14 DAY TRIAL // TELUS has joined the fray by announcing the availability of BlackBerry Bold 9900 and Torch 9810 starting this Friday, August 12.
That's two days later than Rogers who managed to be the first to offer both smartphones in Canada.
However, there's no mention about the release of the BlackBerry Torch 9860, which is expected to come live at Rogers on August 12.
TELUS has yet to announce the phone's prices, but suggested to “stay tuned” for an official announcement coming in the next hours.
It looks like Research in Motion planned to make its newly announced BlackBerry 7 smartphone available in Canada initially. The reason behind RIM's decision is obvious, as the company is headquartered in Canada.
As for TELUS' BlackBerry Bold 9900 and Torch 9810, they share the same hardware and software configuration.
However, customers who prefer a portrait QWERTY keyboard might go for the Bold 9900, while those who are more attached to the slider form factor should get the Torch 9810.
The latter is new and improved successor of the popular Torch 9800 smartphone and comes with a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen display with support for 480 x 640 pixels resolution.
In addition, the Torch 9810 is powered by RIM's latest BlackBerry 7 operating system and packs more memory than the original Torch 9800 – 8GB storage, 768 MB RAM and microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB).
The smartphone comes with the usual slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a 5-megapixel camera with 720p HD video recording capabilities.
Both smartphones are equipped with a 1.2 GHz processor and offer users a plethora of connectivity options, including Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth, built-in GPS and microUSB.
Unlike the Torch 9810, BlackBerry Bold 9900 has a smaller 2.8-inch capacitive touchscreen display and features portrait QWERTY keyboard.
It will be interesting to see if TELUS' Bold 9900 and Torch 9810 will be delivered with Wi-Fi hotspot functionality out-of-the-box, or they will receive the feature post launch via software update.