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It’s probably a loosely kept secret that RIM is working on successor for the all too familiar Bold 9700. But what is not known is that how the Bold replacement will look like. It turns out, not much different from the current Bold, which, if you recall, looks very much like the Bold 9000 that was launched over two years ago.
So what can you expect with the new Bold?
From leaked internal product presentation slides, it looks like the new Bold is more of a refresher model for the current 9700. Design-wise the new Bold — codenamed R020 (rumored to be called the Bold 9780 when it enters the market) — will wear very much the same look as the 9700 but with “premium materials” being used in the construction. Will the new Bold see titanium and carbon fibre being used? We doubt it very much. There will be however, a “piano-style QWERTY”, charcoal rails (as opposed to the chrome accents we see on the 9700) and leather accents on the back panel. And there will be a white version as well.
In terms of specs, not much has changed, The new Bold will get more memory 512MB RAM compared to today’s 256MB and there’s a 5MP camera with autofocus and LED flash (what? no 720p HD recording?) and 512MB on board memory. For memory expansion, the upcoming Bold takes in MicroSD up to 32GB in size.
The R020 will run BlackBerry 6 and if the walkthrough video we saw earlier is any indication, then you can expect the R020 to run very snappy, with a much improved web browsing experience. Much better, it seems, than the Torch 9800.
No launch date is stated in the slides, but we’re shooting for a holiday season appearance of the new Bold.
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