RIM Announces BlackBerry Bold 9790, BlackBerry Curve 9380 smartphones

Yesterday RIM announced two new smartphones based on the BlackBerry 7 operating system—the BlackBerry Bold 9790 and the BlackBerry Curve 9380. The 9380 is the first device in the Curve lineup to include a touch screen.

The BlackBerry Bold 9790 features a 2.4-inch capacitive touch screen, along with the signature BlackBerry physical QWERTY keyboard. It is powered by a 1GHz processor, and includes 8GB of onboard memory, along with a microSD card slot that supports up to 32 GB of additional storage.

The BlackBerry Curve 9380, on the other hand, will drop the physical in favor of a 3.2-inch capacitive touch screen. It comes equipped with a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash and video recording capabilities. There are also a number of social networking apps preinstalled, including BlackBerry Messenger, Facebook, and Twitter.

Both the Bold 9790 and Curve 9380 are powered by BlackBerry 7 and include built-in support for Augmented Reality and NFC. NFC enables users to make mobile payments, pair accessories, or read SmartPoster tags using their phone, though it isn't widely used yet.

BlackBerry 7 also includes the ability to manage personal content separately from corporate content, and it comes with a variety of personal and productivity apps out of the box. It includes the document editor Document To Go; BlackBerry Protect, which provides free online backup and the ability to wipe your device remotely; and BlackBerry Balance IT departments to keep work and personal data separated.

No release dates, carriers, or prices have been announced. According to RIM, availability dates and prices will be announced in conjunction with carriers over the coming weeks.

These new devices are hot on the heels of a number of recently-released BlackBerrys, including the BlackBerry Bold 9930 for Verizon Wireless, BlackBerry Torch 9810 for AT&T, BlackBerry Torch 9850 for Sprint, and the BlackBerry Curve 9360 for T-Mobile.

This article, written by Alex Colon, originally appeared on PCMag.com and is republished on Gear Live with the permission of Ziff Davis, Inc.