The BlackBerry 9900 looks set to bring together the best of both worlds with a touchscreen and slider keyboard combo.
Having smoothed out its issues with touchscreen technology in the
Storm 2, RIM is going back to the keyboard – well, with a difference.
The next BlackBerry we see could be the rumoured 9900 series, which combines the touchscreen of the Storm 9500 family with the best-in-class keyboard of the Bold 9700.
Spy shots of this skunkworks smartphone – shown above and below (sitting next to a BlackBerry Curve for comparison), courtesy of
BBleaks.com – indicate a screen sized somewhere between that of the Storm and the Bold. The display is said to be clocked at the same 480 x 360 pixel resolution as the Storm series.
The screen itself is rumoured to be a more standard iPhone-style touchscreen rather than one which has the piezo-electric ‘SurePress’ technology of the Storm, which is where the keyboard comes into play. But there’s still a lot that could be done on the toucscreen while the keyboard is tucked up out of the way.
The in-the-know
CrackBerry.com also suggests that when the 9900 arrives it will be accompanied by BlackBerry OS 6.0, which will be a slightly enhanced version of the current OS 5.2 including a new Webkit-based browser plus RIM’s own Twitter client, which is currently undergoing beta testing but due for release next month.