AT&T And T-Mobile Announce BlackBerry Bold 9700AT&T And T-Mobile Announce BlackBerry Bold 9700

Both AT&T and T-Mobile announced that they'll be offering the BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone from Research In Motion in time for the holidays. The good news for both carriers is that the 9700 will run on their 3G networks.The Bold 9700 is T-Mobile's (long-overdue) first 3G BlackBerry. This is an important milestone for T-Mobile, which needs to have as many of its smart devices running 3G as possible to combat the onslaught of phones running 3G on its competitors' networks. (The original Bold has been available from AT&T for about a year now, and was AT&T's first BlackBerry with 3G at the time.)

Right now, it's unclear whether or not RIM is making one version of the 9700 for both AT&T and T-Mobile, or if it is making separate models for the carriers, defined only by their spectrum support (850/1900 for AT&T, 1700 for T-Mo). I've pinged RIM for an answer on this, but haven't heard back yet. The press release says the device supports 3G networks "around the world."

As for specs, it pretty much matches and/or somewhat improves upon the specs of the original Bold. One important detail is that it comes with a new 624MHz processor and 256 MB of Flash memory. This should give the 9700's performance a kick in the pants (which, unfortunately, more and more smartphones seem to need lately).

Bluetooth is on board, as is Wi-Fi and GPS. T-Mobile is happy to point out that the Bold 9700 supports its Wi-Fi-based calling service both for consumers and enterprises. This feature isn't available on the AT&T version. The 9700 also comes with the trackpad that was first introduced on BlackBerries with the 8520 (also available from T-Mobile). I don't know how well the trackpad on the 9700 will work, but I found the optical trackpad on the 8520 to be among the best of its kind.

The 9700 also comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, flash and video capture. The browser has been refined, as has the base-level operating system. The 9700 comes boxed with a 2GB memory card, but will support cards up to 32GB once they are available.

Both AT&T and T-Mobile are selling the Bold 9700 for $200 with a new contract, though AT&T is forcing customers to deal with the hassle of a $100 mail-in rebate to actually get to that price point. AT&T and T-Mobile wouldn't commit to release dates, but they did say the 9700 will street "in time for the holidays."