RIM’s most ballyhooed piece from the portfolio of ‘business-looking’ smartphones, the BlackBerry Bold 9700, managed to twist our arms to scribble down a comprehensive review. Without two thoughts, manufacturers across the globe are putting their best foot forward to entice users with feature-packed smartphones. After primarily blessing multimedia enthusiasts with the ability to send and receive Internet e-mail wherever they can access a mobile network of certain cellular phone carriers, RIM has sure enough taken the lead when it comes to innovation. From a two-way pager back in 1999 to monochrome Java-based models to SureType phone models, the company has devised its structure to be the second most popular platform after Nokia’s Symbian OS. So read on as we divulge to decide what puts it under limelight and what takes it on a dusty side.
Keying up our excitement, RIM’s original successor to the original Bold, the Bold 9700, popped out from a quadrilateral black box, not anywhere different from what we’ve seen earlier, while a world travel set charger took a peaceful nap. The corporate-looking exteriors from Blackberry’s creative wits have always luxuriated in great attention from every other phone enthusiast unless you are inclined more towards picturesque or vivacious bodies. Don’t get us wrong but if there’s anyone who lived up to its name then it was the original brother. The Blackberry Bold 9700 inherits from enhancements made to the Curve 8900 and the Tour, among others, but a few stitches in design and performance don’t make it stand next to Tour or 8900.
On clutching it, the successor feels lightweight yet impressive, though not as appealing as it looks when on a desk or table. For serious admirers of the original Bold’s hardware, the design pulls off in falling flat. Faux leather and chrome edging rather than plastic all merged to innovate was the only factor that kept us glued to its design. The fusion of plastic, metal and leather stamped with a metallic Blackberry logo on the back panel is not very neat. The idea of adorning it with chrome metal on sides certainly gets a pat on the back for saving it from being critics’ favorite topic. However, we appreciate the smaller, sleeker form factor of the whole package. If you prefer your world to be summed up in a lightweight body of 4.3oz, though not so incredibly stylish, the smartphone gets ‘go-ahead’. The dimensions of the handset are 4.2†x 2.3†x 0.5â€.
The front surface gives a sphere for a Blackberry logo carved in white letters on top, a 2.4-inch 480 x 360p display that delivers a sharp, crisp viewing experience, and a LED coverage indicator on right just above the screen which keeps on blinking to let one know that they are within the coverage area. We found the flashed light a bit annoying but thankfully could turn it off under Options – Screen/keyboard. The QWERTY keyboard was spotted archiving familiarities from a Bold (or the more recent, Tour) and is worthy enough to catch your attention. The chassis’ edges sport a 3.5mm headphone jack which will let audiophiles listen to their favorite tunes, a microUSB port, two convenience keys and the volume controls. One could also miss the indicator which is emplaced quite hideously on the top.
Now talking about what makes it and what breaks it, the display on the 9700 influenced by the 480 x 320 of the original Bold delighted our eyes with laudable clarity. The colors rendered were very vibrant and bright, taking us back to Grimms’ fairy tales or Lewis Carroll’s depiction of engrossing characters. The only thing that staved us off from getting hooked to those day-dream fables is the size of the display. RIM’s tradition of producing gizmos with small screen size isn’t something new, but we just wish the display had a larger size. The display gives a downside margin for up to six icons for added convenience and lets one customize it at the same time. Well, clicking the menu button took us straight to ‘the wall of 9700’ where graphical user interface has Instant Messaging for those who love tapping their fingers around the clock. Since Blackberry phones are well known for their ability to send and receive mails, we tried our hands at Gmail-ing as well. The device’s 3G and 2G network capabilities just eased off our task and made it easy for us to continue with the process. Fortunately, lagging issues stayed away from our experience. The Blackberry browser which has been criticized on a large scale couldn’t stop us from penning down our view. Though many internet enthusiasts may not agree, we actually liked the browser.
Now typing in those URLs brings us to 9700’s 35-key full QWERTY keyboard performance which seemed to have failed for us. Pressing those tiny letters was sure enough a task, strong enough to make us avoid typing anything. So if anyone of you has normal fingers and wishes on hitting those letters, the keyboard experience may not turn out as smooth as silk. Though the raised ridges on Bold’s highly tactile keys were allocated for neater input, we couldn’t seem to appreciate it. Compared to the 9000 or the Tour, the small kin will make the larger-handed among us feeling inconvenient. Another noticeable change was the elimination of the trackball in favor of the optical trackpad. Those familiar with Apple’s iPhone or iPod Touch may be spotted spreading a good word about the handset’s touch-sensitive trackpad. Scrolling up and down with the optical touchpad for input was a seamless experience.
Unfortunately, integrating social networking sites with the messaging functions proved to be a poor idea. Shuddering at our overall experience of clinging to sites like Facebook slid in pretty natural to us. You still have to sign into the SNS like you’d do if you’d accessed it through the browser. Unlike the stark contacts layout, the messaging interface draws quite closer to some IM and bobbed up as true fun. Trying our hand at playing games was also interesting since pre-loaded BrickBreaker, Word Mole, Texas Hold’Em King 2, Sudoku, and Klondike are sure in to keep those humdrum traveling hours at bay. On the audio quality, the handset offers clear sound but listening to those favorite tunes will be altered by its poor built-in level, which brings to conclude, Blackberry isn’t ‘in the saddle’ when it comes to blowing tunes. AudioBoost has also been planked in which is of no good use. But ironically, playing videos gave a good experience, again depending upon which file format is being plopped to play.
The picture gallery made the scene with twelve pre-loaded vibrant wallpapers while images captured by its 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash couldn’t compete with it at all. Blackberry loyalists may appreciate the fact of scaling up from 2.0 on the original and may enjoy clear images but those smitten by photography wouldn’t find it difficult to look down on it. Limited in options to enhance one’s creativity skills, photos can still be seized in black and white or sepia tones. Cropping and geo-tagging options apart from the fine, superfine and normal picture quality seemed to have saved the ‘camera’ segment from falling on critics’ laps. Holding a smartphone and not accessing videos from YouTube could astonish mobile freaks. We couldn’t find a way to access YouTube despite testing our patience level with continuous notifications that pop up every time the site is accessed. The Blackberry App World calmed us down with commendable arrangement and categorization of applications, some of them placed into the top free apps, two paid apps and the newest on the block. Hopefully, anyone who snaps up a Blackberry won’t be complaining about the price tag attached to these apps.
RIM could have defined the adjective ‘compact’ when it comes to creating professional phones. As we believe, being compact doesn’t mean forgetting the overall performance. The integration of a highly responsive trackpad is a good idea but again that cannot survive the Blackberry Bold 9700 against the storm of feature-rich smartphones being released every other day. Coming back to what we liked the best, the trackpad, we could adjust its sensitivity while personalizing homescreen with six different shortcuts was also possible. Apart from this, the highlighted device was spotted with no integrated accelerometer or motion sensor but this shouldn’t surprise those who have been keeping a tab on almost every other handset out in the market.
The phone’s operating system has been heightened to version 5, while the onboard memory amounts to 512MB and external memory is supplemented by the 2GB card included in the packaging. Those who thought of transferring their pictures or videos to PC will have to visit a shop for the USB cord. Not to forget, the only reason that kept us going while sneak-peeking without having to charge so frequently is the 1500mAHR battery.
To sum it up, the Bold 9700 is a decent smartphone with not so striking attributes, excluding the trackpad here. Most of the features sail on an ‘okay’ board putting us in a dilemma to leave them under ‘red’ category or ‘green’. If you want to establish a serious image among your friends and family who don’t take you seriously, this handset may come to the rescue. The price tag of Rs. 27,990 attached to the Blackberry Bold 9700 doesn’t do much justice to what it offers. This phone gets a fair 7 out of 10 from us.
