It’s no secret that the BlackBerry 9800 slider is coming fast for an official launch on AT&T, but VentureBeat has come up with a date to set your sights on. That date is August 15th, and it comes from John Albright of the BlackBerry Partners Fund who mentioned the date of a new BlackBerry’s release. Later he confirmed our suspicions of the device being the 9800 by naming off features such as a touchscreen with slide-out keyboard.

The biggest news that Albright revealed is that the 9800 has already been distributed to developers, hopefully giving them the tools they need to have their apps ready for the official launch of BlackBerry 6. RIM hasn’t been very good at getting devices out to developers in the past, but if this is true it looks like things are changing on that front.

[Via VentureBeat]