Bold 9900 Hands-on

Bold 9900 Hands-on

The device is a light 4.58 ounces, 4.5 inches long and 2.6 inches wide.

RIM’s Thinnest BlackBerry Yet

The new handset is only 10.5 millimeters thick, or thin, if you prefer.

Apps

RIM said it upgraded the iconography for the BlackBerry 7 operating system, though the improvement in these icons appears incremental. We were told the Blackberry 7 we saw on the test Bolds was still in beta. The 2.8-inch touch-screen is VGA (640 by 480) with 287 dpi resolution.

Social Feed

The new social feed includes custom views and notification bookmarking for Facebook and Twitter status updates.

Near-Field Communication Support

The Bold 9900 includes NFC, which enables tag reading for smart posters and pairing with other accessories.

Music App Storefront

The Bold 9900 includes a new music application storefront.

Camera, Video

The Bold 9900 includes a 5MP camera and supports 720p video.

BlackBerry Bold Frame

The Bold 9900 and 9930 frame is brushed stainless steel.

Bold Back Plate

Blackberry Bold is encased in a glass-weave back plate.

Bold Keyboard

The Bold QWERTY keyboard and optical trackpad have been refined to be larger despite the smaller Bold 9900 form factor.

Bold 9900, 9930 Specs

Here is a deeper look into the Bold 9900/9930 technical specs.

Blackberry 7 OS

The Blackberry 7 OS is 1.6 times faster than its BB 6 predecessor and includes several new features.

Voice Activated Search

The Blackberry 7 OS supports voice-activated search.

NFC APIs for Developers

The NFC capabilities in the Blackberry 7 0S include APIs for developers.

Augmented Reality

The Blackberry 7 OS enables augmented reality via Wikitude and developer APIs.

Music Store

The Blackberry 7 OS nods to consumers with its music storefront, which includes access to Amazon’s music store.

Social Feeds

The new and improved Social Feeds 2.0 application streams Facebook and Twitter status updates.

Business Productivity Suite

While Blackberry 7 features a lot of consumer-friendly perks, it’s also serious about business, offering the Docs-to-go productivity suite with a native PDF viewer. This is free with new Blackberry Bold devices.

BlackBerry Balance

One of the core capabilities for the Blackberry 7 OS is Blackberry Balance, which lets users access Blackberry 6 OS and later devices for work and personal tasks while protecting corporate data.

Blackberry Mobile Device Management

RIM launched new mobile device management software to provide support Blackberry Enterprise Server support for Android and Apple iOS handsets and tablets.