After much too long a wait, the BlackBerry Bold 9900 is finally available on AT&T. There has been no ‘official‘ word on why it has taken AT&T so long to release the Bold 9900 which has been very popular on on T-Mobile as well as the Bold 9930 variant on Sprint and Verizon, however, we believe it is because AT&T wanted to sell as many BlackBerry Torch 9810 devices, which are exclusive to AT&T, as possible.
The AT&T BlackBerry Bold 9900 will set you back $199.99 on a 2-year contract with a minimum data plan of $15 per month. You can pick up the AT&T BlackBerry Bold, of course, from AT&T, and, we’ve also seen it at Best Buy.
it is a terrific device, I have used it for a couple of months on AT&T (bought it from Rogers Canada) … but yeah, it seems that RIM’s fumbling and bumbling has bled over to AT&T …
RIM wasn’t bumbling, for once (like they did by delaying the Pearl upgrade for so long as to make the form factor irrelevant). I have no doubt that AT&T held the Bold 9900 back because they wanted to sell all those new Torches. The Torch is a gimmick device, I rarely see one in the wild (to be honest I have yet to see ANY BlackBerry 7 device in the wild – when I see a BlackBerry its usually one of the older Bolds or a Curve) and I have heard many were returned after purchase. My mother has a Torch 9800, and has had nothing but problems with it. I’ve tried hers out, the keyboard is sunken in and awful to type on. AT&T knows the Torch is a bomb, that’s why the held back the full screen touch version and the Bold 9900 as well as the new Curves for so long.
All AT&T did for me, was force my hand into buying an iPhone 4S because my old Bold 9700 kept freezing. When I went into an AT&T store to see about a new phone, I could not get a straight answer as to when the 9900 would be released (this was after the salesperson tried to sell me an iPhone 4 at a reduced price in the store because “we’re out of stock” on the 4S when I mentioned it was the only phone I wanted aside from the 9900), as if that wasn’t a ploy to move out the older device as well!
As much as I’d like the Bold 9900, I didn’t see any reason to keep waiting and waiting to purchase one because AT&T wanted to be greedy, and my job giving me a Curve to replace an issued “feature phone” finally put me over the top on dumping BlackBerry for my personal phone since typing long work emails was the only reason I hung onto the physical keyboard as long as I did!
It’s ironic. I’m disgusted with AT&T, yet changing carriers is like shooting myself in the foot with all of my family and most of the people I talk to daily on AT&T. It’s like they know this, and could care less about customer service. I expect this trend to get worse over time as it seems like we end up with less options for these types of services every year.
In a twist of irony, my mother is going to upgrade her Torch today. We’ll have to see what she comes out of the store with. My money is on the 9900!
agree with everything you said – that’s why I bought an unlocked Rogers 9900. The keyboard is awesome (far better than even the 9700), virtually no freezing, very fast compared to the 9700, and a really nice combo of a touch screen for certain things and the keyboard for all email/texting. Assuming no more black-outs, the 9900 is a reason to stick with Blackberry, at least for me.