BlackBerry 9000 breaks cover!

We’re just days away from RIM’s annual BlackBerry lovefest held every May in Orlando, but the star of the show is already strutting its stuff. The long-rumoured BlackBerry 9000 is expected to be unveilled at next week's Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES) in Florida and take its place as the company’s flagship smartphone, ticking just about every box in a bold effort to underscore RIM’s leadership in the mobile email stakes.

That’s more important than ever in the face of increased competition from dozens of Windows Mobile devices and of course the iPhone, which Apple is now nudging into the corporate space.

While the 9000 is yet to be confirmed by RIM it’s been the subject of increasingly detailed leaks over recent months, and last week several pre-production models were traded on eBay for up to $880.

So what do we know about the BlackBerry 9000? Picking through the online reports we can confirm that this is an all-new line in the BlackBerry family, which in keeping with the 8100 Pearl and 8300 Curve series will include several models for different markets and carriers. There’s no word yet on what (if any) cute marketing name the 9000 series will carry.

But there’s no doubt that RIM has pulled out all the stops for their new pocket rocket. The unit is a tad larger than the 8800 ‘enterprise’ series, with a slick redesign which subtly updates the BlackBerry look yet carries all the familiar family traits. The upsized chassis permits a slightly wider screen that now runs at half-VGA 480 by 320 (the Curve, by comparison, is 320 x 240) and on the inside, a 3G HSDPA radio (finally!), tri-band WiFi (802.11a/b/g) and GPS receiver.

This is easily the most potent BlackBerry yet. Support for HSDPA will be welcomed by enthusiasts who’ve had to make do with GSM in order to use the latest model BlackBerry handsets, as the only 3G model is the relatively older 8707 with sludgy performance.

The powerplant driving all this is said to be Intel’s old ARM-based XScale PXA270 processor clocked at 624MHz. Intel offloaded its XScale technology to Marvell in mid-2006 as a prelude to developing a line of pint-sized x86 processors for smartphones and other devices, which debuted earlier this year in the form of the Atom.

The OS is reported to be not the forthcoming BlackBerry OS 4.5 but in fact version 4.6. This includes a stylish new UI with crisp icons and transparency. The bundled applications also get a boost, with the browser rumoured to support more PC-like HTML rendering and Flash sites (including YouTube clips) as well as new applications for pulling down RSS feeds.

Just how much of this is specific to 4.6 rather than 4.5 remains to be seen, as does the upgradability of existing BlackBerry devices to either OS.

We’ll be attending WES for APC, so stay tuned for updates!