RIM Blackberry Bold is a superb device and is an improved one from the earlier models.

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

3.5mm headphone jack, faster processor, a 3.2 MP camera (earlier models had 2MP camera), faster processor, 3G capable, e-mail support, GPS. This is an all in one beast!

Thumbs Down:

Browser still needs improvement.

Inside the Trunk:

Technology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone Design: Candy bar
Caller ID: Yes
Additional Features: Bluetooth, MP3 player, Camera, etc.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

BlackBerry Bold 9700 sports a full fledged QWERTY keyboard, like most of models in its family. It has a 2.44 inch display (color depth 16-bit) and the screen resolution is 480X360. It is using a faster processor so you won’t have to wait around for applications to start.

Razzle Dazzle:

In the looks department the Blackberry Bold is certainly a cut above the previous models. It is sleeker, fits better in the hand and in the pocket. The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is 2.36 wide, 0.56 inch thick and 4.3 ounces in weight. Trackball navigator is killed and gives way to optical trackpad.

Inside Dope:

Blackberry phones are mostly meant for sophisticated users who need lots of applications in one box. Blackberry doesn’t make basic phones and RIM Blackberry Bold 9700 certainly is different from other phones that Blackberry has previously made. This is the slimmest of the devices which makes it easy to fit it in your hand and your pocket too.

The phone doesn’t have a big enough display but the resolution makes it up, it has 480X360 resolution to give you a large work area. Also the text looks more compact and easy to read. But a bigger screen would certainly be welcomed in the future.

The keyboard is good but is not as spacious as the Blackberry’s bold. Typing on this keyboard is smooth and you won’t get many mis hits. Blackberry sacrifices compactness and goes for a bigger device which in turn gives rich dividends in the form of good keyboard. A small phone would have resulted into cramped keyboard but more compact.

Blackberry has taken away the trackball navigator and replaced it with an optical trackpad.
This is probably because of the complaints from users that the trackball sometimes stops working and they have to replace it. Using the trackpad is lot cooler than the trackball and you won’t miss the latter.

The presence of 3.5 mm headphone jack gives you the freedom of inserting your choice of headphones in case you are not happy with the bundled set. There is space for 32 polyphonic ring tones and they can be stored in MP3, WAV and MIDI format. You can assign different ring tones to different individuals, so you will recognize who is calling with the type of ring tone even when the phone is in your pocket.

Browsing on this phone is still not improved. The Blackberry has been known to make poor browsers and this one follows the suit.

There is support for POP3 and IMAP accounts. You can set up to 10 accounts to deliver mail to your mobile phone. All the IMs that you need are all present and so is MS-Office mobile suite. For e-mailing this device is among the best. You can sync the company’s Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) with the Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell GroupWise for mail delivery.

The music player in the phone is good and it was lot of fun enjoying songs on this device. The phone supports all popular formats like MP3, WMA, WMA ProPlus, AAC, AAC+, and eAAC+ files. For video MPEG4, WMV and H.264 is supported which means no support for DivX files. Syncing with computers is supported and the software provided syncs the device with MAC and PC. BlackBerry Bold 9700 comes with a 2 GB memory card to store all your songs, videos and photos.

Camera quality has gone up 3.2 MP from 2 MP. All standard camera functions like zoom, auto focus, flash and video-recording capabilities are supported. We were happy with the camera as it gave the result a standard 3.2 MP camera should give. Still these cameras cannot compete with the quality of digital cams. The video quality too was good.

The phone sports a 624 MHZ processor which is the reason behind its fast performance. We did face lag occasionally but the overall performance of the phone was fast. Smartphones of this class used to have 500 MHZ processors but with the increasing need for speed need of the softwares there is no option but to have a faster processor. Or else it takes a lot of time to open applications. If there is multi tasking done on the gadget then speed is further slowed down and hence a faster machine is required. HTC mobiles have upto 800 MHZ of processors.

The call quality on this phone too is superb. We haven’t seen this clear phone call quality till now in our tests. Both sides on the phone call could hear the voice very clearly and the speaker phone quality too was good. The BlackBerry Bold 9700 has Bluetooth so you can pair up your favorite set of wireless headsets. We tried our hands with a couple of headsets and we had no problem pairing it up and the call quality too was good on the headsets.

The lithium ion battery included in the pack will give you about 360 minutes for talk time which is great.

The Blackberry device also has GPS in it so you can map your locations.

Nitty Gritty:

Blackberry phones give us little to complain about. Every product from them has stood up to the expectations of the people. The only thing that weren’t happy about was the browser. Even though there are improvements made in this device in the browser department, it still has a long way to go before we call it good. This phone is the solution to all your requirements; it has camera, music player, email, etc. Buy this phone if you can stand the big look.

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