BlackBerry Bold 9930 (Verizon) Hands on Video

A handful of new BlackBerry smartphones are currently in the process of being released in North America, including the BlackBerry Torch 9810, Torch 9850/9860 and Bold 9900/9930.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on a Torch 9810 and Torch 9850, as well as a Bold 9930, ahead of their official releases, and I, along with my colleague Keith Shaw, decided to throw together a quick video walkthrough of each. (Check out my related video walkthroughs of the Torch 9810 and Torch 9850.)

These videos aren’t meant to be full reviews. I plan to post up in-depth evaluations of the devices after I spend a week or so with the new BlackBerrys. But the clips will give you a good feel for what to expect from the three handhelds, from both a hardware and software perspective. And you can check out my first impressions of RIM’s Bold 9900, from its BlackBerry World conference, for more details.

One cool Bold 9930 feature I don’t mention in the video is Near Field Communications (NFC), a short-range wireless technology not unlike Bluetooth that you’ll very likely be hearing a lot about in the future. NFC should enable wireless payments and other wireless data transfers, among other things. But I didn’t touch on NFC for good reason; though the BlackBerry Bold 9930 and its GSM brother, the Bold 9900, support NFC—in fact, RIM gave me an NFC demo on the 9900 at BlackBerry World in May–the feature will reportedly be disabled by U.S. carriers, including Verizon and T-Mobile, at least at first. Sprint, however, is expected to release the BlackBerry 9930 on August 21, with NFC enabled. And hopefully the additional U.S. carriers will enable the feature via software update at a later date.

Visit Verizon Wireless’s website for more information on the Bold 9930 or pop on over to RIM’s site for details.

AS