It’s been a busy couple of weeks for BlackBerry. Not satisfied with announcing the successor to the Storm, those email enthusiasts from across the pond have upped the ante with a successor to the hugely popular BlackBerry Bold smartphone. So, following on from the Storm 2, surely the next ‘Berry to get excited about is the BlackBerry Bold 2 right? Wrong! Clearly not a fan of continuity, BlackBerry have bucked the trend in announcing the eagerly awaited (and much rumoured) BlackBerry Bold 9700. What can we expect the second addition to the Bold line up? Read on for our first look at the Bold…

The first thing that’ll strike you about the 9700 Bold is the design; it looks fantastic. The new Bold is half a centimeter slimmer than it’s wider predecessor looking more like the recent Curve 8900 with an all black body made up of high class metals and plastics. The new Bold dispenses of the trackball in favour of an optical trackpad for navigation. Working in a similar fashion to those found on laptops, we loved this style of navigation on the 8520 Curve but expect an even more refined and even more intuitive user experience on the new Bold. If the outside borrows from the Curve range, on the inside it’s all Bold with the 9700 sporting HSDPA and Wi-Fi connectivity for high speed web access and downloads. GPS is also included, complimented by the BlackBerry Maps app which acts as a navigation tool.

And the premium features don’t end there. The 9700 features a large, hi-resolution screen that displays over 65,000 colours; creating a vivid viewing experience for all your photos, videos, files and websites. The Bold 9700 also Syncs with iTunes and Windows Media Player letting you transfer your entire music collection to your phone and with expandable memory up to 16GB, there’s room for your movies and photos to boot. Continuing the theme of work and play, the Bold 9700 sports a 3.2 Megapixel camera with auto focus and an LED flash plus support for video capture putting it on a par with the iPhone 3GS and ahead of the Palm Pre in the camera stakes. Rounding things off nicely, the Bold 9700 comes with full support for BlackBerry App World letting you customise your bold with all the latest apps.

Let’s be honest, we knew it was coming and we also knew pretty much all the specs. And yet we’re still excited. Why? Well, the original Bold was easily one of BlackBerry’s finest smartphones and with the 9700 promising to add improvements in all the right areas, those crafty Canadians could be on to a winner. Set to launch early November, click here to register for updates and we’ll keep you in the loop for all things Bold.

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BlackBerry Bold 9700 announced!