There has been plenty of talk lately of the Blackberry Bold Torch 9800 Slider, the first device from Waterloo to not only have both touch screen and QWERTY keyboard, but also run their now infamous Blackberry6 OS. As of yet nothing has been officially acknowledged by either RIM or any carriers, but as with almost every RIM device to date, there have been numerous leaks to keep fan boys excited, including but not limited to one of the device booting up with an AT&T splash page. That’s where this gets interesting.

The talk has always been that AT&T would launch it at some point this summer and would have exclusive rights for a certain (undisclosed) time period. As exciting as this sounds to my American readers, it comes across as a bit confusing to my Canadian ones. RIM and Rogers have always had a close relationship. Rogers was first to market with the Blackberry Bold 9000, the first North American 3G Blackberry and had it for months before AT&T saw it and well over a year before Telus/Bell launched their HSPA coverage and started to sell it as well. This being said Telus and Bell have their HSPA network live and working well, so why an exclusivity to Rogers when they all launched the last 3G Blackberry 9700 simultaneously? Simply put the 9800 has a touch screen and until now the only Canadian carriers to have ANY Blackberry touchscreen devices are Telus/Bell with the CDMA Storm 1 and 2 series devices.

Again, this is still just speculation.

No release dates, pricing, or acknowledgement have been given by Rogers. Stay tuned for more on this as we hear it.

[Via Mobile Syrup]