to long emails while still providing the options to use the touch screen functionality.  There are quite a few features that are expected to be a part of the Bold 9800 release:

• Upgraded Webkit browser (better browsing experience)
• Enhanced media player (this needs to rival iTunes)
• 512 MB of RAM
• WiFi functionality
• SurePress technology as part of the on screen keyboard
• 4GB of on board storage
• > 5 mega pixel camera

While none of these features have been confirmed, this will be the first smartphone from BlackBerry, if they get it right, that can start their climb back to the top of the ladder.

No release date has been issued but I would expect it by September.