More new BlackBerrys: Curve 8900 and Pearl 8200 flip-phone

Seeking to stay top dog in the email-centric smartphone pack, RIM is ramping up for a busy few months with three new smartphones on the horizon. Here’s a roadmap of the next crop of BlackBerrys and how the various product names and model numbers stack up.

Storm 9500: the just-announced touchphone will arrive here early November and be exclusive to Vodafone for the life of the product. This may be the first touchscreen BlackBerry but it won’t be the last. And while Vodafone will be the sole carrier for the 9500, don’t rule out the appearance of updated models in the 95xx series which will be available through other carriers. Just don’t expect to see those in a hurry, because RIM and Vodafone have made a sizeable investment in bringing the 9500 to market and they’ll want to milk this first-gen model for all it’s worth.

Pearl 8200 series: a flip or ‘clamshell’ version of the Pearl featuring an external secondary display. It was originally known by the codename of KickStart – ad admittedly catchy moniker that we wish RIM had kept!

The ‘flip’ models will all belong to the Pearl 8200 series, compared to the first-gen Pearl 8100 line. and be positioned as a highly affordable entry-level BlackBerry for the consumer, so expect to see this offered on very low contract rates if it arrives here – no carrier has yet publicly raised their hand to bring this onto the local market.

This is a GSM-only device that’s actually larger than the Pearl 8100, as well as being more stylish. The photos only hint at this, but take it from us: it’s impossible to appreciate just how swish this flip-phone looks until it’s parked in your paw. It weighs in at a light 100 grams.

The display is a generous 2.6 inch 240 x 320 LCD panel, while the external display on the outer casing is 1.6 inches clocked at 160 x 128. That secondary screen shows the time, message notification icons, incoming emails and SMS messages, signal strength and battery level.

The rest of the recipe is basically Pearl on the outside and Bold on the inside. Pearlish traits are the SureType keypad, 2.0 megapixel camera, microSD card slot and 3.5mm headphone jack.

The Bold bits stem from the use of BlackBerry OS 4.6: you get that crisp new interface, a halfway decent browser (although it’s still miles behind the iPhone’s Safari), HTML email with the ability to read Microsoft Office document attachments plus highly capable music and video playback.

Watch for three models in the flip family, none of which will actually be called the Pearl 8200. The already announced Pearl 8220 gets Wi-Fi (11b/g), while an as-yet-unconfirmed Pearl 8210 (which RIM has codenamed SeaWolf) will have a GPS receiver. We also expect to see at some stage a Pearl 8230 flip-phone packing Wi-Fi and GPS, based on the evolutionary pattern of the original Pearl 8100 series (the 8110 with GPS, the 8120 with Wi-Fi, and then an 8130 with both). For the US CDMA market, RIM plans an 82xx model codenamed Apex.

Curve 8900: this is the second-gen Curve, which RIM previously cloaked under the codename of Javelin (you may also hear mention of Niagara, which is the line’s EVDO model). It’s still to be launched by RIM so there’s zilch word on local release.

Think of the Curve 8900 one as the result of a torrid night between a Curve 8300 and Bold 9000. The design borrows from the Bold’s striking elegance with a black fascia and oversized buttons flanking the trackball. Yet the corners have the same sharp angles as the Curve 8300 rather than the Bold’s slightly gentler and more fluid camber.

Compared to the Bold 9000, the Curve 8900 also retains a smaller form factor and roomier QWERTY keypad where each key stands slightly apart from the rest. Yet while it’s thinner than the Curve 8300 it’s also taller and wider, mainly because of the upsized screen which now runs at a lush 480 by 360 pixels (Half VGA+).

This is not only well up from the 8300’s 320 x 240, it’s even a higher resolution than its big brother Bold, which manages only 480 x 320 (Half VGA). The Curve 8900 also scores a better 3.2 mexapixel camera with auto-focus.

Both Wi-Fi and GPS are built in, with a 512MHz Xscale processor to kick things along. This is beefier than the 312MHz engine of its predecessor, but still a few cylinders short of the Bold’s 624MHz powerplant.

As you’d expect, it has OS 4.6 and all the goodness which comes with that. Perhaps the sole sad note here is that the Curve 8900 remains a GSM-only device – if you want a 3G BlackBerry you still need to look to the Bold and Storm.

This massive rollout will ensure busy times ahead for RIM’s newly-appointed Australia/New Zealand PR manager, Antoinette Trovatto. Headhunted from a PR role at HP Australia, and previously working in similar capacities with the local offices of Symantec and Toshiba (through their PR agency), Trovatto’s position has been freshly created by RIM – a measure, perhaps, of just how competitive it expects the Australian market to become in the near future.