RIM has taken the wraps off its latest BlackBerry handset, showing a more media friendly phone with no trackball in sight (read our hands on Blackberry Curve 8250 review).

The new 8520 handset will have an optical trackball instead, and on the top of the phone are some rubberised multimedia keys (as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack on the side of the phone) to highlight the new BB focus.

The phone itself is clearly meant to slot in somewhere below the Bold, but towards the higher end of the pack - to that end it's likely to cost around £25 a month on contract.

Specs appeal

In terms of other specs - we're getting a 2MP camera, Wi-Fi and GPRS connectivity (sorry 3G fans, but it's for your battery's good) and a microUSB port.

BlackBerry App World, RIM's new application portal, also lives inside the phone like a happy elf in the App Tree, as well as full HTML browsing.

Battery life is listed as 4.5 hours of talk time and 17 days of standby time (which you can thank the GPRS signal for) as well as a microSD slot for expansion.