BlackBerry Bold Successor Details Leaked Online

The engineers over at Research In Motion are being kept busy after details emerged of yet another upgrade to its handset portfolio.

According to a leaked internal document labeled “confidential”, which appeared online at BoyGenuis, the upgraded handset has been dubbed the BlackBerry Bold R020 and will appear sometime in October.

Bold R020

Cosmetically, the handset appears very much the same as the previous Bold handset, but RAM has been upgraded from 256MB to 512MB, and will also come with the new BlackBerry OS 6. Otherwise, besides a 5 megapixel camera (with a flash), there doesn’t seem to be much difference.

That said, it could be that the Bold R020 will be slightly smaller than its forbears, but it is difficult to gauge from the image. What it does say is that it will feature a 624MHz processor and MicroSD support up to 32GB, to satisfy most storage requirements.

It has a 2.4-inch screen, plus the usual Wi-Fi and 3G network connectivity, and a 3.5mm headphone socket.

BlackBerry has been kept busy of late. Its latest handset, the BlackBerry Torch 9800 has been relatively well received, but many are concerned that it is not enough of an advance to take on the likes of the Apple iPhone.

Price Cut

Indeed, the signs are not encouraging after online retailer Amazon.com began offering the Torch 9800 for sale at just $99.99 (£64), less than half the launch price of $199.99 (£128) from AT&T. And it seems that RIM could be losing money on every Torch sold, after research firm iSuppli found it carries a bill of materials (BOM) estimated at $171.05 (£109.66).

And there is speculation that RIM is developing a iPad tablet rival after it emerged in late July that RIM had purchased the domain BlackPad.com.

RIM is currently facing intense competition from Android handsets and the Apple iPhone.