It is well known that T-Mobile plans to introduce a new and improved BlackBerry Curve model, the 8900, later this month. Well, a leaked Best Buy price sheet indicates that RIM smartphone, already available from Rogers in Canada, will prove to be something of bargain for U.S. customers.

According to the sheet, the Curve 8900 will sell for only around $150 with a two-year contract. Not a bad price for a new piece of RIM hardware.

Update: T-Mobile launched the Curve 8900 today. It goes for $199.99 with a two-year contract and data plan, after a mail-in rebate. That's not as low as the rumored price, but it is still pretty good.

Those jonesing for a Curve 8900 and inclined to buy their smartphones without a contract may reconsider their preference for not signing on the dotted line after taking in the contract-free cost of purchasing the new BlackBerry. That's because the price sheet reveals that the Curve 8900 will go for the a rather expensive $649.99 without a user agreement.

The new BlackBerry is stylish with a body of titanium and chrome.

The Curve 8900 is supposed to be the thinnest, most compact, and lightest full-size BlackBerry with QWERTY thumb-keyboard yet. And T-Mobile and RIM say the unit offers the highest resolution screen -- 2.44-inch display runs at a resolution of 480 x 360 pixels (HVGA) --- of any BlackBerry device.

Although the Cuve 8900 sports Bluetooth, GPS capabilities and Wi-Fi connectivity, there's no 3G. The BlackBerry does support T-Mobile's Wi-Fi VoIP Unlimited HotSpot Calling service and unlimited nationwide calling to five people with T-Mobile myFaves, however.

T-Mobile Unlimited Hotspot Calling allows smartphones to seamlessly switch voice calls and data connections between the operator's cellular network and a Wi-Fi network, depending on which is cheapest to use or available at a given moment. There's also T-Mobile @Home, which enables you to make landline calls over the Internet for a flat fee per month.

With the BlackBerry 8900, there's also a 3.2 megapixel camera with image stabilization, digital zoom, and flash for taking picture and video and a microSD slot for adding storage. It ships with a 256MB card and supports card sizes up to 16GB.

The processor runs at 512MHz, and this BlackBerry, like all recent ones, supports the playback of music and video. It integrates a 3.5mm stereo headset jack for your listening pleasure.

You can learn more about the BlackBerry Curve 8900 here.

In related news, you can now buy RIM's first touch-screen BlackBerry, the Storm (see left), at a 50 percent discount at Amazon.com. The e-tailor is now listing the smartphone, which launched at $200 with a two-year contract, for only $100. That's basically a two-for-one sale.

While a success, RIM and Verizon sold over a million during first two months of availability, the Storm is far from the iPhone killer the companies had hoped it would be. There are many reasons for this. One of the more disappointing is the large number of bugs customers have encountered with the Storm.

RIM fixed a number of these problems, which resulted -- according to RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie -- from the company rushing the Storm to market ahead of BlackBerry Friday, back in December.

Last month, RIM shipped its 50 millionth BlackBerry, the first of which appeared 10 years ago. You can buy a BlackBerry in over 150 countries.

According to RIM, it routes 3 petabytes (3,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of traffic each month. That's a lot of mob-e-mail.