Vodacom South Africa And RIM Launch The New BlackBerry Bold Smartphone

Vodacom South Africa and Research In Motion (RIM) launched the new BlackBerry Bold smartphone in South Africa.

From its lustrous black exterior, satin chrome finished frame and stylish leatherette backplate, to its stunning display, sophisticated user interface and newly designed full-QWERTY keyboard, the BlackBerry Bold is a symbol of accomplishment and aspiration. It is the first BlackBerry smartphone to support tri-band HSDPA high-speed networks around the world and comes with integrated GPS and Wi-Fi, as well as a rich set of multimedia capabilities.

“Crafted from premium materials that radiate elegance, the BlackBerry Bold provides unprecedented functionality and performance in a highly intuitive smartphone. With Vodacom’s range of packages for BlackBerry smartphones, customers can afford staying in touch with unlimited email and Internet browsing,” says Dot Field, Chief Communications Officer, Vodacom Group.

“The BlackBerry Bold is a major step forward for business-grade smartphones. It wraps incredible speed, power and functionality together in a beautiful and confident design,” says Mark Guibert, Vice President of Corporate Marketing, RIM.

SUPERIOR PERFORMANCE

The BlackBerry Bold makes short work of downloading email attachments, streaming video or rendering web pages. It includes 128 MB Flash memory plus 1 GB on-board storage memory, as well as a microSD/SDHC memory card slot for up to 16GB of additional storage that is conveniently accessible from a side door.

It comes with the renowned BlackBerry productivity applications, including phone, email, messaging, organiser and browser, and works with thousands of other mobile business and lifestyle applications, making it easier than ever to stay connected, productive and entertained. With this powerful new smartphone, users can even talk on the phone while sending and receiving email or accessing the web, and can edit Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint files directly on the handset using the preloaded DataViz Documents to Go software suite.

STUNNING DISPLAY

The BlackBerry Bold smartphone comes with an incredibly vivid display. Its HVGA (480×320 resolution at 217 ppi) colour LCD is fused to the undersurface of the lens, making images leap out with stunning definition and clarity. Pictures are vibrant while videos play smoothly and web pages, documents, presentations and messages snap with exceptional quality and contrast.

DESKTOP-STYLE WEB PAGES

With its newly enhanced, high performance browser and high-resolution, ultra-bright display, the BlackBerry Bold smartphone gives users an on-the-go web browsing experience with desktop-style depiction. 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 different emulation settings allow users to choose between desktop-style HTML content and the mobile version of web pages. Attachments can also now be downloaded from within the browser and there is support for streaming video.

RICH MULTIMEDIA

While it is designed to meet the extensive requirements of the business professional during the day, the BlackBerry Bold smartphone is also a perfect after-hours companion. It features a 2 megapixel camera with video recording capability, built-in flash and digital zoom. The enhanced media player can display pictures and slideshows quickly, play movies smoothly in full screen mode, and manage an entire music collection.

For managing music and video, the BlackBerry Desktop Manager software includes Roxio Media Manager for BlackBerry as well as Roxio Photosuite 9 LE, which makes it easy to enhance pictures and create photo albums on the computer. 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*. Support for High Speed USB 2.0 allows files to be transferred quickly from a desktop computer to the BlackBerry Bold smartphone.

POWERFUL GPS WITH VODAFONE SATNAV

Combining the BlackBerry Bold smartphone’s integrated GPS with the Vodafone SatNav application, powered by Telmap SatNav technology, users can find an address quickly and track their location easily as the route is displayed on a 3D map, together with audible step-by-step directions.

FIRST CLASS PHONE

The BlackBerry Bold smartphone features a new acoustic design that increases the size of the phone’s audio sweet spot, improving listening quality and clarity. It also comes with numerous premium phone features including Speaker Independent Voice Recognition (SIVR) for Voice Activated Dialling (VAD), Bluetooth 2.0, 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. It supports global roaming and features dedicated ‘send’, ‘end’, and ‘mute’ keys, smart dialling, speed dialling, conference calling and call forwarding. It also features noise cancellation technology that offsets background noise, a powerful speaker phone and support for polyphonic, mp3 and MIDI ring tones.

ROBUST EMAIL & MESSAGING

Like all BlackBerry smartphones, the BlackBerry Bold gives users the industry’s leading mobile messaging solution. It 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).

CONVENIENT ACCESSORIES

The BlackBerry Bold smartphone comes with a variety of convenient accessories including a stereo headset, travel charger, carrying case or sleeve and USB cable, and users will be able to personalize their BlackBerry Bold smartphone by purchasing replaceable leatherette backplates that come in a range of colors. The BlackBerry Bold smartphone also comes with a removable / rechargeable 1500 mAhr battery.

AVAILABILITY

The BlackBerry Bold is now available in South Africa from Vodacom. Customers can enjoy unlimited email, web browsing, and navigation for as little as R69 (including VAT) per month when connected using BlackBerry Internet Service; or for R139 (including VAT) a month when using BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Both options are provided as bolt-ons to an existing Vodacom Airtime Contract.