14 DAY TRIAL // Currently sold by T-Mobile in the US, an AT&T-branded Blackberry Bold 9780 has been spotted on Ebay and can be purchased for $899.00. AT&T plans to replace its Blackberry 9700 smartphone with the Bold 9780, but an official release date hasn't been disclosed yet. Previously launched by T-Mobile, Blackberry 9700 was picked by AT&T only two weeks later, so we can assume that it will start offering the 9780 as well, by the end of 2010.
It has become usual for RIM to offer its smartphones for retail to as many US carriers as possible, Blackberry Storm and Torch being the only exceptions.
As a side note, the Ebay seller offering the AT&T Blackberry Bold 9780 claims that the smartphone won't be available until next year for the carrier. The sales package of the device also includes a 2GB microSD card.
Blackberry Bold 9780 is powered by a 624 MHz processor and runs on Blackberry 6.0 platform. It comes with a 2.44-inch TFT with 65K colors support, 480 x 360 pixels resolution and touch-sensitive optical trackpad.
In addition to its full QWERTY keyboard, Bold 9780 embeds 256 MB internal memory, 512 MB RAM, as well as microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB, 2GB card included).
It also sports a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash and video recording capabilities. Other key features of the smartphone include: HSDPA, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UMA, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP support, 3.5 mm audio jack, GPS with A-GPS support (BlackBerry maps), Push Email, IM and Document editor (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF).
The Li-Ion 1500 mAh is rated by the manufacturer for 528 hours (408 hours for 3G) of standby time or 6 hours of talk time.
Blackberry Bold 9780 is currently sold by T-Mobile for $129.99 with a two-year contract, so we can assume that AT&T's price will be something close to it.