AT&T, T-Mobile Nab Sleeker BlackBerry Bold 9700 for $199

The Bold has gone a diet. Although we loved BlackBerry’s original ultra-premium smart phone, it was a bit large and bulky. Now RIM has unveiled the BlackBerry Bold 9700, and its more compact design will have a lot of AT&T and T-Mobile customers hankering to pick one up for $199 on a two-year contract.

The Bold 9700 is definitely narrower and shorter than its predecessor, measuring 4.3 x 2.4 x 0.6 inches vs. 4.5 x 2.6 x .6 inches for the first Bold. It also weighs four tenths of an ounce lighter (4.3 ounces). RIM uppsed the screen resolution to 480 x 360, but made the display smaller: It’s now 2.4 inches diagonal instead of 2.8 inches.

The second thing you’ll notice about the Bold 9700 is that its trackball is gone, now replaced with a small touchpad. The touchpad works like a camera, and so all you have to do is glide your finger across it to navigate menus. It’s a design also found on the T-Mobile Curve 8520.

We’ve had a chance to play with the device briefly and, despite an OS that’s starting to feel a bit aged, we were floored by the beauty of the industrial design and the comfort of the keyboard.

As with most of RIM’s GSM devices these days, GPS and Wi-Fi come standard, but only the 9700 on T-Mobile will let you make unlimited nationwide calls using the carrier’s Unlimited HotSpot Calling service.

On both versions you get a sharper 3.2-megapixel camera (up from 2-MP), a 3.5mm headphone jack, and support for microSD cards up to 32GB in size. RIM left the same 624-MHz processor under the hood.

The Bold 9700 will be available in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for a full review.