The new Blackberry 9800 Slider is slated to be available by the end of August, and formally introduced today at 11AM. Finally, I feel like RIM got it right with this one. It’s the best of both worlds – a real smartphone touchscreen with a pop-up full keyboard. I always bypassed going with an iPhone or Droid because they lacked keyboards and I don’t get along with typing on glass. What kind I say, I like feeling the keys when typing.
Now, the Blackberry 9800 Slider has a whole new Blackberry 6 operating system which improves upon the Blackberry Storm software and brings cool new software and features. Social networking is easy to navigate; there’s a maps and barcode scanner, you can search with one query for your phone and Internet; and more applications are available. It has all the specs you’d expect: bluetooth, wifi, GPS, Java, and microUSB port.
Here’s how the Blackberry 9800 stacks up with the iPhone 4:
- 3.2 touchscreen – 360 x 480 pixels – iPhone has a whopping 960 x 640!
- 5 megapixel camera – iPhone has the same
- 1.2GHZ processor – iPhone has a slower estimate 800MHZ
- 512MB RAM speed – iPhone has the same
- 4GB storage, external storage up to 16GB storage (microSD card) – iPhone already has 16GB / 32GB internal
- Up to 260 hours standby time – iPhone is about the same
- Full QWERTY keyboard – iPhone’s keyboard is on glass
The bottom line here is that now the Blackberry offers touchscreen capabilities with the full keyboard. Die-hard Blackberry enthusiasts, a.k.a. BB’ers, will now be happy. But, it still doesn’t stack up well with the iPhone 4’s crisp graphics and well-known apps. The iPhone 4 has a resolution of 960 x 640 whereas the BB 9800 only has 360 x 480. That is a huge difference! That being said, old die-hard BB’ers will jump at this new smarter phone of Blackberries. The smartphone setup should be a piece of cake although it’s on a new operating system. The Blackberry setup has always made the tech support pretty easy so that aspect won’t be a tech issue.
