BlackBerry Tour Comes to Verizon on July 12, Officially

Mobile phone carrier Verizon Wireless has confirmed that the BlackBerry Tour 9630 will become available on its airwaves as soon as July 12. At the same time, the company has also confirmed that the device will sport a price tag of $199.99 upon the signing of a new 2-year contract agreement and after rebates. The handset will come to the market via a variety of operators, both in Canada and the US, and it seems that Verizon will be the first one to make it available for purchase.

The wireless carrier already has the phone's page up and running on its website, where people can also pre-order the device in case it appeals to them. The most interesting part of the story, however, is that Big Red will not launch only one version of the phone, but two, both of which are priced at $199.99, though one of them lacks the 3.2-megapixel photo snapper.

The new device, as many of you might already know, comes with a tri-mode CDMA EVDO Rev. A/ quad-band GSM/EDGE/ single-band HSPA radio, while also featuring an HVGA landscape display and a 3.2-megapixel camera with video recording capabilities, as well as a GPS receiver with A-GPS support, Bluetooth connectivity, a Qualcomm chipset with 256 MB of RAM and 192 MB of ROM, a 528 MHz processor, speakerphone and microSDHC memory card slot for additional storage space.

In related news, we learn that Sprint, another US operator committed to add the BlackBerry Tour to its lineup, is expected to do so on July 20, only about a week after the handset's launch with Verizon. Although previous reports pointed towards a “later this summer” release, it seems that the operator has decided to speed things up, which is not a bad thing after all.

And since the BlackBerry Tour managed to create quite a fuss lately, it seems that another carrier has plans to offer the phone to its subscribers. The operator we are talking about is none other than Bell, which is now reported to have already begun shipping out dummy units to its retail locations. BGR claims that the handset should become available with the carrier in the near future, and points towards Friday, July 17 as the possible release date.