Vodafone Grabs BlackBerry Bold 9900

Vodafone has become the first UK carrier to throw its hat into the BlackBerry Bold 9900 ring, confirming that it will offering the BlackBerry 7 OS smartphone later this year. The handset, announced at BlackBerry World 2011 yesterday, will be the first to run RIM's new smartphone OS, and has both a touchscreen and a QWERTY keyboard.

T-Mobile USA confirmed yesterday that it would be offering the Bold 9900, complete with HSPA+ support on its 4G network. The handset has a 2.8-inch VGA resolution display, optical trackpad, WiFI a/b/g/n, Bluetooth, NFC and a 5-megapixel camera, among other things, though neither T-Mobile nor Vodafone have said what will actually make use of the NFC beyond RIM's official accessories (which will auto-pair when tapped together).

The Bold 9900 is expected to launch sometime this summer. More on the handset in our hands-on report from yesterday, including a demo of BlackBerry 7 OS.

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