Research In Motion doesn’t plan on making it easy for Apple, especially now, when everyone expects a 3G iPhone… and what better way to counteract with the iPhone-mania than by introducing the latest, most innovative smartphone to date: Blackberry Bold 9000.

“The new Blackberry Bold represents a tremendous step forward in business-grade smartphones and lives up to its name with incredible speed, power ad functionality, all wrapped in a beautiful and confident design,” it’s how Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO of Research In Motion, described their latest creation.

What to expect from the Blackberry Bold? Well, more features than any other Blackberry before it, a slick design, with black exterior, satin chrome finished frame and a leather-like backplate, an incredible display, offering an extraordinary viewing angle, and of course, a new-designed, easy-to-use keyboard. How could this go wrong?

For the first time ever, the Blackberry supports tri-band HSDPA, as well as 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi networks, and comes with an integrated GPS. The 624 MHZ processor is perfect for downloading e-mail attachments, streaming video or rendering web pages, as well as for editing Word, Excel or Power Point files with the help of the DataViz Documents to Go suite.

In addition to that, it includes 128 MB Flash memory and 1 GB on-board storage memory, accompanied by a microSD/SDHC memory card slot (which is expected to also support the upcoming 16 GB microSD/SDHC cards).

The display is simply amazing: half-VGA (480x320 resolution) 65,000 color LCD, offering an incredible, unprecedented video and image quality. The 2 megapixel camera has video recording capability, built-in flash and digital zoom, while the media player can display full-screen videos, pictures and slideshows.

No touch screen? Lazaridis explained their physical keyboard option to PC Magazine: “People tell us, don’t futz around with your keyboard. They say, whatever you do, don’t get rid of that keyboard. But I don’t think anyone could accuse us of not reinventing ourselves all the time, and you’re going to see different devices from us.”

As for its availability, RIM said the Blackberry Bold 9000 will this summer to wireless carriers around the world, although the price still remains unknown.