For our readers in the UK, Vodafone UK and Research In Motion (RIM) have announced the arrival of the BlackBerry Bold smartphone

[From Mark Hampton] This one is for my visitors in the UK and thanks to Mark Hampton for sending the press release through. Vodafone UK and Research In Motion (RIM) have announced the arrival of the BlackBerry Bold smartphone.

The BlackBerry Bold is the first BlackBerry smartphone to run on Vodafone's high-speed mobile broadband network.

Crafted from premium materials inside and out, RIM believes the smartphone is set to deliver advanced communications and multimedia features.

The company informed that mobile users will enjoy phone, messaging, organiser, web browser and e-mail applications, including the ability to edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files on the smartphone using the pre-installed DataViz Documents to Go software suite.

The BlackBerry Bold smartphone comes with built-in enterprise-grade Wi-fi (802.11 a/b/g) and integrated GPS that supports location-based applications including Vodafone Sat Nav (a full-featured satellite navigation application).

The phone also features a half-VGA colour display (480x320 resolution at 217 ppi) and smooth video playback to complement its set of multimedia capabilities including a media player for music, photos and videos and a 2 megapixel camera with video recording.

You can watch my hands on with the Blackberry Bold here and get more deets and purchase here.