But this time the company has a capacitive touch screen, trackball replaced over time to an optical trackpad, and all in a simplified package of 10.5 mm.
We were lucky, a prototype of our friends at Negri Electronics received blue and lasts up to We Were in the face. Head past the break for an exclusive preview of the device from RIM to pray the will of its competitors in the first round of devices with QNX country in 2012, given.
The BlackBerry Bold 9900 has a strong resemblance to the original 9000 Big Bold and the fans of this device's robust form factor, but love the BlackBerry Bold 9900 Gone are the leather-back, which was replaced by a door-smooth carbon fiber battery.
It is interesting to note that it is possible during the entire backside of the device removed and replaced in 9000 only the same body part that comes from the battery compartment cover BlackBerry Bold 9900. The central part of the carbon fiber is surrounded by a soft contact lens cone black rubber finish on the outside of the unit slightly, resulting in a nice form factor in general.
BlackBerry Bold 9900 is located between the front of a capacitive touch screen 640 x 480 pixels divided and below a full QWERTY keyboard. The screen size is 2.6 inches to 2.8 inches hit the 9000th The screen is bright and lively with excellent viewing angles and brightness. As with two of the flame, a little sensitivity seems quite good, with the screen take up at the slightest touch on the surface of a nearby. Overally, we are very pleased with BlackBerry Bold 9900 screen impressed as we were with two of the flame.
So far as we can tell, the keyboard is the same size as that of the OG Bold, though the buttons seem to be a bit more 'clicky.' It's kind of difficult to explain, but the keyboard feels more firm than mushy -- but that's not necessarily a bad thing. We also noticed that the four main navigation buttons for the BB OS (send, menu, back, end / power) are all flush with the device and backlit, rather than having splits between then. There's also the now ubiquitous trackpad located front and center, and it has a nice white backlighting that helps make it stand out against this BlackBerry's murdered-out facade. When the screen shuts off for standby mode, the trackpad glow rem for an extra few seconds before fading back into darkness.
On the inside, the 9900 boasts a 1.2GHz processor, which is bumped from the 624MHz of the 9780. In fact, we're pretty sure that the guts of the 9900 are identical to those of the Torch 2 -- just crammed into a thinner, non-sliding enclosure. We've known the specs on this bad boy for a while now, but after playing with one for day or so, we're impressed with the real world translation into performance. It's noticeably more snappy than current BlackBerry devices on the market, and the fading transitions of BlackBerry 6.1 OS 7 didn't seem to stutter in regular use. Of course, this is still BETA software -- and from what we've heard, our build is quite a bit older than what's currently on demo devices -- so performance is subject to change.
A five megapixel shooter is located on the backside of the device, but it's been relocated to the upper left corner as opposed to the centered position on the 9000. Again we're convinced that this camera is identical to the one in the Torch 2, which means it's capable of capturing 720p HD video. If you want to see some performance of this shooter, head back to our Torch 2 preview -- what you get on the 9900 isn't vastly different.
BlackBerry 7 OS screenshots
The BlackBerry Bold 9900 will ship with BlackBerry 7 OS, and we won't bore you with the details of this marginal upgrade to the OS. (We went over many of them when we showed you the Torch 2). We will say that the performance improvements we noted on that device seem to have made their way to the 9900, and that many of the mundane tasks that used to bring up the dreaded hourglass of doom no longer do so.
Overall, the 9900 is definitely a sexy slab of circuitry, but we still can't skirt around the fact that RIM has been making the same device for years now. We're glad to see the improved specs and solid hardware, but it doesn't detract from the fact that the OS is virtually unchanged except for some visual flair and new APIs. We're hopeful that despite rumors to the contrary, RIM will be able to get this device out the door during its promised "summer" time frame, and we know it won't be good if it misses that self-imposed deadline. Still, the fact of the matter is that RIM desperately needs to get something radically new out the door as soon as humanly possible, or else users will continue flocking to other platforms. It hopes it has a winner on its hands with the BlackBerry Bold 9900, and while we'll reserve judgment until the thing finally ships to end users, we do think it's yet another step in the right direction.