More news on possible BlackBerry Slider

The other day, numerous BlackBerry fans tossed and turned all night. Who could blame them after we reported about the possible new BlackBerry Slider that RIM was apparently working on, and included a picture of the device. Naturally, all 'Berry fans came out of the woodwork after months of being bombarded by Androidmania, the Nokia N900, the HC HD2 and more. And with them came a number of questions that Crackberry tried to answer. First off, the site believes that the picture is genuine and if it is not the final build of the model, it is close to it. Interestingly, they give a good reason why it is not the Storm3 but is in the Bold family instead. The reasoning has to do with the theory that Verizon has exclusivity to the Storm/SurePress names. The word is that the slider that RIM has been working on is GSM which eliminates Big Red which puts the kibosh on the device being a Storm variant. And with the positive response that the Bold has had-including the 9700-why remind people of the problematic Storm? The QWERTY keyboard also has the same fret design that the Bold has. The display has a resolution of 360 x 480 pixels and does not-repeat, does NOT have SurePress.

AppWorld has a service that developers use to see which devices are installing their product. A 9700a has been showing up in the data and Crackberry says that they were told that the "about" screen on the slider calls it the 9700a.. Despite the AppWorld report showing that the device runs OS 5.2, it is probable that the handset will run the new 6.0 OS. There is no 5.3/5.4/5.5 running up to 6.0, so it is possible that the 5.2 OS will be re-branded as 6.0. When will this handset be launched? Crackberry figures a summer release for the phone. If you look at the App World analtytics below, you will see that it showed AT&T as the carrier for the 9700a. This means that RIM's partners are already involved in the phone's development which is the kind of thing you see moving closer to launch. The success of the Bold 9700 could lead RIM to push everything aside to get this new form factor out into the public's hands. We hear that more pictures are coming including a video and we will be on the lookout to make sure that we pass everything along to you. Whether or not you use a 'Berry, this could be one of those devices that gets all cellphone fans pumped up.

source: Crackberry