A BlackBerry slider 9800, with a slide out, portrait QWERTY keyboard and a revamped BlackBerry OS 6.0 could be nearing release. How do we know? Official RIM documents sitting live on its site right now say so!
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We’ve seen spy snaps of a BlackBerry slider prototype recently, as well as leaked screenshots of revamped BlackBerry software, but now more evidence pointing to an imminent launch is live on RIM’s site right now.
BlackBerry addicts have stumbled across a document on RIM’s BlackBerry site, which mentions a BlackBerry 9800 with a QWERTY keyboard, and tantalisingly, a 360×480 screen resolution. That’s not hugely sharp, but certainly points to a screen that’s longer than it is wide, like a BlackBerry Storm. But with a keyboard shoved in there too.
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The UAProf document, as it’s known, also lists a 6.0 version of “RIM OS”, pointing to a BlackBerry slider 9800 model running the new operating system.
Other specs in the document list the latest n-standard Wi-Fi, plus 3G, and plenty of file format support for music and video, including the popular H.264 video codec. Disappointingly though, the BlackBerry browser is listed as only being HTML 4.0.1 – in other words, not up to the swish HTML5 standards of the Android browser and Safari on the iPhone. Whether or not the BlackBerry slider 9800 will pack the new, faster WebKit browser we’ve been promised is still unclear.
There’s no word on a launch date for the BlackBerry slider 9800, but it can’t be far off now: RIM’s big annual expo, WES, takes place at the end of the month in Orlando Florida, so a betting man might want to take a punt on then.
Out TBC | £TBC | BlackBerry (Via CrackBerry)
