RIM’s latest BlackBerry will combine a touchscreen with a full QWERTY keyboard in a candybar-style design, according to leaked images.
N4BB.com (News for BlackBerrys) has published leaked photos of what has been dubbed the BlackBerry Bold Touch. The leaked device seems to borrow its shape from the original BlackBerry Bold 9000 smartphone rather than the current BlackBerry Bold 9700 (seen on the right). Unlike the BlackBerry Torch 9800, which uses a slide-out keyboard, the BlackBerry Bold Touch is a candybar smartphone.
In addition to the QWERTY keyboard, the BlackBerry Bold Touch (codenamed Dakota) will also have a 2.8in capacitive touchscreen, with a 640×480 resolution, a 5-megapixel camera that doubles as a 720p HD video recorder, 8GB of internal memory and 768MB RAM. The BlackBerry Bold Touch will also feature an integrated Near Field Communications (NFC) chip. NFC is a short-range wireless communication technology; the same used in many new credit cards, whereby the card can be simply swiped across a smartchip to make a purchase. NFC is rumoured to be an inclusion on the upcoming Apple iPhone 5, and is also present on recently launched What is Android? like the Google Nexus S and the Samsung Galaxy S II.
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The BlackBerry Bold Touch is expected to be just 10.5mm thick, making it the thinnest BlackBerry ever released.
The leaked specifications are listed as follows:
Dimensions: 115x66x10.5mm
Radio: Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE; Tri Band UMTS
Display: 2.8″ diagonal – VGA 640×480, resolution 287dpi
Camera: 5mp – Flash – Image Stabilization – HD Recording (720p)
Navigation: Capacitive Touch, Optical Trackpad
Keypad: Wide QWERTY – Physical Send, End, Escape, Menu, Right Side Convenience Key, Volume Control
Memory: 8GB – 768MB RAM – up to 32GB MicroSd Card
WiFi: 2.4 GHZ b/g/n – 5GHz a/n – Mobile Hotspot
Connectivity: Micro USB – Bluetooth – NFC
Sensors: Magnetometer – Accelerometer – Proximity