Despite the leak, the new handsets come as no surprise, since both the BlackBerry 9650 and Pearl 3G have been making the rounds on gadget rumor blogs for several months. Then, on Sunday, Al Sacco from CIO.com (a sister publication of PCWorld) released a photo via Twitpcic of a Sprint advertisement from the WES 2010 promo notebook that included the Bold 9650.
Here’s the specs we know so far:
BlackBerry Bold 9650
BlackBerry Pearl 3G
Like the Bold 9650, the Pearl 3G will also come with a 3.2-megapixel camera and a high-resolution screen, but the Pearl 3G will be exclusively a quad-band GSM phone with no CDMA capabilities–typical of most Pearl devices. The Pearl 3G will also have slightly better Wi-Fi connectivity than the Bold, using the newer 802.11n standard as well as backwards compatibility with b and g networks.
Both devices will use the new Blackberry trackpad in place of the old trackball.
The Street’s report contradicts Bold 9650 rumors from earlier this month from the blog Crackberry, which claimed the Bold 9650 would be launching on Verizon on May 27. Another popular Bold 9650 rumor said Sprint would be getting a version of the device without a camera, but it’s not clear if that rumor will be proven false or not.
RIM is famous for its inability to keep its upcoming device’s locked down, as photos and screenshots of products in development frequently leak online. Earlier this month, Boy Genius Report posted purported screenshots of the next iteration of the Blackberry OS and a new flip phone called the Blackberry 9670.
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