David Flynn23 November 2009, 8:00 AM
Optus is the first carrier to list the BlackBerry Bold 97000, which makes its debut on a $79/month plan – oddly, the same price as the Bold 9000...
During the
Australian launch of the BlackBerry Bold 9700, RIM Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand Adele Beachley told ACP that the Bold 9700 would be available “in late November”.
We’re now in the back end of November and sure enough, the Bold 9700 has surfaced.
Optus is first out of the gate, taking pre-orders for the oven-fresh smartphone listing on its familiar $79/month cap plan (actual availability is early December). This bundles unlimited email and Web through the BlackBerry Browser with $300 of talk and text.
Oddly enough, the Bold 900 – which remains on the menu and was expected to drop in price, based on it having generally inferior specs to the Bold 9700 – still sits on the exact same $79/month plan.
Apart from the slightly larger screen size and form factor of the Bold 9000, pretty much everything else favours the Bold 9700 – from the pairing of 2100 and 900MHz 3G for Optus’ dual-band ‘Yes G’ network to the 3.2 megapixel camera, optical trackpad and new BlackBerry OS 5.0.
Optus also has the non-3G Curve 8900 and Curve 8520 starting from $59/month and $49/month, respectively.