BlackBerry Phones Spotted on Camera [BlackBerry 9700 Onyx & Essex aka Tour 2 Leak to the Public; Dakota & Mr. T Also Mentioned]

The BlackBerry Storm 2 is one of the most interesting phones coming from RIM this fall but it’s not the only BlackBerry you should be waiting for. Other RIM creations are on the way and luckily for us some of them have been spotted in the wild. The BlackBerry 9700 Onyx, the BlackBerry Essex aka BlackBerry Tour 2 will all be available from various carriers at some point in the future while the Dakota and Mr. T are some very interesting projects.

The 9700 or the Onyx is the follower of the Bold and it’s rumored to be an impressive smartphone. The specs aren’t official but you can expect a new trackpad, quad-band GSM/EDGE/GPRS and UMTS/HSDPA connectivity, a 480 x 360 resolution screen, a 3.2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth and WiFi and a full QWERTY keyboard. The designated carrier should be T-Mobile USA which would make the 9700 the first T-Mo BlackBerry coming with 3G support on board.

The Essex is a just a BlackBerry Tour CDMA version with a twist but it’s a little far-fetched to call it the Tour 2. The phone will offer a trackpad instead of the trackball but the best thing about it is that it brings WiFi support which will make current Tour owners very, very mad! The phone could be available early next year but there’s nothing officially official about it yet.

The Dakota is going to be the first BlackBerry hybrid phone and I’m actually surprised that RIM waited so much time to make a smartphone that has both a touchscreen display and a physical full QWERTY keyboard. There aren’t that many details available for the Dakota (previously known as the Magnum) so we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed hoping to finally see it. And let’s not forget that RIM might also launch a Storm-like BlackBerry that will also feature a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard at some point in the future. After all they do have a patent describing such a BlackBerry! Come to think about it, isn’t possible that the Magnum aka Dakota is actually a Storm-like slider phone? Although the slider in question has a different code name: “Mr.T”.

Check out the gallery below to see the Onyx, the Essex and a concept picture of the BlackBerry slider. In case you’re willing to ignore about 9-minutes of Vietnamese then you could also check out the 9700 in action too in the video below the image gallery.