Blackberry 9700 Hands-on: AT&T and T-Mobile Release News

Verizon has been concentrating so much effort with the release of the Motorola Droid as well as the attacks on AT&T with their TV ads that the release of the BlackBerry 9700 has gone almost undetected. The new Bold handset is already available on the T-Mobile network and is coming to AT&T on November 22.

Verizon may have shot themselves in the foot with forgetting this handset, although RIM’s latest handset is more for the business user, consumers have always had great things to say about the Bold handset and the latest version is even better.

The new Bold is a lot like the BlackBerry Curve, it still maintains that premium look but things are now rounder and much slimmer. The back of the handset has a leatherette finish and the addition of an optical sensor tracking your finger movement is a much-needed upgrade. The new Bold weighs about half and ounce less than the original handset.

Although the new handset has a smaller battery, talk time is said to be around 6 hours as well as 6 hours use on 3G. For a detailed hands-on review of the BlackBerry Bold 9700, head over to Business Week.