Sprint gets BlackBerry Bold 9650: $200 on contract, ships May 23
By Darren Murph 
posted April 26th 2010 9:47AM
posted April 26th 2010 9:47AM
[Thanks, Travis]
Advanced Features and Refined Style of BlackBerry Bold 9650 Smartphone Coming to Sprint
Available in all Sprint sale channels May 23, the new BlackBerry Bold 9650 offers international roaming for a global smartphone experience
OVERLAND PARK, Kan., Apr 26, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) --With an extensive array of high-end communications and multimedia features, compact and highly refined design and international roaming capabilities, the new BlackBerry(R) Bold(TM) 9650 smartphone will be available from Sprint (NYSE: S). It will operate on Sprint's nationwide 3G Network domestically, and roams on other high-speed wireless networks around the world for reliable voice and email communication.
The BlackBerry Bold 9650 smartphone will be available for $199.99 with a new two-year service agreement, after a $100 mail-in rebate (taxes & surcharges excluded). It can be purchased in all other Sprint sales channels, including Web sales (www.sprint.com), Telesales (1-800-SPRINT1), Sprint Business Sales, Sprint stores, national retailers and third-party dealers, Sunday, May 23.
BlackBerry Bold 9650 provides instant access to email, calendar, contacts, robust business and entertainment applications and location-based services, leveraging the best performing wireless networks in the United States and abroad. It is also ideally suited for those who want to stay socially connected and share moments through pictures and videos over MMS and popular IM services like BlackBerry(R) Messenger. It also offers easy access to social networking sites like Flickr(R), MySpace(TM) and Facebook(R), with smooth integration, providing a great view of what's happening both personally and professionally.
"BlackBerry Bold 9650 extends Sprint's position of offering the best portfolio of BlackBerry smartphones in the industry with a powerful mobility tool for those who want to stay connected, both domestically and abroad," said Fared Adib, vice president - Product Development, Sprint. "Our customers will appreciate its fast Web browsing, downloads and streaming as well as social media and productivity enhancing applications. This is an ideal smartphone for juggling busy personal and professional lives."
"The BlackBerry Bold 9650 is a sophisticated and feature-rich smartphone with uncompromising performance that lets you stay connected to the people and content that matter most, whether at home or travelling the world," said David Smith, vice president of Handheld Product Management, RIM.
In addition to top-of-the-line performance, functionality and features, the BlackBerry Bold 9650 smartphone comes with BlackBerry(R) OS 5. It is also designed with a smoothly integrated optical trackpad and a distinctive, highly tactile, fretted keyboard and features a large, high-resolution display (480 x 360 resolution at 245 ppi).
Additional features include:
* Access to up to 10 supported email accounts (including most popular ISP email accounts such as Yahoo!(R), Windows Live(TM) Hotmail(R), AOL(R) and Gmail(TM)), plus BlackBerry(R) Enterprise Server support offering advanced security and IT administration capabilities for corporate deployments
* Built-in GPS and Wi-Fi(R) (802.11 b/g)
* 3.2 MP camera with flash, variable zoom, image stabilization, autofocus and video recording
* Advanced media player for enjoying pictures, video and music
* 512 MB Flash memory and an expandable memory card slot that supports up to 32 GB microSDHC cards, with a 2 GB microSD card included
* 3.5 mm stereo headset jack
* Support for the Bluetooth(R) stereo headsets (A2DP/AVCRP)
* Sprint Music Store, Sprint Navigation, Sprint TV(R), Sprint Football Live and NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile
* BlackBerry(R) App World(TM) for access to thousands of applications
The 3G Sprint Mobile Broadband Network (inclusive of data roaming) reaches more than 269 million people, 18,652 cities and 1,838 airports. The Sprint Mobile Broadband Network (inclusive of data roaming) have twice the coverage of AT&T's current 3G network and 14 times the coverage of T-Mobile's current 3G network, both based on square miles1.
According to Sprint performance data, Sprint Mobile Broadband connections are successfully connected and maintained better than 99 out of 100 times. According to a recent independent network test conducted by PC World, no one has a more reliable network than Sprint based on a recent 13 city 3G performance test 2.
BlackBerry Bold 9650 for most customers requires activation on an Everything Data plan or a Business Advantage Messaging and Data plan. Additional plan options are available for business customers. For just $69.99 per month, Sprint's affordable Everything Data 450 plan with Any Mobile, AnytimeSM gives customers unlimited calling with any U.S. wireless user, unlimited text and picture messaging, unlimited Web, email and social networking, and unlimited GPS navigation for the same price AT&T and Verizon charge for unlimited talk only. Sprint Everything Data plans also automatically enroll customers in the Sprint Premier loyalty program, which provides annual device upgrades, discounted accessories and other benefits.
Sprint's Simply EverythingSM plan offers nationwide unlimited calling, unlimited text and unlimited data, including email, social networking, Web browsing, Sprint Navigation, Sprint TV, streaming music, Sprint Football Live and NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile, for only $99.99 per month (plus taxes and surcharges). That is a $480 savings over two years vs. a comparable AT&T iPhone(R) plan3. (Prices exclude taxes and surcharges. Both Everything Data and Simply Everything plans are available to existing customers without extending their service agreement. New lines of service require a two-year service agreement.)
International Travel
The BlackBerry Bold 9650 smartphone operates domestically on the Sprint 3G network, and globally on 2100 MHz UMTS/HSPA and quad-band EDGE/GSM/GPRS networks where Sprint has international roaming agreements. With this smartphone, Sprint customers have the power to make or receive phone calls in more than 185 countries and access BlackBerry(R) data services including email, apps and Web browsing in nearly 150 countries.
Sprint offers clear value and simplicity with its Worldwide BlackBerry(R) service plan. The Worldwide BlackBerry plan gives customers unlimited BlackBerry email and Web access in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and other locations using CDMA technology, and with UMTS and EDGE/GSM/GPRS carriers abroad where Sprint has applicable roaming agreements. The plan is available to corporate customers for $69.99 per month, or an additional $40 per month (excluding taxes and surcharges) as an attachable to Simply EverythingSM, Everything Data, Everything Data Family or Business Advantage with Messaging and Data plans.
Sprint international voice roaming rates range from $0.59 to $5.99 per minute, depending on where customers are calling. Customers making frequent calls while in Canada can take advantage of a specific service plan for $2.99 per month which allows calls to be made and received at $0.20 per minute. Additional pricing plans are available exclusively to enterprise customers.
Customers also have the option of using a third-party SIM for international voice and data services.
About Sprint Nextel
Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including two wireless networks serving more than 48 million customers at the end of the fourth quarter of 2009 and the first 4G service from a national carrier in the United States; industry-leading mobile data services; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. The company's customer-focused strategy has led to improved first call resolution and customer care satisfaction scores. For more information, visit www.sprint.com.
The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited. RIM assumes no obligations or liability and makes no representation, warranty, endorsement or guarantee in relation to any aspect of any third party products or services.
1 Coverage comparison based on publicly available information as of 04/01/09 inclusive of Sprint roaming partners. Based on square miles.
2 PC World's test included Sprint, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile in thirteen major cities in all regions of the country during December 2009 & January 2010. In all, roughly 9,000 individual tests of Sprint's 3G service were conducted from 280 testing locations in 13 cities. Testing sessions were one minute in duration per location, and network performance can be highly variable from neighborhood to neighborhood. In laptop-based tests, Sprint tied with another carrier for first in 3G network reliability
3 Savings based on publicly available information comparing AT&T Nation Unlimited plus required iPhone data plan and optional unlimited text messaging totaling $119.99/month for AT&T as of publication date, excluding taxes, surcharges and fees. iPhone is a registered trademark of Apple Inc.
evo news please!!
Am i the only one who thinks this is too expensive? 200 AFTER rebate.
@Outsider have you ever used a Bold before? i would pay 300-400 for the quality you get with blackberry, best and most reliable phones ive ever used
@Outsider wow you'd pay 300-400 for that bullshit? The fucking thing doesn't even support Exchange!!
FAIL!
@zephxiii
"FAIL"---lol.! :D....buhtt anyway this phone is A TOUR WITH A DIFFERENT TRACK PAD!!!!...and just because the name "BOLD" I tatted on it means nothing.!...plus it's kinda ugly
@zephxiii
No, he wouldn't. He also thinks $200 is too expensive. I have no idea how you read his post otherwise.
seriously.... $200? Why in gods name would any regular consumer buy a blackberry bold over an iphone or android phone? God i hate blackberry.
@vicsvenge
Have RIM ever actually aimed these types of Blackberry at the average consumer? I mean everyone I know got one at some point as some status symbol...all the suits in the city had one so they needed one to look more important. But, besides them, were they actually positioned as good replacements for "media" focused devices?
@vicsvenge
Well let's start with the people who like simple over new in your face features. Or people who want to work on a tested stable platform that makes the operating system transparent. I am not a BlackBerry fan either, but your comment clearly shows your bias.
@vicsvenge
No, it certainly is way too high when you can get a Palm Pre Plus for free after two year contract.
@o TINY o After using a PRE for a year, played with an iphone and used android for awhile I have no idea why someone would want to pay $200 for a blackberry in it's current (unchanged) form.
If my company gave me one as a work phone fine but PAY for my own?
@vicsvenge
I hate black berries too, but I also hate other smartphones that aren't seizing the opportunity to take RIM down. I hate RIM because they refuse to innovate, and the only thing that is keeping them alive is their unrivaled email system.
There's simply no other smart phone out there that can handle messaging like a Blackberry can. On the flip side Blackberries utterly suck at doing everything else.
@MrX8503 my 8900 was good at A LOT of other things, poynt was my lifeline and the speakers on it were amazing, i used to drown out my friends iphone when he was playing stupid videos or songs just to piss him off, the web browser sucked tho but they fixed it... the only company that has a shot at stealing BlackBerries market is WinPho7, no one else has the business capabilities
@vicsvenge
Maybe because some people need a real phone for work and not a toy/mp3 player/camera/fake lighter.
I like the iPhone and even own an Android, but for somebody that really needs a work phone, BlackBerry is hands down the way to go.
Another thing that many people forget to mention is the coolness and usefulness of the BlackBerry Messenger. You can be in touch with people from all over the world almost immediately (BBM, voice notes, pics, etc), at no extra cost. Rates for international/picture messaging are just ridiculous (~$.15-$0.20 per message) and most providers don't include them as part of their unlimited plans, but BBM takes care of that... faster and at no cost (as long as the receiving party also owns a BB).
@vicsvenge I know..they suck so badly..
@hlazarde I believe there is a version of BBM for WebOS and Android as well. Not sure about iPhone...
@onemadrssn
Nope. It's only available on BlackBerry devices. RIM hasn't (and most likely won't) made it available for other platforms.
This seems like a mighty boring non competitive phone. There are to many better solutions available now and on the horizon. RIM needs to step it up.
@thezero4
They should call it Blackberry Fat
Lol at all the Blackberry hate..
I'd love to see some news about new hardware from PALM however....even if its the most random rumor ever...
Let me think...The Tour Plus or the HTC Evo 4G? Same price, same specs...oh wait, not even close. Maybe if you smash the Evo with a hammer the phones would be more closely related. No OS 6.0? No 9650 for me, Evo in June!
@abrown00
except:
the EVO 4G will be a first generation wimax device, and as we all know first-gen devices are always super glitchy. this blackberry is at least a 3rd-gen (more depending on how you count generations) of this type of phone, i know it will behave very well (stable) and predictably.
the EVO 4G is a shotgun of features. i'm not complaining about the feature-set (it's nice) but having many features also usually implies unpredictable behavior, sluggish performance, and low battery life. on the flip side, this RIM phone has a very tame set of features. the only features it has are those that would definitely be used by their target audience, no more and no less. optimistically i would call it balanced.
and they are charging $200 because unlike most phone companies, RIM has the luxury of knowing that the ppl who use their devices are not the ones buying them, and the to the ones buying them $200 is no big thing.
@onemadrssn
A dinosaur of a phone, shouldn't cost $200. It should be free, no matter how you slice it. Also did you just call the Snapdragon, sluggish? There are Droid phones out now that use the Snapdragon and it looks mighty fast to me.
@MrX8503
Yes, I did call a phone powered by a snapdragon sluggish. I did not say that the snapdragon specifically is sluggish; in most applications it's very snappy. I said that a phone with a bloated unrefined OS topped off with a plethora of fancy power-hungry features will most likely be sluggish; I am basing this off only my experience in the consumer electronics industry and historical data.
@onemadrssn What are you trying to convince us of? That we should not move forward? My HTC Magic with a 2800mah batttery that lasts 12 hours of HARD use and is still lighter and thinner is significantly better than co workers BB's all day every day and they know it. I get 8 hours of NAV! HTC is reliable as it gets. Go back to 2002 bro.
@xanavi AND I HAVE A 1ST GEN DEVICE!
@xanavi
I'm trying to convince you that comparing a totally new first-gen device to an [almost] last-gen device is like apples to oranges. it's very easy to get lost in all the new features and forget to consider how that would affect the core-functionality of the device (whatever that might be).
Also, I was trying to show that the BB is a a very targeted device. They know EXACTLY who will buy this and they made it perfect for them. The EVO 4G takes more of a "throw it all against the wall and see what sticks" method of choosing features; who are they exactly trying to target?
I hope the product managers at HTC and Sprint know, because I have no idea given that feature-set. I can guess it's someone with huge pockets who needs to be able to watch/carry HD videos on the go. Maybe a movie producer who needs to be able to easily plug into any TV and show something? But he also likes the nostalgia of FM radio.... Or someone who travels by plane a lot, but never brings a laptop.
@onemadrssn
Nexus1, HTC Desire, HTC incredible, all very fast snapdragon phones. I don't know what reviews you've been reading but Android is not bloat.
Rim suck they keep making the same damn stupid phone with same boring software
Wow, phone announced and release date announced - all without dicking around with small news leaks, blurrycams, contests, etc. This is the way it should be with all handsets.
@whySoSerious well... there were leaks and blurry cams long ago. But usually RIM leaks are more like gushers.
Any news releasing a new Blackberry for Nextel?
Is there a place online that can show me the differences between the Curve, Tour and Bold? They keyboard is pretty different on the Curve but the Bold and Tour seem to be the same thing (except that Bold seems to be on the GSM carriers in the US while the Tour was on the CDMA, but now the bold is moving over to Sprint, so what is the difference between a Sprint Tour and a Spint Bold, aside from the $200 price on the Bold)
@croooow this new bold 9650 has wifi, 512mb of mem, a trackpad, and opengl support. The tour 9630 has 256mb of mem, a trackball, no wifi and no opengl support. Beyond that there is not much difference.
The differences between all of the different blackberry models out there are subtle.
@hated one
Uhh what?
The Blackberry hate is amusing to be sure. I've never heard someone who is serious about business spew the same kind of iPhone bias. iPhones and Android phones are cool. You won't cath me replacing my Blackberry with one, and that's based on extreme amounts of daily usage . . . for business. If you can get away with using a fun phone for business, all the power to you. The odds are, you just simply don't send as many (or as detailed/lengthy) emails a day. Blackberry phones do what they need to do, nearly perfectly.
@MechaPumpkin
Blackberries are great for business, but they absolutely suck for everything else. Not only that but the OS is ancient. I used a friends BB curve recently and I didn't like the interface at all.
@MrX8503 The OS is ancient? No, it's not. Yes, we're agreed, they're great for business. That's all I said. Your comment about the OS is uninformed. I've owned a 6210, 7800, 8800, Curve, Bold 9000 and finally a Bold 9700. The OS has undergone radical changes in that time. Your experience of using your friend's Curve once, isn't much of a background. They're great for business and do several things "fun" phones do, they just do them worse. Fun phones do lots of things better, and can also be used for business (if the trade-off is of value to you). See how there's 2 different markets? By the way, I've used about 30 iPhones (which I've setup for dozens of clients), own an iTouch, have owned Android phones and generally make sure I try something before I decide I dislike it. However, I don't dislike iPhones or Android phones. I think they're awesome. Still wouldn't trade my Blackberry for one when it comes to conventional business applications (read: straight-up email communication).
@hated one
Did I sleep for two years without realizing it? Last time I checked it was 2010 and a 2 year contract only puts you at 2012.
BB OS 5? :(
Fun Fact to all you BB haters: BlackBerry STILL has the majority of the cellphone market share in the US. 3 years after the iPhone and a year after Android.
@MarkCohen Yep, now filter out kids under 18, and anyone else without a 'career'. Then, of the people with careers, eliminate those who don't need to constantly reply in detail to the emails they receive while out of the office. I think you'll find this statistic gets even more telling. iPhones are great. They even serve the same purpose. Just not quite as optimally. Anyone who claims otherwise is ramping up their onscreen typing skills in order to justify the trade-off. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'd just rather not make the trade off at all.
@MechaPumpkin So basically, take out people who actually NEED a smartphone, and the iPhone wins? Awesome, thanks for proving a point I didn't even have to bring up, bro!
@MarkCohen
Basically, I think what he meant was, you can apply some kind of penalty to "unimportant" users as a scaling system and the result will be that Blackberry will be clearly be the winner.
@Outsider Oh, oops. Totally misunderstood. Let's just downrank that into oblivion....
@MarkCohen What is this mob mentality? I am happy with my android, not about to mob up on RIM HQ with some android fanatics.
@MarkCohen
Yes, I was agreeing with you, 100%.
I don't, however, think the other users are unimportant at all. I'm just pointing out that there are VERY CLEARLY 2 markets. Comparing iPhones to Blackberrys is like comparing the PS3 to the Wii. They're both great, but you can't use one to bash the other. Well you can, but you'd be making a very silly argument.
I've never been a fan of BB but I like the easy to use keyboard on their devices (similar to Nokia's better business devices).
Getting rid of the trackball should make it a lot more comfortable to handle.
Probably won't be long until I see these new ones in the hands of some business partners.
Yawn. Another boring refresh of a BB line that hasn't changed a lick in years.
Every other month RIM comes out with another updated model with marginally better hardware specs.
And $200 is way overpriced. This thing should be $150 tops, and even that is on the high end.
IT LOOKS EXACTLY THE SAME! I have nothing against blackberry, they make good quality phones with great keyboards but they need something refreshing, well they dont NEED it but it would be nice.