BlackBerry Bold Finally Announced for U.S. Market

RIM’s BlackBerry Bold will finally hit the U.S. on November 4 after a long delay.

The Bold packs GPS and Wi-Fi capabilities, 1 GB of memory (and support for a 16 GB microSD card). It also has a multimedia player for music and videos and a 2 megapixel camera with built-in flash, zoom and video recording. The bells and whistles of the Bold are no secret to the consumer, but the price along with the release date, was announced this week. With AT&T the Bold will set customers back $300, a price that shocked most.

In a way, the Bold is the last traditional BlackBerry to be announced before the company took the social smartphone idea and ran with it. The two newest handsets in the RIM line take a different direction than what would be considered the norm as far as BlackBerrys are concerned and while the world is waiting for the BlackBerry Storm, the launch of the Bold is going somewhat unnoticed.

The Bold was supposed to reach markets during the summer, giving RIM ample time to prepare for the launch of it’s first touch screen device as well as it’s first clamshell phone. The device was delayed and a couple of weeks back RIM CEO hinted that the delay was to make sure AT&T Bold owners wouldn’t experience the same 3G issues that plagued iPhone users over the summer. However, now that the Canadian manufacturer already has two way cooler phones on the starting line, it’s hard to care about the Bold aside from whether or not it will see the same or similar 3G issues as the iPhone.

The Bold was recently pulled from the UK market. Mobile service provider Orange said the network was suspending shipments of the device in the UK following reports from other operators about software issues with the device. In its native Canadian land, the Blackberry Bold continues to operate on Rogers Wireless’ HSDPA network and is available to customers for $300 on a three-year agreement.