Bold 9790 and Curve 9380 on RIM's Developer Portal

Soon, Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion is expected to add to its offering a new series of devices, and the BlackBerry Bold 9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9380 should be among them, some of the latest reports on the matter suggest.

The handset vendor has been long rumored to plan the release of these smartphones, yet no confirmation on this has been made available until now.

CrackBerry reports that the two BlackBerry Bold 9790 and Curve 9380 devices have just emerged on the company's BlackBerry App World developer portal, which can be considered almost an official confirmation on their existence.

Moreover, the fact that they emerged on the developer portal shows that it might not be too long before RIM will bring them to the market, although specific details on this haven't been unveiled for the time being.

The same as the latest high-end handsets from RIM, the upcoming BlackBerry Bold 9790 is expected to feature a 1.2GHz application processor, along with the popular QWERTY keyboard of all Bold smartpones, and NFC capabilities.

As for the new Curve 9380, it is expected to lose the physical keyboard of previous models to replace it with a full-touchscreen experience.

Even so, it will remain a less powerful smartphone, and should arrive on shelves with an 800MHz chip, NFC connectivity, and an affordable price tag.

When compared to previous BlackBerry devices, the new handsets pack better hardware, new features and more applications, which clearly make them far more appealing.

However, the latest BlackBerry 7 OS devices did not manage to impress as much as originally thought, which shows that RIM still has to pack them with better hardware to bring them in line with smartphones running under other platforms.

One way or the other, enthusiasts will certainly appreciate the new phones, especially since the Bold 9790 should arrive on shelves with a smaller design than other Bold handsets, but with the same capabilities, while the new 9380 would be the first touch-enabled Curve model.