RIM will be bringing the BlackBerry Bold to the UK later this August, fueling the ever increasing CrackBerry habits of businessmen and addicted emailers alike. The Bold (or BlackBerry 9000) will be the best BlackBerry in the range, with a sexy frontend to the OS, a sleek black styling as well as WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, 3G and EDGE, and a standby time of 13 days (which is a long time for a smartphone, to say the least). When launched, the Bold will be available in T-Mobile and Carphone Warehouse stores, with no word on any expansions to other carriers as of yet.

Also included is a 2 megapixel (same as the iPhone) and flash (one up on the iPhone), as well as 1 GB of memory and support for more with an additional memory card.

Whether or not this will take off and be an “iPhone killer” is yet to be seen, but I predict that missing things such as the full featured experience of the iPhone’s iPod, the App Store and multi-touch may leave this to the hungry business types, always out to get the latest device to keep them connected. However, that is not to say that this is not a nice phone, and it certainly (for now, anyway :D) beats the iPhone hands down in the enterprise market, with better push email support and things such as the ability to edit Microsoft Office documents, whereas iPhone users can only view them. And even though there is no App Store, the ability to install any application made for the BlackBerry without having to submit officially to RIM is a big one up on the iPhone, and this is certainly a valid arguement that BlackBerry supporters use when arguing over the best phone.

I have to say, even though I am an iPhone user, my limited use of a BlackBerry Pearl has proven to me that they are very nice mobile devices and I can certainly see why they are better for business applications than the iPhone is. However, you can see where the iPhone is a breath of fresh air on the OS side, as the BlackBerry OS feels a little old, as well as no HTML support in email and other niggles which certainly make it a little annoying. The keyboard was definitely something I was not to sure of, but the Pearl has a QWERTY keyboard that doubles up each key to save space, so I am sure something like the Bold might suit me more, with each key to itself.

If I had the choice between this and an iPhone, I would choose the iPhone, but it certainly is a nice phone that I would certainly consider if the iPhone wasn’t an option. I can see this being a hit for sure.

Here are some specifications provided by CrackBerry.com.

• Size - Length: 114mm, Width: 66mm, Thickness: 14mm
• Weight (with battery) - 133g (same as the 88xx series. I can attest to it!)
• Memory - 1GB on-board (storage) and 128 MB Flash (applications)
• Battery - 1500mAhr lithium cell
• Est. Battery Life - Standby: 13 days, Talk Time: 5 hours
• Network Support - UMTS: 2100 / 1900 / 850MHz, GSM: 1900 / 1800 / 900 / 850 MHz, GPRS, EDGE and HDSPA networks
• Wi-Fi - 803.11a/b/g enabled
• Display - HVGA, 480 x 320 pixels, Transmissive TFT LCD, supports over 65k colors
• Media Player, Video Support - DivX 4, Div X 5 & 6 are partially supported, XviD is partially supported, H.263, H.264 and WMV3
• Media Player, Audio Support - .3gp, MP3, WMA9 (.wma/.asf), WMA9 Pro/WMA 10, MIDI, AMR-NB, Professional AAC/AAC+/eAAC+
• Media Player, Audio - BlackBerry Media Sync allows you to transfer your desktop iTunes music to your BlackBerry!!!
• Camera - 2.0MP, 5 x digital zoom (with flash of course)
• GPS - internal GPS with extended ephemeris, BB Maps is standard
• Bluetooth - Bluetooth v2.0, all the normal stuff and Bluetooth Stereo Audio via A2DP and AVCRP
• USB Port - Enables charging and high-speed data synchronizations via USB “A” to mini-USB “B” cable (I can personally say moving files back and forth is now lightning quick!)
• Browser - HTML browsing, View Movies/Clips from websites built for mobile streaming, RSS feed support