Waterloo, Ontario – Research In
Motion (RIM) is expanding its portfolio of smartphones based on its new
BlackBerry 7 OS.
The BlackBerry Bold 9790 is a
bar-style phone with resolution touchscreen and tactile keyboard. The
BlackBerry Curve 9380 is the first Curve-series smartphone with a touch
display. It lacks a hard QWERTY keyboard.
Both models will be available in
the coming weeks from multiple carriers around the world. RIM didn’t disclose
the carriers.
In August,
its first five BlackBerry 7 OS smartphones in the U.S. in
its Bold and Torch series. All feature 1.2GHz processors. Later that month, the
company expanded the new OS
with 800MHz processors.
Curve handsets are smaller than
the company’s other handsets and are positioned as an affordable series
targeted to consumers who want to step up from a feature phone or their current
Curve
The new BlackBerry Bold 9790
comes with optical trackpad, 1GHz processor, 8GB of onboard memory, and an
expandable memory card slot that supports up to 32 GB of additional storage.
The all-touch BlackBerry Curve
9380 features a 3.2-inch touchscreen and preinstalled social-networking apps
such as BlackBerry Messenger, Facebook, Twitter and Social Feeds apps. It also features
a 5-megapixel camera with flash and video recording.
Both also have built-in support
for Augmented Reality and near field communications (NFC). With the Wikitude
Augmented Reality application, the phones can find nearby BlackBerry Messenger
contacts in real-time, read reviews on restaurants close to them, and get
information about landmarks near the contacts, the company said.
NFC makes it possible to make
mobile payments, pair accessories or read SmartPoster tags with the tap of the
smartphone.
The BlackBerry 7 OS delivers
faster, more fluid web browsing, improved zooming and panning, HTML 5 support,
voice-activated search to conduct a universal search for content on the phone
and web, and BlackBerry Balance, which separates personal content from secure
corporate content, giving corporate users the ability to use their personal
handsets for personal email and other personal-use apps.
