RIM Announces BlackBerry Smartphones with 7 OS

Research In Motion (RIM) has announced five new smartphones based on the BlackBerry 7 OS. Two of them belong to the Bold series, while three are from the Torch series of business phones.

The Bold 9900 and 9930 will feature a touchscreen and keyboard, much like the Nokia E6. Both devices will be 10.5 mm thin, and NFC (Near Field Communications) capable.

The Torch 9850 and 9860 will have a touch-only interface, aided by a relatively big 3.7" screen. On the other hand, the Torch 9810 will have a slide-out keyboard, and a 3.2" touchscreen.

The new bunch will boast a 1.2 GHz processor, and will be capable of 720p video recording. The company claims that BlackBerry 7 smartphones will deliver up to 40% faster browsing speeds than previous iteration. Other improvements include optimized zooming, panning, and better HTML5 performance. The phones will come pre-installed with the latest release of BBM (BlackBerry Messenger). These new devices will be globally released later this month.