RIM announces trio of touchscreen BlackBerry smartphones

Back in May RIM announced the Bold 9900 (aka Bold Touch) and since that time we have seen leaks of all of their other upcoming BB OS 7 smartphones. Today, RIM officially announced the rest of the lineup that includes the Bold 9810 and Torch 9850/9860 devices and all of them have touchscreens.

Here is a quick breakdown of the models, as provided by RIM. I highly recommend you check out the various posts on CrackBerry.com for video walkthroughs of each device and much more detailed information.

• BlackBerry Bold 9900 Series: The Bold 9900 and 9930 are the thinnest BlackBerry smartphones ever, and the first Bold devices to combine the iconic BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard with a brilliant touch display, as well as the first BlackBerry smartphones to include built-in support for NFC.
• BlackBerry Torch 9810: The faster and more fluid new BlackBerry Torch 9810 builds on the popular design of the BlackBerry Torch 9800, featuring a large 3.2 inch, high resolution touch display and a distinctive BlackBerry slide-out keyboard.
• BlackBerry Torch 9850 and 9860: The new all-touch BlackBerry Torch 9850 and 9860 features a 3.7 inch display, the largest ever on a BlackBerry smartphone, making it fully optimized for displaying photos, videos, and powerful gaming experiences.

When I first tried the older BB Torch I did not like it very much, but then I spent a couple of months with one as I was writing my PlayBook Companion book and came to really enjoy that form factor. I was thinking about a Bold 9900 for myself to go with my PlayBook, but if the rumored price is correct I am not sure it will be worth that for me. I would like to see what Verizon ends up with though since that dual mode Torch does seem like a nice option. I found the Storm all touchscreen BlackBerry to be a major failure and am still not convinced that an all touch BB is a good choice given that they do not yet run QNX which I think will offer a much better touch experience.

RIM signed up more than 225 carriers for these new devices so they will be hitting it hard and hoping that these devices can turn things around soon, as James pointed out. We should see these start appearing from carriers at the end of August.