At this point we know the upcoming BlackBerry Bold 9700 will debut on at least 4 major carriers: T-Mobile, AT&T, Rogers and Vodafone.  Current BlackBerry Bold 9000 owners are probably wondering whether the updated BB is worth handing over their upgrade eligibility and hard earned money so we’ve decided to help you make the decision for yourself.  Of course not everything about the BlackBerry Bold 9700 is known since there is still time for RIM to play around with OS features and such, but the majority of the specs and details have been confirmed.

As seen in the picture above the BlackBerry Bold 9700 aka Onyx features a smaller form factor than the existing Bold 9000.  In addition the camera will be upgraded to 3.2-megapixel and include auto-focus/flash and of course video recording.  To improve the speed and performance of the device, RIM has upgraded to 256MB of RAM and will be packaging the Bold 9700 with BlackBerry OS 5.0.  One feature that we really appreciate is that you no longer need to remove the battery from your BlackBerry to access the SIM card, simply remove the back cover and have instant access to your SIM.  Of all the changes to the BlackBerry Bold the biggest concern for most will the loss of the navigation ball (trackball) in favor of a trackpad.  While we have not personally tried the trackpad, every review of the device has had nothing but positive comments about its accuracy and ease of use.

From a styling point of view, the smaller form factors comes at a cost.  The existing BlackBerry Bold 9000 looks very polished and really fits the mold of a high-end business device.  The quality build we see on the Bold 9000 has been lost a bit with the Bold 9700 as you can see above.  While this area is really subjective, my opinion seems to be shared across the forums and BlackBerry community, but if the improved performance is as good as I’ve been told this will be an easy compromise.  So there you have it, you know the main differences between the Bold 9000 and Bold 9700, the only question left is whether T-mobile, At&t, Rogers or Vodafone will release the device first.