Much hyped BlackBerry 9000 leaked

"Sexy" next-gen HSDPA smartphone from RIM gets snapped, stroked

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28 March 2008 14:57 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

We've known the BlackBerry 9000 is incoming for a while now - and the model was even confirmed by RIM's CEO recently - but the chaps at Engadget Mobile have managed to wangle a hands-on that leaves the much-rumoured device in no doubt at all.

A totally revamped from the ground up interface, described as having "modern, warm theme with wireframe icons and slick animations" is said to be "beautiful".

The biggest improvement is also the introduction of HSDPA - speedy 3.5G - as well as Wi-Fi, which should be enough to turn heads back to RIM even in the increasingly competitive smartphone market.

Previous rumours have put the new device's launch via Vodafone in May with an overall feature set showing quad-band EDGE, triband 3.6Mbps HSDPA, a 480 x 320 display, 2-megapixel camera and GPS. More as we have it...