BlackBerry Bold 9790, Curve 9380 Hit UK In January

Research in Motion (RIM) plans to release two new smartphones based on the BlackBerry 7 operating system in the UK in January. The Bold 9790 will offer a high-resolution touch display and a “tactile” keyboard and the Curve 9380 will be the first-ever Curve smartphone with a touch display.

Both models are launching in the US first and pricing is expected to be $479.99 (£304) for the Bold and the Curve will cost $429.99 (£272). Carrier deals will be announced when the smartphones become available next year.

JIT JavaScript and BB7 OS

The Bold 9790 combines a high-resolution touch display, tactile keyboard with an optical trackpad, and comes in a narrow design. With the BlackBerry 7 OS and 1GHz processor, the Bold 9790 allows users to browse the Web, run applications, work with documents and play multimedia files. It includes 8GB of onboard memory and an expandable memory card slot that supports up to 32GB of additional storage.

The Curve 9380 is the first all-touch smartphone in the Curve family. It features a 3.2-inch high-resolution display and comes with preinstalled social networking applications, including BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), Facebook, Twitter and Social Feeds applications. The handset also features a 5MP camera with flash and video recording.

The smartphones run BlackBerry 7 OS, which includes support for augmented reality and near-field communication (NFC). It also includes the ability to manage personal content separately from corporate content, and comes with a variety of personal and productivity applications. The browser includes a new JIT (just-in-time) JavaScript compiler to improve the load-time speed of Web pages, and it offers optimised HTML5. The universal search capability has also been enhanced with support for voice-activated search.

BlackBerry 7 includes a number of preinstalled applications and integrated functionality for productivity and sharing and collaboration. The Premium version of Documents To Go is included free, offering users document editing features as well as a native PDF viewer. BlackBerry Protect is preloaded, allowing personal data to be backed up and secured in the cloud.

BlackBerry Balance is also integrated in BlackBerry 7, and the Social Feeds (2.0) application has been extended to capture updates from media and favourites all-in-one consolidated view. The Facebook for BlackBerry smartphones (2.0) application introduces features like Facebook chat and BBM integration that make it possible for users to connect with Facebook contacts in real time.

“We are very excited to expand the BlackBerry 7 portfolio with the new BlackBerry Bold 9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9380,” said Carlo Chiarello, senior vice president, handheld product management at RIM. “BlackBerry smartphones offer a uniquely refined mobile communications experience that people love and we think many customers will be thrilled by the faster performance, beautiful touch displays and compact designs available with these new BlackBerry 7-based models.”