Hot off the CrackBerry Tip Line and following up yesterday's photos of the 9650 OEM casing, you're looking at live photos of the Blackberry Bold 9650. As you can see in the photos, the About screen is branded with the BlackBerry 9650 device model (I guess RIM's thought here is to keep the 96xx as CDMA and 97xx as GSM) and the back of the device features the Bold brand name. Referred to by the codename essex (originally thought to be the Tour2 as it follows up the BlackBerry Tour 9630), the Bold 9650 adds WiFi, an optical trackpad and OpenGL support above and beyond the features and specs found in the 9630. Two more photos below.

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Remember that photo of the BlackBerry Pearl 9100 Full Qwerty keyboard that popped up online at the beginning of March? Well the same company has now posted the OEM casing for the yet-to-announced BlackBerry Bold 9650. We've already seen lots of evidence (Bold 9650 user guide, 9650 inventory listings) that the next generation BlackBerry Tour (codename "essex") has dropped the Tour branding in favor of being called a Bold but we have yet to see photos of that until now... assuming of course you trust these photos (more images below). 

From the OEM casing photos you get a clear sense that visually the new CDMA BlackBerry Bold retains the look of the Tour 9630 (exception trackpad vs. trackball) as we saw it in our original BlackBerry Tour2 first look vs. getting some cosmetic surgery to look more like the BlackBerry Bold 9700.

Regardless of name or looks, I think at the end of the day we just want to see this new device get announced! Thanks to Matt B. for sending this in!

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Some information for those out there that are awaiting the release of the BlackBerry Tour 2 aka 9650 aka Essex. If you have been holding out for the Tour 2 your waiting may soon be over as rumors abound claim the Tour 2 should be arriving anytime soon now. Be it this month or next, that window of release is there as a rumor.

A often used indicator for this is when devices get loaded into CelleBrite. CelleBrite can be used as a collaborative POS system, but also has the capability to allow transfer of contacts to and from wireless devices. It's used by quite a few carriers in their stores. This time around though, seeing the Tour 2 loaded up in there and given its source, being that of a Verizon tipster, it's safe to say that this one came from within Verizon. That's all we have for now folks but as the day gets closer we're sure well see some more release information pop up.

Just yesterday we saw Sprint branded software running on a BlackBerry Tour 9650 (codenamed essex) and today we get a chance to see (thanks Sal!) actual branded hardware for a Verizon BlackBerry Tour2. I still get excited as these branded units start to pop up, as it means we're that much closer to a real release date. Still just rumors floating around on when this guy will show up officially, but hopefully it is still on track for early 2010. Sadly this is the only image that Sal has on hand, but hopefully some more will turn up in the coming weeks.

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