RIM Announces Two More BlackBerry 7s, Another Bold and Another Curve (Just What We Needed…)

The idea of having more than one Bold or Curve has always seemed stupid to me, even when RIM was at the top of their game. I figured when RIM observed how Apple marketed its iPhone, it would streamline its roster of smartphones to one of each model. I was wrong then, and I'm still wrong.

Today Research In Motion expanded its lineup of BlackBerry 7 devices with a new Bold (9790) and a new Curve (9380). Naturally, they have very minimal differences between the other Bold and Curve (and Torch) models and the redundancies are tremendous both aesthetically and internally. Are these launches in any way necesary when the only thing people have any hunger for is 2012's QNX superphone?

"We are very excited to expand the BlackBerry 7 portfolio with the new BlackBerry Bold 9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9380," said Carlo Chiarello, Senior Vice President, Handheld Product Management at Research In Motion. "BlackBerry smartphones offer a uniquely refined mobile communications experience that people love and we think many customers will be thrilled by the faster performance, beautiful touch displays and compact designs available with these new BlackBerry 7 based models."

Carlo could have said this months ago at the first BlackBerry 7 launch. Maybe he did.

Not only are these devices redundant, they're entirely underwhelming: horrible screen resolutions, puny RAM, single-core processors, and BlackBerry OS 7—not an awful platform, but it has nothing on QNX, let alone Android 3.0 and iOS 5.

The only purpose of these devices that I can imagine would be targeting rapidly growing markets overseas in high-population, low-income regions like India and Indonesia. After all, the new Curve is just a crappy Torch and and the new Bold is just a crappy Bold but on a budget they'd impress someone who never owned a smartphone before. But in North America, these gadgets are DOA.