Research In Motion (RIM) today introduced the BlackBerry Bold smartphone in India with Airtel, Vodafone and Reliance.


The BlackBerry Bold is the first BlackBerry smartphone to support tri-band HSDPA high-speed networks around the world. It integrates 802.11 a/b/g Wi-Fi and GPS, which can pinpoint the user's location and supports location-based applications and services. It comes with a half-VGA (480x320 resolution at 217 ppi) color LCD that is fused to the undersurface of the lens. The smartphone also comes with a media player for music, videos and photos and a 2 megapixel camera with video recording.

"We at RIM are excited with the response to BlackBerry in the Indian market. Through the widened reach of Airtel, we look forward to penetrate the high level of consumer sophistication in the Indian market by introducing the new BlackBerry Bold which will set new benchmarks in business mobility by integrating elegance with powerful internet speed," said Mr. Jim Balsillie Co-CEO Research In Motion.

"We are delighted with the opportunity to bring the BlackBerry Bold smartphone for Airtel customers" said, Mr. Sanjay Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer, Mobile Services, Airtel. "We are always committed to introduce innovative and cutting edge technology to our users. BlackBerry Bold users will experience next generation technology and also be able to optimize their business and leisure time while on the move."

Managing music, pictures and video is made easy with the inclusion of Roxio Media Manager for BlackBerry as well as Roxio Photosuite 9 LE in the BlackBerry Desktop Manager software. For users that manage their collection with iTunes, the new BlackBerry Media Sync application provides a simple way to sync iTunes digital music collections with the smartphone.

The BlackBerry Bold smartphone also comes with a newly enhanced, high performance browser. The 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 web page, while various emulation settings allow users to choose between the full desktop-style HTML content and layout or the mobile version.

The BlackBerry Bold smartphone comes with a 624 MHz mobile processor, 128 MB Flash memory plus 1 GB on-board storage memory, and a microSD/SDHC memory card slot that is accessible from a side door. DataViz Documents to Go is also preloaded, enabling users to edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files directly on the smartphone.

The BlackBerry Bold also features a new acoustic design that increases the size of the phone's audio sweet spot, improving listening quality and clarity. It comes with support for hands-free headsets, stereo headsets, car kits (including car kits that adhere to the Bluetooth Remote SIM Access Profile) and other Bluetooth peripherals, noise cancellation technology that offsets background noise, a powerful speaker phone and support for polyphonic, mp3 and MIDI ring tones.


The smartphone works with BlackBerry Enterprise Server, which enables advanced security and IT administration within IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise environments, as well as BlackBerry Professional Software for small businesses.

It also works with BlackBerry Internet Service, which gives users access to up to 10 supported work or personal email accounts (including most popular ISP email accounts).

Priced at Rs. 34,990, the BlackBerry Bold will be available by the end of September 2008 at authorized channels nationally.