BlackBerry Bold 2 to be announced October 21 for T-Mobile, AT&T

We have it on good authority that T-Mobile and AT&T both currently plan on announcing the Bold 2 -- also known as the Onyx -- on October 21. As a refresher, this would be the touchpad-driven piece with model number 9700 that's been making the rounds on the leak circuit the past few months, a fitting successor to a device that virtually every celebrity this side of Merle Haggard has been photographed carrying at once point or another. What we don't know is pricing or retail launch date, but at least this gives us a pretty hard target for when we can expect details -- so start cleaning out that Bold trackball, because you're going to have something to eBay here pretty shortly.

[Thanks, Cody]

[duff Posted Oct 8th 2009 12:25AM]

Good job on scoring another amazing device verizon!

[MasonicAngel Posted Oct 8th 2009 12:32AM]

nicest Blackberry to date! This coming from an iPhone guy! very high end look, nice chrome bezel now if only they polished the OS, web browsing and memory to match

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 8th 2009 12:34AM]

I am an iPhone user also, but leaning towards picking this up when released. Use my iphone for games....

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 8th 2009 12:32AM]

^ hahaha. Well verizon is getting two android phones soon...

[MasonicAngel Posted Oct 8th 2009 11:14AM]

Well Max coming from a guy who left iphone shortly to go try the vaunted Android let me tell you Android is at best an unpolished , OS with crappy , buggy unfinished software and yes I had 1.5 and nothing changed. The OS is light years behind apples IPhone OS so verizon can have those android failures

[dave1812 Posted Oct 11th 2009 2:25PM]

I almost picked up a couple of mytouch 3g's yesterday until I learned that Android 1.6 does not support Bluetooth voice dialing! Not only that you have to click icons to start voice dialing (without BT) on the phone and then confirm the contact brought up by using your voice, WITH ANOTHER SCREEN CLICK!! So much for using this sucker in the car. What a ridiculous oversight by the Android development community.

[SParklingCYaNide Posted Oct 8th 2009 12:32AM]

GOod Job this is Excellent! We all knew but its good to hear again.

[Crunch Posted Oct 8th 2009 2:33AM]

I wonder how they will price it...$299 w/ 2-yr, I would think. $399 - $100 mail-in rebate for regular customers? Hmmm

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 8th 2009 6:12AM]

Crunch, you are probably right, but I hope it will be less.

[ndcart Posted Oct 8th 2009 9:17AM]

I'm not trying to knock the device, but it looks like almost every other blackberry device. What is different between this one and the original bold? Just curious.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 8th 2009 9:54AM]

Ermmm its not even similar to the original Bold for a start it has a trackpad whereas the original Bold has the trackball...it had a much smaller and tighter form to the bold. It has 256mb of ram which is more than the original bold, which came with 128mb and lastly it has a 3.2mp camera rather than the 2mp camera that the Bold came with. It also will run with OS5 rather than OS4.6 that the Bold was running.

All in all its just as good if not better than the original Bold.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 8th 2009 2:04PM]

I'll have to agree with ndcart ... it does look similiar to several of the Blackberry's on the market. Obviously that is about economies of scale for RIM. The deltas between this and initial Bold do not appear to be significant enough to upgrade from a Bold or pay extra to get out of an agreement.

[tiepair Posted Oct 9th 2009 10:54PM]

I wouldn't really call it better than the original. That's a matter of perception, as the phone has gotten smaller. I'd also compare this in an iPhone3GS vs iPhone 3G type deal (Ooh, it's slightly faster, and more megapixels/focus on a crappy cellphone camera). On another note, a few of us Bold (9000) users like the wider phone, and larger keypad.

This phone does look decent, but I'm going to wait for the next generation, if possible. OS 5.0 looks promising thus far, and hopefully RIM's purchase of a browser developer will also help out. Either way, my original Bold 9000 does the job it's intended to do great, and should do so for a while (or until it's broken, lost, etc, etc.)

I just got on with the Bold this past January, so I don't really need to change up, unless a real upgrade comes. At least it has a trackpad, although I haven't used one, so I don't have a straight up experience based opinion on it, vs. the trackball. I also use a holster, and only have trackball issues every once in a while. That's generally fixed after a quick move in all directions.

Either way, this would be a good device for some 83xx Curve users to change over to. I just hope that 3G battery life has been increased. My 9000 lasts a whole day on a normal work day, so I'm still not complaining. There are other much heavier users that could probably use some extra life, though.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 16th 2009 11:45AM]

Is the T-Mobile version coming with 3G or it will be EDGE as always? This is the only thing I hate about T-Mobile: Always late with everything: Phone models, navigation speed, rates... If T-Mobile had to run a marathon, it would be ALWAYS the BIGGEST loser...

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 25th 2009 9:28AM]

Alvaromiami,

I believe the T-Mobile version will in fact be coming with 3G. This should be one of the first 3G phones they offer from my understanding.

http://www.blackberrybold2.com