Vodafone UK has announced that its customers can now buy RIM's new high-end BlackBerry Bold 9000 smartphone.

 

The Bold is offered by the V carrier even for free, for those who also want a contract agreement for two years and an Anytime 600 data plan that costs 35 GBP (43 Euros or 62 USD) per month. The new smartphone can also be bought together with various other plans and its price can go up to 187 GBP (230 Euros or 330 USD).

 

BlackBerry Bold's highlights include: Wi-Fi, GPS to work with Vodafone Sat Nav, a 480 x 320 pixel TFT display, a full QWERTY keyboard, advanced email and messaging capabilities, full HTML browser, DataViz Documents to Go, Music and Video players, a 2 Megapixel camera, 1GB of internal memory and support for microSD and microSDHC cards.

 

"The powerful combination of the BlackBerry Bold on Vodafone’s fastest and most reliable network provides our customers with the ability to work more flexibly than ever before. Following Vodafone’s annual Critical Response Time Index, which emphasizes how a third of UK businesses continue to expect an email response to their new business enquiries within two hours, the arrival of BlackBerry Bold and it’s unrivalled functionality has never been more timely for our customers," stated Elaine Roberts, head of enterprise marketing at Vodafone UK.

 

Mark Guibert, vice president of corporate marketing at Research in Motion, added: "The BlackBerry Bold is the most advanced BlackBerry smartphone to date. It delivers an amazing blend of functionality, performance, usability and design, making it an ideal choice for both business professionals and power users in the UK."

 

Besides UK, BlackBerry Bold will soon be available all over Europe. Germany and Austria already have the handset, France and Luxembourg are getting it next week, while users from the other European countries should be able to buy it by the end of 2008.