RIM announces two Blackberry smartphones

CANADIAN PHONE MAKER Research in Motion (RIM) has announced its Bold 9790 and the Curve 9380 smartphones and launched BBM Music.

RIM's two latest handsets will come with its Blackberry 7 operating system. The Curve 9380 ditches the keyboard to be the first in its family to be touchscreen only.

The firm has also launched its cloud based music service, BBM Music, which it announced in August. It rivals services like Spotify and We7 and has a social element that involves users sharing their music libraries with each other.

"We are very excited to expand the BlackBerry 7 portfolio with the new BlackBerry Bold 9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9380," said Carlo Chiarello, SVP of handheld product management at RIM. "BlackBerry smartphones offer a uniquely refined mobile communications experience that people love and we think many customers will be thrilled by the faster performance, beautiful touch displays and compact designs available with these new BlackBerry 7 based models."

The Bold 9790 sticks to the traditional Blackberry recipe with a touchscreen and Qwerty keyboard. It will be powered by a 1GHz processor and come with 8GB of internal storage.

RIM said the latest version of its operating system will deliver improved web browsing, voice searches and support for augmented reality and near field communications (NFC).

No dates have been specified but the phones will be available globally in the coming weeks, according to RIM. µ