BlackBerry Bold 9900 Now Available at Vodafone UK for Free

As we reported yesterday, BlackBerry fans living in UK will be able to purchase the new Bold 9900 smartphone starting today.

Spotted recently at a Carphone Warehouse store, the BlackBerry Bold 9900 has just been put on sale at Vodafone UK.The smartphone is now available for free on select plans at £34.17 or above.

Unveiled in May, the Bold 9900 is among the first BlackBerry 7 smartphones to be launched in Europe, but RIM plans to release two more devices by the end of the year, the Torch 9810 and 9860.

All three phones are powered by the new and improved BlackBerry 7 operating system and each equipped with a fast performance 1.2 GHz single core processor.

Also known as BlackBerry Dakota or Magnum, the phone measures 115 x 66 x 10.5 mm and weighs 130g (battery included).

When it comes to design, the phone is surely one of the slimmest offered by RIM, but otherwise comes with the same traditional BlackBerry-esque shape.

In addition, the Bold 9900 offers business customers both worlds, as it comes with a full portrait QWERTY keyboard with excellent ergonomics and a 2.8-inch capacitive touchscreen display with a slightly better 480 x 640 pixels resolution and 16 million colors support.

On the inside, the smartphone packs 8GB storage, 768 MB RAM and microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB).

There's also a 5-megapixel photo snapper on the back that features autofocus, LED flash and 720p HD video recording capabilities.

Other highlights of the Bold 9900 include: HSDPA (14.4Mbps) and HSUPA support, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, Wi-Fi hotspot capability, as well as GPS with A-GPS support (BlackBerry Maps).

The BlackBerry Bold 9900 is expected to be released in other European countries by the end of the month or in early September.