You may have heard of the launch soon of the new Blackberry Bold 9800 slider which till now just seemed like another Blackberry smartphone following a well trodden footpath.

The folks over at the Berry Fix ( a dedicated Blackberry fan site ) have discovered that the Blackberry Bold 9800 slider will also have a virtual keypad. This is common on many mobile phones and smartphones but it would be an unexpected change by BlackBerry for the new Blackberry Bold 9800 slider.

Berry Fix took a photo as above which indicates to us here at 3G.co.uk that as well as having the normal QWERTY keypad, this slider also has a touchscreen keypad.

The photo above clearly shows the virtual keypad but we are not quite sure what established Blackberry smartphone users will make of this. The other thing that we notice is that the virtual keypad buttons for text entry etc are diddy. A busy Blackberry user may be put off by this, but hey just slide out the QWERTY keypad then. All round a good move by Blackberry.