BlackBerry Style 9670 on Sprint Begins Shipping Oct. 31

Sprint and Research In Motion announced the launch of BlackBerry (News - Alert) Style 9670 smartphone. The smartphone will be available in the United States only from Sprint beginning on Oct. 31.

The new flip BlackBerry Style features a full QWERTY BlackBerry keyboard that makes e-mail, messaging and real-time chats with BlackBerry Messenger or “BBM” incredibly easy, company officials said in the announcement.

According to Fared Adib, vice president of product development for Sprint (News - Alert), the compact flip form factor on the BlackBerry Style smartphone makes it quite unique within the BlackBerry lineup.

Style 9670 features the new BlackBerry 6 operating system and a wide range of advanced communications and multimedia capabilities. 9670 is also the first Sprint Smartphone with BlackBerry 6.

Other noteworthy features include a 5MP camera with flash and support for video recording, built-in GPS for location-based apps and geo-tagging, WiFi (News - Alert) for faster connectivity and extended data coverage, and an expandable memory slot for up to 32GB of additional storage.

“The new BlackBerry Style smartphone is a feature-rich, premium BlackBerry smartphone that makes the perfect choice for Sprint customers who love the flip form factor but want advanced smartphone features and a full QWERTY keyboard,” David J. Smith, vice president of product management for Research In Motion, said in a statement.

With its optical trackpad for fluid navigation two large displays, the new BlackBerry is also available in two colors – steel grey and royal purple.

The flip form factor is extremely easy to use for calls, while the full QWERTY keyboard provides the same attractive features enthusiasts have come to expect from their smartphone, Adib added. “Also, with the enhancements available through BlackBerry 6, Sprint customers will love the new user interface and the enhanced Web browsing experience.”

BlackBerry 6 comes with a redesigned interface and expanded messaging capabilities with intuitive features to simplify the management of social networking and RSS feeds and provides integrated access to BBM, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (News - Alert) and various instant messaging applications that are preinstalled on the BlackBerry Style smartphone.

A new WebKit-based browser renders HTML Web pages (as well as HTML e-mail) quickly to offer a great browsing experience. It enables users to access multiple sites simultaneously and provide mouse-like navigation with the optical trackpad and a zoom feature that intelligently auto-wraps text in a column, while maintaining the placement of a page's key elements for easy viewing and navigation.

BlackBerry 6 has a universal search feature that allows users to search through e-mail, messages, contacts, music, videos and more on the smartphone and extends searches to the Internet or to discover applications on BlackBerry App World. The BlackBerry Style also includes a preinstalled YouTube (News - Alert) app and Podcasts app.

The BlackBerry Style smartphone will be available nationally on Oct. 31, for $99.99 (after a $100 mail-in rebate) with a new line or eligible upgrade and two-year service agreement with activation on a Sprint Business Advantage Messaging and Data plan or Everything plan with data, company officials said.

Sprint's Everything Data or Business Advantage Messaging and Data plans include unlimited Web, texting and calling on the Nationwide Sprint Network to every mobile in America with Any Mobile, Anytime. Everything Data plans start at $69.99 per month (excluding taxes and surcharges).

In September Sprint and Research In Motion announced the release of the new BlackBerry Curve 3G (model 9330), a new addition to the BlackBerry Curve family of smartphones.

BlackBerry Curve 3G 9330 ships with BlackBerry 5 out of the box and is BlackBerry 6 ready, the company said in the announcement.