Bold 9900 Hands-on

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

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

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.

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

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

The Bold 9900 includes a new music application storefront.

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

The Bold 9900 and 9930 frame is brushed stainless steel.

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

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

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

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

The Blackberry 7 OS supports voice-activated search.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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