BlackBerry Bold 9900 hits T-Mobile August 31 at steep $300
updated 12:20 am EDT, Wed August 17, 2011
T-Mobile confirms BlackBerry Bold 9900
T-Mobile chose midnight to price and date its version of the BlackBerry Bold 9900. The BlackBerry 7 hardware reaches shops on August 31. For unknown reasons, the phone will cost much more than at AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon, at $300 on contract, even after a $50 rebate.
Its version should be identical to those at other networks other than the requisite change over to T-Mobile's native bands for 14.4Mbps 3G. Features like Wi-Fi calling aren't expected to be available immediately, and it's not clear if the personal hotspot creation will be an option.
The 9900 is considered RIM's flagship for the year with a mix of a 2.8-inch, 640x480 touchscreen and a distinctive, large, QWERTY keyboard. The 1.2GHz Snapdragon along with 768MB of RAM and BlackBerry 7 are key to a major improvement in speed. Slimming down versus earlier Bolds drops autofocus from the five-megapixel camera but is returned by 720p movie recording. About 8GB of storage is built-in, although only 188MB is available purely for apps.
