14 DAY TRIAL // Canadian smartphone designer Research In Motion might be set to soon announce officially the launch of its first sliding device, the BlackBerry 9800, the latest rumors around the Internet suggest. It seems that the company already sent out invites to an event to be held on August 3, during which it might announce nothing else than the long rumored sliding mobile phone.
The said event next Tuesday might also bring to light the fact that the first BlackBerry slider would arrive on the United States market on AT&T's airwaves, since the wireless carrier would also be present at the event. Unfortunately, no other details than what can be read on the shot attached to this article are available on the matter, but previous rumors suggested that August 15 would be the launch date at AT&T.
The said device is expected to arrive on shelves with the mobile phone maker's new BlackBerry 6 operating system, while sporting the name of BlackBerry 9800 Slider, or BlackBerry Torch, according to some. The handset should arrive with a touchscreen display, while also sporting the popular BlackBerry QWERTY, though in a sliding form factor this time.
A recent article on BlackBerry Cool suggests that the BlackBerry 9800 would indeed be the main dish at the event, especially since the BlackBerry OS 6 logo can be seen on the invites sent out to media. Moreover, it seems that the launch event seems to resemble a lot with the last year's release of BlackBerry Bold 9700.
Rumors on the upcoming availability of this device have started to emerge ever since last year, and it seems that they are finally getting close to proving true. Moreover, with RIM pushing out all sorts of details on its new BlackBerry 6 platform, as well as on various services and software solutions related to it, it was only a matter of time before official release was made. All in all, nothing is certain for the time being, but August 3 should make things official, it seems.
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