RIM Preparing New Blackberry Slider Smartphone

Canadian smartphone manufacturer RIM is apparently working on a slider phone that's reminiscent of the Palm Pre with a portrait QWERTY keyboard and what appears to be a shiny silvery finish.

BBLeaks leaked two pictures, whose authenticity hasn't been confirmed by any other third parties. From the picture, one can see that the phone has a trackpad rather than a mechanical trackball.

It keeps the traditional signature RIM keyboard and may come with a touchscreen, albeit one that looks like a 2.8-inch one. Expect it to come with RIM OS v6.0, an ARM-based processor and all the usual features - WiFi, 3G, microSD, accelerometer and a 3.2-megapixel camera - that are commonly present in midrange models.

Both respected mobile news websites Mobilecrunch and Boygeniusreport say that they are puzzled by RIM's move. The first one says that the phone is "butt ugly" while BGR reckons that RIM is "really stuck in 2005".

RIM customers have been accustomed with non-sliding keyboard that have entertained users for the best of the last decade. However, with the release of the Storm and the Storm 2, the smartphone manufacturer took the bold step to introduce touch screen.