Waterloo, Ontario-based smartphone maker RIM announced the new BlackBerry Bold (9000) flagship smartphone today, its slickest, speediest, most powerful and most connected BlackBerry to date.

RIM BlackBerry Bold (9000) More Photos View Specs

Research In Motion (RIM) said its Bold smartphone is the first BlackBerry to offer high-speed mobile Internet access using tri-band HSDPA networks, Wi-Fi and integrated GPS. It also has twice the screen resolution (480 x 320 px) of the current BlackBerry Curve model, making for a very sharp display. The Bold matches the resolution, but not the size, of the screen on Apple's iPhone, which has emerged as a potent competitor in the "smartphone" category.

"The new BlackBerry Bold represents a tremendous step forward in business-grade smartphones and lives up to its name with incredible speed, power and functionality, all wrapped in a beautiful and confident design," said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO, Research In Motion.

With its glassy display area, flat profile and rounded corners, the BlackBerry Bold's exterior looks a bit iPhone-esque. But it comes with a black and satin chrome finish, stylish leather-like backplate and configured with a hardware QWERTY keyboard and retains the general dimensions of its predecessors, so it's much shorter and somewhat thicker than the iPhone.

Powered by a 624 MHz mobile processor, support for tri-band HSDPA and enterprise-grade Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g) networks, the Bold makes short work of downloading email attachments, streaming video or rendering webpages. It includes 128 MB flash memory plus 1 GB on-board storage memory - with a microSD/SDHC memory card slot accessible from a side door.

The Bold also comes with BlackBerry productivity applications, including phone, email, messaging, organizer and browser.

A trackball mimics a mouse, making it easy to navigate sites in "Page View" or "Column View" or to zoom in on specific parts of a webpage, while various settings let users choose between full HTML content or the mobile version. Attachments can also be downloaded from within the browser and there is support for watching streaming videos (RTSP - real-time streaming protocol).

It features a 2.0-megapixel camera with video recording capability, built-in flash and 5x digital zoom. The media player displays pictures and slideshows, plays movies in full screen mode, and manages the music collection. Audio can be played over the dual speakers in stereo sound. An equalizer gives users 11 filters - like "Lounge," "Jazz" and "Hip Hop."

BlackBerry Desktop Manager software includes Roxio Media Manager for BlackBerry and Roxio Photosuite 9 LE to enhance pictures and create photo albums on the computer. BlackBerry Media Sync lets users sync iTunes digital music collections with the Bold.

Through its integrated GPS, the BlackBerry Bold can pinpoint its location, supporting location-based applications like BlackBerry Maps.

The Bold features a new acoustic design improves listening quality and clarity. It also comes with Speaker Independent Voice Recognition (SIVR) for Voice Activated Dialing (VAD). It also features noise cancellation technology that offsets background noise.

The BlackBerry Bold is scheduled to be available from wireless carriers around the world beginning this summer. AT&T said that it will be the exclusive carrier for the Bold in the U.S.; its 3G network is the only one stateside that is compatible with the first model of the handset.

- RIM BlackBerry Bold (9000) Specs