The Bold 9900 isn’t Blackberry’s first touch screen and keyboard hybrid , but expands on learnings from their earlier Torch mobile phone. RIM’s latest is also their slimmest handset to date, at 105mm thick, but retains a surfeit of buttons around the edge, including media controls and the camera shutter button. Its touch display is small for a modern Smartphone – just 2.8 inches, but has a track pad and QWERTY keyboard to fall back on, allowing various means of input and navigation.

With a 1.2Ghz processor at its heart, powered along by the latest version of BlackBerry software OS 7, the quality of the resulting visuals is good thanks to the screen’s 287dpi resolution. On the surface, OS7 is very similar to OS6 except for updated menu icons, but it provides a speedier experience – the browser is 1.6x faster. OS7 also introduces a voice activated universal search and BlackBerry Balance, which separates the user’s work and personal content on the handset.

Notable software includes a music and video player, a dedicated Facebook application and an inbox and calendar that can integrate messages from other services. On the hardware front you get 8Gb of internal memory, a MicroUSB port for linking to other devices and a MicroSD slot. Other miscellaneous, but important, features are 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity, and a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash. You also get HD video recording at 720p and integrated NFC (near field communication) capability which introduces mobile wallet facilities, using a short range wireless technique.

The Blackberry Bold has a proximity sensor, magnetometer compass and a gyroscope. The integrated GPS comes with Blackberry Maps, but also enables other augmented apps to come to life. This includes a version of Wikitude that identifies both places and people from your address book on screen. This looks like Blackberry’s most feature-packed Bold to date, and appears to hit the right balance between work and play! Visit http://www.phones4u.co.uk/ to find out more about this, and other great phone deals.