Canadian manufacturer RIM’s latest Bold smartphone, the BlackBerry Bold 9930, retains the iconic QWERTY slab design, but it also features a touchscreen that makes the phone applicable to today’s smartphone war.

The 4.53-inch tall and 2.6-inch wide BlackBerry Bold 9930 is the thinnest of the series, measuring just 0.41-inch in thickness.

The Bold 9930’s biggest draw is probably its physical wide keyboard. It feature sculpted keys, considerable dividers in between keyboard rows, and a large space bar, which allow users type and send out long e-mails and texts quickly.

The keyboard also features the usual BlackBerry alt, shift, sym and speaker keys. There are Menu, Talk, Back and Power/End keys between the display and the keyboard. The touch-sensitive trackpad is quite responsive.

The 2.8-inch 640x480 pixel display is quite bright, sharp and responsive, while the glossy patterned back, brushed metal edges, and the glass face adds to the handset’s beauty.

The 5MP photo snapper comes with 4X digital zoom, a flash, image stabilization and face detection. However, it lacks autofocus.

The handset also comes equipped with Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, which allows users to pay for goods via the mobile phone.

In addition, the BlackBerry Bold 9930 runs on the company’s new operating system, viz. BlackBerry OS 7, which is said to be aesthetically it is very similar BlackBerry OS 6, but a lot faster than it.