BlackBerry 9700's arranged marriage to T-Mobile leaves its mark, seen in the wild
By Ross Miller 
posted August 11th 2009 12:57AM
posted August 11th 2009 12:57AM
Sure, it's more or less just a BlackBerry Onyx with a trackpad, but slap a T-Mobile logo on it, and the excitement is all rejuvenated. Such a device was spotted in the wild by the folks at Crackberry, sporting a silver chrome and a leather-clad battery cover. Not much to say here, but with that branding, we're hoping it's not long before heading into the consumer channels. Don't worry AT&T friends, we're sure your GSM-equipped 9700 is just around the corner, too.
[Thanks, Glenn]
[Thanks, Glenn]
This will be an interesting addition to the tmo family..but is this thing better than a trackball one?
I could not imagine it being worse. As much as I love my 8900, the trackball is my least favorite part of the phone! Little debris would often times get in there and cause the tracking to skip or the trackball to stick. Those are reasons why you no longer see trackballs in mice these days!
The only mouse I see with a trackball anymore is the Apple Mighty Mouse. And that's used for scrolling.
Maybe Apple will get smart and upgrade to this technology. It's right up their alley, with touch and all that.
Can't wait. Any truth about driftwood/9700 not having UMA?
That would suck balls, I have been waiting for a T-mobile 3g+UMA phone for a long time now and I thought the Driftwood would be the ice-breaker.
Same here. Been waiting for 3g & UMA as well, but just been reading as of late that presumably t-mobile has had some "compatibility issues" getting UMA to work with 3G. Hopefully not true.
I don't understand why its a problem. Have the wifi hand-off to Edge or GSM signals like all the other current UMA Blackberrys. Why does the hand-off need to be to 3G?
Freakin' EXCELLENT! Finally.
if this also has GPS then im sold not caring so much about UMA but thank god they finally get a #g blackberry. didnt want to leave t-mobile for ma bell aka ATT.
Good god it's perfect! Except if I cant freaking get tabbed browsing inside 3 months of owning it, for the premium I'm getting ready to dish out it better be os5
@pheer6224
Look at the picture is shows OS 5.0.169.
I am on my Bold using the Bolt browser and I can see that I am fairly certain.
Can't wait for the Bold 2 to hit, lookin' good.
I bought my wife a BlackBerry 8520 last week and I LOVE the trackpad compared to the trackball. Major improvement. I've been waiting for a 3G BlackBerry to come to T-Mobile, this is long overdue.
Yay Trackpads
for the love of god, please replace the $ button with period!!! who the hell are actually using this stupid button regularly enough to warrant it's own button?
uh, the period is right next to the "$"...what's the need for tow period buttons?
what i meant was for rim to get rid of the need for alt-m for periods. i'd rather have a stand alone period button rather than stand alone $ button. for the several months i've been using bold, i probably used the $ button less than 10 times.
ahhh, i see what you mean. i didn't look at it that way. i have the tour on VZ and must have overlooked that detail. now that you mention it, i agree!
or you could just hit the spacebar twice...
try doing the spacebar twice with an email address. or website, or countless other reasons.
@m0m0
When entering a URL in the BB browser, pressing spacebar once produces a period. Of course, that doesn't help in many other contexts. I agree that a dedicated period button would be much more useful than a $ button.
Look like the iphone to me.
haha! good one :)
T-Mo is really stepping up there phone game this year.
tmobile usa? ;D or for some where else tmobile usa dont have many good phones please answer me thankss
PLEASE for the love of god can this have 3G AND UMA...
I love my 8900 but the tethering speed is killing me. has anybody heard a (potential) launch date/price?
looks good. although the squared trackpad seems to throw the design off a little bit, in my opinon. i prefer the circular trackball on my tour, looks nicer.
Good news for AT&T fans, AT&T cell phone blog mention the blackberry 9700 will also head to AT&T named Onyx.
http://www.att-phones.org/blackberry-9700-heading-to-att-also-named-onyx.html
Thanks Dan for the tip on the space bar for periods! I can't wait for this to launch, I was almost going to get a mytouch out of curious desperation... I have an old 8700g and need an upgrade bad. If this rolls out in 3G, its a done deal. the TouchPro2 is way to expensive and that WinMo is dog slow.