Blackberry Reviews

Overview

Pros:

• Sleek Design
• Large Display
• Amazing Connectivity
• Perfect for Email and Messaging
• Decent Applications

Cons:

• Lacks 3G
• Small buttons on the keypad
• Slower than the Bold.

Review:

RIM produces the best and the most successful line of business smart phones in the market today; however, it is still light weight when compared to players like Nokia. But, the first thing that comes to mind when people think of RIM is email. Yes, e-mail. The last decade marked the rise of BlackBerry as the champion device for email while on the go. Today, it has become a need for most professionals who travel a lot.  In 2007, RIM launched the Curve, a phone that was not only used by business professionals, but also by the regular users. 2008 marked the launch of Bold, a more serious attempt at penetrating into the market.  This year, RIM launched the BlackBerry Curve 8900.  A solid addition to the T mobile’s smart phone line up, it replaces the older Curve 8300 series. The phone brings several notable improvements, including a sleeker design, a faster processor and a 3.2 MP camera.  The Curve 8900 is a full QWERTY messaging smartphone with integrated Wi-Fi with UMA support. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the lack of 3G support, something that could have given it a great edge over all its competition. Despite this, it is an amazing phone and is absolutely recommended for both consumers and professionals.

Design:

No surprises:
A typical QWERTY device, there are not many surprises in terms of form factor or design. The Curve 8900 PDA Smartphone looks like all its predecessor BlackBerry handsets except for the half QWERTY models that are slimmer. Whereas the Blackberry Bold was more elegant and classy, the Curve is more sporty and hip looking which would appeal to a wide variety of users. The phone casing is entirely built out of plastic and it reminds you of the Nokia E71. RIM used several finishes and paint applications to make the handset more durable. However, the E71 is built out of metal and weighs 125 odd grams more than the Curve. At 109 x 60 x 13.5 mm, the Curve is about the same size as the original, appreciably much thinner though. The overall build quality of the device is good except the loose fitting rear battery cover.

Display:
The 8900’s display is a beautiful 480 x 380 pixel unit that has a diagonal length of 2.4 inches. Smaller than the Bold, it has more pixel density than the Nokia E71 and runs on a TFT LCD which bundles the resolution along with 65k colours. The display is more legible than the Nokia business phone and it retains more vivid colours when exposed to direct sunlight.

Controls layout:
The BlackBerry layout of controls has 2 call keys, a back and a menu button as well under the screen. The centre piece is the trackball, stunningly black and equally stunning comfortable to use. The keyboard has a four row layout and the num pad is on the left. The side controls allow for easy one handed operation, all keys except the space bar are of the same size. The spacing is sufficient and their shape is very comfortable to use. The keys give a very tactile feedback and the keyboard is adequately backlit.
The left of the BlackBerry has one of the convenience keys that allow you to start the voice dialling, by default and you could change that according to whatever suits your needs.  Another such key is on the right side of the handset below the volume rocker and the 3.5 mm standard audio jack. There is the microUSB slot that allows you to charge your phone.  On the bottom of the phone is the microphone pinhole.

Ports and connectivity:
On the top of the model is the ear piece alongside the BlackBerry logo. On the right side of this is the LED indicator.   Seen it somewhere? Yes, this part of the phone is a replica of the Storm. There are 2 more keys here – one for locking the phone and the other for muting it. The smooth surface might make you miss those keys and the only way you can tell is by feeling them.

Features:

The Interface:
The BlackBerry runs on the BlackBerry OS v4.6 and the interface is no different from the Bold’s UI. The home screen and the main menu are neat and simple and have yet very appealing icons. The main menu and the standby screen can be customized beyond recognition and look more attractive. As mentioned earlier, the text sub menus are non customizable and their frequent appearances are irksome.  The eye candy might not impress users who are bothered by functionality.  We suggest that RIM should do some firmware updates to fix the looks of the deeper UI levels.  The home screen is pretty well organized and has 6 shortcut buttons placed at the bottom and the status icons on the top. The profiles can be accessed from here and as well as the 2 other features one chooses to assign for the convenience keys. The Menu navigation of the Curve does not use soft key based navigation where the available options for every options for every menu item. There are no lag or jerky motions while navigating. Though the processor is slower than the Bold, one would not notice any difference. The 8900 is a business device and the audience would mind the dreary look of the deeper sub menus.  The UI responded well and though it is not the biggest cheer of the phone, it is not that bad either.

Connectivity:
To get connected, one has 3 options: Wi-Fi, BIS or EDGE network that T mobile provides.  The RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 has a Wi-Fi network that allows you to check email, shop online, stream videos and music and even make phone calls. Setting up a Wi-Fi network is easy and one can switch back from a carrier service seamlessly.  The upside of the integrated Wi-Fi is UMA support which allows you to make and receive unlimited calls over a wireless network. In order to make this work, you need to sign up for T-Mobile’s Unlimited Hotspot Calling plan which is available separately. However, what is lacking is the inclusion of 3G support.  Excluding it might hurt its sales in the long term perspective. The browsing speeds were pretty good even on EDGE and yet inclusion of 3G would have made it a killer phone. There is the Bluetooth v2.0 which sports A2DP and a microSD data memory card slot.  One reason why 3G was excluded is the fact that UMA features would interfere with HSDPA networking. We would still want to see 3G included on the phone.

Web Browsing:
One of the biggest disappointments in the BlackBerry Bold was the web browser; the Curve features a much improved browser. Far from perfect, the browser’s home page was nicely rendered. The thumbnails were placed far too side of where they should have actually been, but otherwise the pages seemed natural. Pages loaded slowly on the EDGE but on Wi-Fi, they loaded with ease. The support of HTML Browser with support for RSS feeds and streaming media is an amazing addition.

Email:
One aspect where RIM manages to outshine any of its competitors is the email functionality on the BlackBerry.  The smooth and sleek feeling of email functionality is unique to the series.  The 8900 extends to the legacy of IMAP4, POP and the BES emailing system. Like the other BlackBerrys the 8900 can sync with the company’s BES with support for IBM, Lotus Domino, Novell GroupWise or Microsoft Exchange. It takes just about 10 seconds to set up a new account in the BES. The Curve 8900 can handle up to 10 email addresses. There is a unified inbox for email as well as separate account folders. The email system is undeniably robust, but we wish that the email apps were not dependent on the menus as it was tiresome to keep selecting menus through search, copy and forwarding emails.

Applications:
Being a phone that belongs to the business segment, it has all the basic applications which tend to be handy like the Calendar, Memo Pad, Task List, Voice Recorder, a password keeper, Encryption services, zip services and archiving services performing as usual. The calendar application badly needs a visual update which would make it more usable. The calendar is robust and has plenty of fields that keep track of appointments and meetings. Sadly, it has been the same wireframe box that it was when the original BlackBerry hit the market.  For Office Documents handling, there is the DataViz Documents to go.  It is not a complete premium edition, to use the other features, you will have to pay to upgrade it. The phone allows you to make minor edits to word documents and Excel spreadsheets. There is the built in GPS designed to work with BlackBerry Maps and other location based software to help you figure out your location.

GPS:
There is an in built GPS receiver and comes with A GPS support. There is the BlackBerry maps pre-installed, however for it to work, one needs to activate the BlackBerry internet plan. So you cannot have voice guided navigation till you upgrade it. The Maps provide basic functionality and voice guided navigation and it allows you to send your location to anyone via email or SMS.

Multimedia Capabilities:
In spite of being a business phone, the Curve 8900 is pretty good on the multimedia front. The music player has conservative looks and a decent functionality. The music player sorts the music library automatically according to artist, album or genre. One can make playlists and add album art. Sadly, custom equalizers are not available. The player can be minimized to play in background and go back to it via the task manager. There is the headphone jack that allows you to listen to music on your headphones. The microSD card could be upgraded and we wish there was more memory. The Media Sync app searches your iTunes library and allows you to synchronize music playlists with your BlackBerry. The transfer was slower than what it would have been on an Apple device, yet the inclusion of the feature to allow you to sync to your iTunes playlist is cool.

Video Player:
It was pleasant to watch videos on the Curve. Though it cannot rival the Storm’s screen, its higher pixel density and landscape orientation provide excellent quality. The Movie player played back video clips great, scaling the video without much trouble. For managing videos, Media Sync does not provide any help here. One can set to work in full screen with the virtual buttons by a key press. But here is the best part; Curve’s video player comes with DivX and XVid support along with MPEG 4 and WMV. A good deal on the whole.

Camera:
Like the Storm the BlackBerry 8900 Curve is equipped with a 3.2 MP auto-focus camera and a LED Flash. The imaging capabilities of the device are pretty limited and it produces images that look okay and good for a camera phone, even thought nothing that impressive. The snaps are pretty decent, but at reduced zoom, the loss of detail is obvious. It does a nice job with mixed lighting as well. The Camera interface could have been much better as the status message hides a good portion of what actually ends up in this picture making proper framing impossible. The UI is uncomfortable and there are no shortcuts available either. But perhaps, the saving grace is the image geo-tagging which allows one to record ones location in the images EXIF data. In the settings, white balance, colour effects and image stabilization, picture size and quality are available.  The picture quality is sadly below average in the 3 MP league and most of the photos have a distinct oil painting look. There is a problem with the corner softness, though that would not bother most of the users much. Nothing impressive here!

Video Recording:
If it sounded like the Camera was bad, the Video recording was worse.  A disaster If one wants to take full featured video recording. The videos are captured in 3Gp format and can have colour effects applied.

Performance:

Call Quality:
Call quality of the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 was satisfactory. There was some background noise and made audio quality less pristine than the other smart phones. There is the Enhance Audio option where once can boost treble or bass, but that would not improve the call quality either. The speakerphone was OK and there was some hollowness in the voice of the callers.  If it was not for the cut off bass the Curve could have been amongst the best sounding mobile phones in the market.

Responsive:
The Curve has a 512MHz processor and is fairly responsive and you would not notice much difference between the more powerful Bold’s performance.  There was some sluggishness when we tried accessing our photo album or camera. But that would not be much of a bother either.

Speakers:
The 8900 has a speaker that cannot rival the Bold’s output yet is not bad either. The Video playback was impressive and the picture quality was smooth and the picture looked great on the high-res screen.

Connectivity:
Connecting to Wi-Fi was easy and the EDGE speeds were OK too. The GPS navigator worked reasonably well and one can summarize that the RIM 8900 performs as well as its predecessors.

Battery Life:
The Curve 8900 runs on a 1,400mAh lithium ion battery with a rated talk time of 5.5 hours and up to 14.5 days of standby time. We got about 8 and a half hour of continuous talk time and its digital SAR rating is 1.01 per kilogram. The reason that these figures are better than the Bold is perhaps because of the lack of 3G. Using GPS drained the battery very fast and a car charger would come in handy.

Accessories:

T-Mobile ships the BlackBerry Curve 8900 with a travel charger, a USB cable, a 256MB MicroSD card, a protective case, a software CD and a reference material.  It lacks the 8 GB memory card that the Storm offered.

Warranty:

There is a warranty of one year provided on the BlackBerry Curve 8900 from the date of purchase.

Verdict:

The Curve 8900 is a great addition to the BlackBerry series. It is a gorgeous and a powerful device that is packed to the brim with excellent features and hardware. The display is beautiful and a decent camera, a puffed up 512MHz processor, and is excellent for email, messaging and multimedia. It lacks 3G and that is probably what might dent its sales.  Apart from that, this has everything a regular user looks for. Yet, it does not deviate from its main target : The Business class. Definitely a must buy and highly recommended if you are looking to own a business phone that simplifies things and your work.

Check other 2010 Latest Blackberry Phone Reviews in this website.

BlackBerry Curve 8900 - Technical Specification Table

Manufacturer	RIM
Model Name	BlackBerry Bold 8900
Product Type	Smartphone
Colour	Black
Dimensions H x W x D (mm)	109 x 60 x 13.5 mm
Weight	110g
Display	2.44? Transmissive TFT LCD colour display
Colour resolution	65k of 480 x 360 pixel colour display
Operating system	BlackBerry OS; 4.6
CPU	512 MHz processor
Messaging	SMS, MMS, Email, IM
Browser	HTML
GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support
Camera	3.15 Megapixel Camera, Flash, Camera, Settings,Video Player and Recorder
Messaging options	Text messaging or SMS, multimedia messaging or MMS, Instant messaging or IM, and email
Audio features	Alert types: Vibration, MP3 ringtones Speaker phone: Yes 3.5 mm audio jack
Memory	256MB storage, 256 MB RAM microSD, up to 16GB.
Supported audio format	MP3, WMA
Supported video format	DivX and XviD.
Data	GPRS: Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps EDGE: Class 10, 236.8 kbps WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UMA Bluetooth: Yes, v2.0 with A2DP USB: Yes, microUSB v2.0
Games	Yes + downloadable
Product features	The personal organizer with a Phone Book, Calendar, Alarm Clock, and Task List. Specialized BlackBerry Operating System with a Full QWERTY Keyboard, a Trackpad Navigation,Document Viewer. Handsfree speaker, media player, video player and recorder, camera, Browser, Corporate Data Access, Built-in GPS and BlackBerry Maps, SMS/MMS with Wi-Fi support and game options for added entertainment 32 polyphonic ringtones MIDI , SP-MDI, MP3, WAV.
Battery	5.5 hours of talktime and 15days of standby time
Security	Password protection, keyboard lock, AES or Triple DES encryption, FIPS 140-2 Compliant
Warranty	One year

The BlackBerry Bold of last year proved one thing for sure to all of us; it went on to shatter the thoughts of people who have been thinking that the Business phones are boring. It went onto be one of the standout devices of last year and it was RIM’s statement that it was coming for the consumer market. The phone had included a new technology with the screen that fused the LCD display to the outer glass which resulted in a super bright display with vivid colours. While it remains to be a solid device, it is just about time that we had a faster and flashier looking model over the reins. And that model has come in as the RIM BlackBerry Bold 9700. We feel that it could have been named as the Bold Mini, but the logical Canadians at RIM have stuck to the numbers. This model has inherited the stylistic cues and capabilities from its flagship BlackBerry Bold 9000 and has scaled them down into a more pocket friendly form factor.

Design:

One of the sleekest:
Design wise we noticed that the Bold 9700 and another one of BlackBerry’s smallest handsets, the Curve 8900, look and feel as though they have been cut out from the same cloth. Having the same dimensions of height and width, the Bold packs just a wee bit of extra flab on the thickness (H x W x D), 4.29″ x 2.36″ x 0.56 and the set weights a light 4.3 ounces along with the batteries. But the couple of extra decimals cannot do much to diminish the super pocket friendly dimensions and weight of the Bold.

The aesthetics:
As a trademark of the original Bold, this new BlackBerry 9700 model too has been trimmed with a heavy dose of chrome with a broad swoop on the chin. The thin rails running up on the sides and the thick stripe on the top back adds to the aesthetic beauty of the phone. Here is the glad news for most of you out there who hate the fingerprint smudges; none of the panels on the phone are thick enough to show off the fingerprints and RIM has employed some rubbery black plastic on the rest of the parts of the phone to repel them. The original Bold had a full leather wrapped back that made a splash, but that has been toned down to just a more modest patch of black leather on the battery door that still seems to retain the executive fashion statement. The solid feel of the phone well compliments the overall aura of the quality.

The buttons:
The diet of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone has added a touch of class to the proceedings as it now looks like a Storm 2 handset but with a whole lot of keys jammed on instead. As in the case of all the BlackBerry phones, you will find the display and main keypad is separated by a strip of the most commonly used controls that includes talk, end call, back etc, which can be accessed with comfort using the thumb finger. The top of the phone houses two buttons, the lock and mute keys. The lock key turns off the display and locks the keys and the latter mutes the phone when ringing, but holding it down will put the phone into standby mode. RIM has also taken a leaf out of Nokia’s book by including a method of unlocking the phone using the star key coupled with the call button.

What is on the sides?
On the right side of the phone, there is a bubbled out volume rocker and a dedicated camera shutter button. The up/down volume buttons also doubles as a music navigation button for the media player. In the left side, you can find a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, microUSB charging, data connection and a programmable shortcut key. Since this is built into the curved chassis, a portion of the headphone jack is left exposed. On the older Bold, this was a flush socket, which meant a more snug fit; however, we did not experience any issues as far as the audio playback is concerned. So it is just an aesthetic issue. There is a built-in expansion slot just behind the battery door. The best part about the slot is that, it can be accessed without even removing the actual battery and this slot can accommodate cards of capacity of a whooping 32GB.

The ball replaced by trackpad:
The earlier set of BlackBerry had been always known for their trackballs, but the Bold 9700 has taken the divergent path of the most recent BlackBerrys like the Curve 8250 by opting for an optical trackpad. As you swipe your finger over the gem shaped center button, it acts just like the trackpad on a laptop. While some of the BlackBerry fan will be missing the tacky little pearl, they certainly will not be missing the reliability issues that always seemed to pop up from it collecting lint. This new navigation can be adopted easily and soon, you will find yourself trading in the tactile feedback of the old trackball for a slicker and quieter solution.

A better keyboard:
The QWERTY keyboard in Blackberry Bold 9700 Smartphone is better than ever before. The bigger keys make up for a lack of space between them with a sculpted finish that makes each one stand out. But it is disappointing that the keys of the 9700 are not as clicky as the Bold 8900’s, but you will have no trouble typing with it. The build feels tighter, much more refined and quieter than the Curve model. BlackBerry knows what people want from the keyboards and they have proved it once more.

Brilliant display:
As in the case of the Curve model, the new Bold too uses a brilliant half-VGA display of resolution 480 x 360 pixels. The screen is now among the highest resolution in the BlackBerry world, as it stands at a magic-matching HVGA resolution.  It has the same brightness, resolution and colour of the Curve 8900, which is amazing. Being just 2.44″, it certainly cannot compete with the full touchscreen mobiles available; however, the half VGA brightness that has been crammed into the tiny area produces a tack sharp display that makes even the tiniest text and details look very crisp. The powerful backlight offers all the punch that you would need to read under all conditions, without washing out the deep black levels and vibrant shades. The display is also supposed to have a light sensing display, but the Bold 9700 seems to have confused about that function, constantly upping the brightness of the screen when the light conditions do not seem to change.

User Interface:

The navigation has been has been exclusively achieved via the optical trackpad, even though the keyboard offers some easy to use shortcuts. The home screen sports a wider space for your favourite picture, with the favourite icons from the top level of the full menu appearing at the bottom of the home screen to act as shortcuts instead. You will also find links to the sound profiles which are included that allows you to quickly switch off the noisy ring tones or set the phone to vibrate only before entering a meeting or cinema. By pressing on the menu key, you will get a full set of icons that include the complete set of BlackBerry applications and functionalities. If you want to navigate through this effectively, the only way is through the trackpad. So, make sure that you go through the sensitivity setting in the options menu. Though this is not necessary, some might find that the trackpad is almost unusable at the default sensitivity level, and this is especially if you have come from using a physical trackball.

By holding down the menu button, the running tasks pane open up and you will be able to see what is eating up the memory, but we have to admit that the 624MHz processor performs in an admirable fashion. Though the trackpad can be used for most of the operations, it is the menu button that does most of the hard work, as the most important elements of each of the applications are accessed in this manner.

Basic specifications of Bold 9700:

Moving on to the features, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 has a hardware specification that is same as its predecessor for the most part. We were delighted to see the 3G internet which was a much needed feature that made many potential consumers turn down the Curve 8900. The other highlight features included WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 and GPS. The Bold 9700 sports a 3.2 mega-pixel camera, which is an upgrade from the 2.0 mega pixel that was available in the original Bold. Out of the box, the 9700 come with only 256MB of internal memory; however, RIM has included a 2GB microSD card in the built-in expansion slot.

BlackBerry 5.0 operating system:

We are glad that the Bold 9700 Smartphone ships with the BlackBerry 5.0 operating system which is same as the one that shipped with the Storm 9530. But we are left wishing that RIM had done something about the layout of the screen, it still seems to be very sparse. For instance, the contacts menu looks very dull; while the names are listed well, the start black and white background and font could do so with a little design tweak. Functionality wise, it looks and feels the same as the 4.5X software that is running on most of the other models, but this version does have a very long list of minor but appreciable upgrades which includes the ability to forward the calendar entries and resize the photos upon sending them.

The old fashioned OS:

The operating systems of Apple, Palm and Google look great in their 21st century flashy and updated software, while the Microsoft, Nokia and RIM look like the old men of the smartphone world who are just clinging on to what still works. The BlackBerry OS is much preferable to the Symbian or Windows Mobile 6.5. We have to admit the fact that the BlackBerry OS does the business tasks exceptionally well. It is just that the antiquated look and the relatively small app store feel like rust on an otherwise shiny new PDA. Though you might accuse the Bold for being a bit boring when it comes to the design of the user interface, the most impressive fact is that, it keeps everything simple. This is one of the main reasons why consumers have flocked to BlackBerry for so many years. We hope that there will be a few design tweaks in the future to make the menu look a little less boring, but for now, it is perfectly functional and allows the phone to operate at a pretty fast rate.

Contacts:

As we had mentioned earlier, the contacts list looks quite dull. At the profile, the things are a little better, with a picture and all the information about the contact displayed with ease along with the birthdays and your anniversary with him or her. Being able to scroll down and select an action is one of the likable elements of the phone and this means you need not launch a dedicated application every time you wish to send a text.

Call features in Bold 9700:

When you are actually making a call, you have a lot of options on offer. When a call is made, you get to see all the pertinent information that was mentioned earlier in the profile on the call. Activate the loudspeaker and place it with the back down on a flat surface, and the phone becomes a very decent speaker phone indeed. It is a very well known fact that the BlackBerry series which is designed for the business users and with respect to that, the in-call options are even more strongly expected. Here, you can add a caller to the conversation and you can also transfer it on to another person using the same method. Yet another nice touch given to the phone is the ability to enhance the audio of call that brings up the bass or the voice tones, in case you are struggling to hear either, which actually makes a great difference when the person that you are trying to speak to is in a loud environment. The in-call notes are really likable too. Though it is not a latest feature, having the ability to write down a note on a phone conversation and then retrieve that in the contact profile later on, is a very handy function, especially if your BlackBerry is for your office.

Wireless connectivity:

For the sake of connectivity, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 phone has WiFi, Bluetooth and 3G. All works well and especially the WiFi as per usual on all the BlackBerry handsets. The WiFi and 3G switches between each other quite fast. If you have enough battery life available, you can always leave it on and let it connect to your trusted networks whenever you get in range of them. Bluetooth is very easy to setup with both of them having their own set up widget in the menu screen that helps explain what is going on when you try to connect it to a near-by device. We especially liked the option to ‘listen’ for a device trying to find our device, like the two objects were silently shouting commands to each other, just out of range of the human ear.

Everything fastened:

It is worth noting that RIM has significantly sped up the performance in both the BlackBerry Bold and Storm, with both of the smartphones reacting to the inputs and opening applications at a much faster rate than ever before. For instance, when we try to open the gallery in the original Bold, it takes quite some time to load, whereas now, the thumbnails pop up almost instantly. Similarly, opening and closing the applications has become a much easier experience than ever before, making it extremely easy to navigate around without being forced to wait each time an operation is done.

Disappointing browser:

The biggest disappointment as far as the software is concerned was with the lack of improvements in the default browser of BlackBerry, which literally lags behind all its rivals. The slow load time of the phone was very evident when put into test with the iPhone. The tiny display also hampers browsing on the pages that are not formatted for mobile web, but the fine resolution of the display makes the microscopic texts readable. It is certainly not the most intuitive browser on the market, with constant hanging on websites, both on WiFi and 3G connection. The evidence of this can be found in the fact RIM has recently purchased Torch Mobile, developers of Webkit browsers, which is similar to the one used in iPhone and Android platforms, which means the company clearly knows it needs to up the game here.

Not an intuitive one:

You will be able install other browsers, but they cannot be set as default. You will also find some nice touches in the browser, like the way you will be set it to mimic Firefox when accessing certain pages. But some of the other issues like zooming in and out of the pages still does exist, like you can click to zoom in, but have to press the alt key to zoom out. Though we are able to understand why RIM has used these keyboard shortcuts, in today’s pinch, zoom, twist and punch browser interaction society, the Bold has started to look a little out-dated. We have to admit that there are very few options for the non-touchscreen phones, but we would have liked to see some other better use of the trackpad and perhaps some improvised smart-fit text resizing technology. Given the fact that we are marking down the phones for not being able to play flash, it is certainly not acceptable for a phone to struggle with the JavaScript.

Camera:

The 3.2 megapixel camera that is on the 9700 is just identical to the one that is planted on the Curve 8900. As with the internet browser, the Bold’s camera is not there for winning any photographic competition. But we are not here to give a bad idea about it, we are fans of the camera and for what it is designed for, it does a bang up job. The camera auto focuses with a quick half press on the center button and the snaps are sharp and have reasonable colour clarity. The LED flash of the phone is good enough to snap out some workable snapshots in the dark, although you will be able to hear a healthy dose of typical low-light noise to go along with it. The 2x digital zoom can be handily operated by the optical trackpad and it is a nice touch too; especially as beyond that the phone cannot really handle that much of detail. The bad news is that the 2.33” display does not make a great view finder and also seems to exhibit a significant amount of latency as the camera is moved around.

Video recorder:

The video recorder feature is same as that of the camera feature. The phone can record and it will capture footage for those odd moments when you want to share them with your friends latter. Since the video is only a HVGA, there is not a lot of point putting it on any large display, but again, we do not expect that you would want to. It captures a fairly high amount of detail in the videos and the chop-less footage quality appears to be offering a fairly high fps capture. While there is no full video suite to play with latter, you will atleast be able to rename and replay the file to the content of your heart. The great news here is that, if they are not too long, you will even be able to send them.

Media features:

As we said earlier, RIM is trying its best to make the BlackBerry range less of an “Executive type, serious face” device and more of a “wow” factor to it. This has been achieved by the converged media sector on the new 9700. In the earlier model, music was a separate and aloof function and the 3.5mm headphone jack can make listening to music on the go a much easier experience.

Music player:

You will not find any special feature on the music player, but has all the functions that you would hope for including shuffle, repeat, playlists and categorising them by album, artist, etc. There is a menu option to stream the songs out to a Bluetooth headset. The album art displaying interface is cute and it is perfectly OK for the MP3 player of the Bold 9700 could replace an MP3 player, provided, you use a microSD card of massive capacity. The formats supported goes beyond the simple MP3 as there is also support for WMA and ACC+ t00. Hence, you will not be hamstrung by so many of the incompatible file types.

Video playback:

As in the case of the music player, the video player too does just what it needs to without being fancy. We are not sure if you would want to watch videos on a 2.4” display, but what we do know is that the increased and the shrunken proportions make the video look sumptuous on this mobile. When we tried to watch a full length movie on the phone; not only were we conscious the whole time of people wondering why we were staring a BlackBerry for such a long period of time, but the screen seems to have lost some of the details. Coming to formats supported, the 9700 is compatible with DivX, MWV, XviD and 3gp codecs. But for some reason, the Xvid is supported only partially for some reason.

Image playback:

Despite having 8GB full of media files, the Bold 9700 did not show even the slightest hint of slowing down before powering through the thumbnails of the photos which were displayed in just milliseconds, rather than having to wait for ages. Scrolling through them and opening them for editing was a simple task too.

Other media features:

Some other nice media features included in the phone is a voice recorder with apparently no limit on how much of sound can be recorded on one setting. You can even take voice notes so that you will not have to write down that important plot line you had just thought for the novel; one that you might never write.

Making a call:

Although dialling with the miniature number keys of BlackBerry can be a pain, the Bold 9700 had an excellent call quality. The Bold came out with flying colours on the test that we had with the landline. The phone distinctly lacked any warbles blips or distortion, making the PDA one of the most competent smartphones for voice that we have reviewed so far. Though we were pleased with the call quality, the 3G connectivity was not very pleasing as it dropped out on more than one occasion to the default GPRS.

Messaging and Texting:

BlackBerry is actually pretty good for messaging. It is very easy to set up, with just the “ask the guy from IT” elements necessary for you to start receiving the push emails. It is much easier if you want to get involved with some of the consumer email as T-mobile would want you to. The process is as simple as entering your email address and password on the popular accounts like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail accounts. The plug-in gives you direct access to your mailbox. Interacting with email will be a pleasant experience from the well laid out inbox to the sheer number of keyboard shortcuts making navigation around messaging easier than ever before. However, if you are a kind of person who gets millions of junk emails a day, and you do not want the hassle of having to delete them all at once, you have to mark them unopened as it appears that you can mark blocks of messages for deletion, rather than the relevant ones. This is one of those times that on the Bold that you will be ever experiencing any kind of slow down, as the phone struggles to keep up.
Your texting experience will be same as the experience that you will be getting out of emailing. Threaded conversations are a real boon as you will have the set of keyboard shortcuts, however, you might not get as many as you would get with email as they offer a richer messaging experience. With the 9700, you will be able to even send an IM or Facebook message to the person.

Games:

There are a range of games that would keep the business person amused. We are great fans of the Texas Hold’em King 2 poker game and there will not be a soul in the world who will not end up addicted to the BrickBreaker game at some point in their lives. You will also note that the latter works well with the trackpad rather than the ball, this will surely be a big relief for those BrickBreaker BlackBerry fans.

Applications:

There are the Word, Excel and Powerpoint viewers and they do exactly what they are supposed to. The search function is excellent and it can check through practically anything, from messages to tasks to contacts and makes it very easy to spot something that you are looking for in a hurry. Of course, the BlackBerry maps are back into action again, but they are still no better. The cartoonish place labelling and blocky graphics were quite irritating and you also have the GPS system which works well with the inbuilt mapping software. However, we liked some of the features, like the layers option on the map that allows you to make notes on where the important things are, like your house, work place, etc, any place you would struggle to find in general life.

What if I lose it?

The PC software is dealt with in two ways: Desktop manager and media sync. BlackBerry Desktop manager basically allows you to back up all your files to your computer to make sure they are safe if you lose the phone, which we all will do at some point, let us be honest here. Media Sync is one step beyond that in terms of entertainment, whereby it reads your iTunes and Windows Media Player playlists and sends them to your Bold 2 9700 directly to the new device without the hassle of having to put it into mass storage mode every five seconds.

Battery and battery life:

Despite the phone being small, RIM has kept the battery capacity to 1500 mAhr for the new Bold. The battery employed has a talktime of six hours and standby time of 21 days which is a significant rise from the 4.5 hours of talktime and 13.5 days of standby time that was offered by the first model. In fact, the 9700 claims to be having a battery life that is better than any other modern BlackBerry available in the market; which is true too. It can easily last a whole day with normal usage and can sometimes give you another day if the Wi-Fi is shut down and push email when not required. It is really nice that RIM has managed to optimise its battery software to work so efficiently. This means the users do not have to consider carrying a charger around with them “just in case”.

Warranty:

RIM offers BlackBerry Bold 9700 one year limited warranty for parts and labour.

Verdict:

The reduction in size of the Bold and a handful of the refinements has made the new Bold one of BlackBerry’s best ever smart phones. If you had read our Curve 8900 review, you might have noticed that we fell in love with it, but was not happy with the fact that the smartphone was stuck on the EDGE internet. The Bold 9700 essentially takes that winning design and adds the crucial missing element in the form of 3G Internet access, along with a better keyboard, optical trackpad, and even longer-lasting battery. Though the model lacks the frills of an iPhone or Plam Pre, for the utilitarian business users, it proves to be one of the most polished smartphones on today’s market.

Check 2010 Blackberry Reviews in our website.

BlackBerry Bold 9700 Smartphone - Technical specifications, Features

Manufacturer	RIM
Model Name	BlackBerry Bold 9700
Product Type	Smartphone
Colour	Black
Dimensions H x W x D (mm)	109 x 60 x 14 mm
Weight	122 g
Display	2.44″ Transmissive TFT LCD colour display
Colour resolution	Half VGA resolution with 65k of 480 x 360 pixel colour display, backlight and colour sensing screen
Operating system	BlackBerry OS; 5.0
CPU	624 MHz processor
Messaging	SMS, MMS, Email, IM
Browser	HTML
GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support
Camera	3.15 Megapixel Camera, Flash, Camera, Settings, a Viewfinder Display, Video Player and Recorder
Messaging options	Text messaging or SMS, multimedia messaging or MMS, Instant messaging or IM, and email
Audio features	Alert types: Vibration, MP3 ringtones Speaker phone: Yes 3.5 mm audio jack
Memory	256MB storage, 256 MB RAM microSD, up to 16GB, 2GB included
Supported audio format	MP3, WMA9, .3gp, WMA9Pro/WMA 10, AMR-NB, MIDI, Professional AAC/AAC+/eAAC+.
Supported video format	XviD partially supported, H.263, WMV3, H.264, DivX4 and DivX 5/6 which is also partially supported.
2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network	HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100 HSDPA 1700 / 2100 / 900
Data	GPRS: Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps EDGE: Class 10, 236.8 kbps 3G: HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UMA Bluetooth: Yes, v2.1 with A2DP USB: Yes, microUSB v2.0
Games	Yes + downloadable
Product features	The personal organizer with a Phone Book, Calendar, Alarm Clock, and Task List. Specialized BlackBerry Operating System with a Full QWERTY Keyboard, a Trackpad Navigation, Document Viewer. Handsfree speaker, media player, video player and recorder, camera, Browser, Corporate Data Access, Built-in GPS and BlackBerry Maps, SMS/MMS with Wi-Fi support and game options for added entertainment 32 polyphonic ringtones MIDI , SP-MDI, MP3, WAV.
Battery	6 hours of talktime and 21days of standby time
Security	Password protection, keyboard lock, AES or Triple DES encryption, FIPS 140-2 Compliant
Warranty	One year

RIM released a new version of Blackberry Curve 8350 into market with push-to-talk services and the power of Blackberry Smartphones. Particularly this is good news for the users who have not seen a push-to-talk smartphone since RIM Blackberry 7100i, which was introduced to market in June 2006. The Blackberry Curve 8350 is the latest blackberry smartphone to employ iDEN Technology and is the only smartphone that offers push-to-talk service in the industry to provide sub-second call set up and connects to largest push-to-talk community which comprises of millions of users and business solutions, including GPS-enabled solutions one of the largest selections.

Design:

Dimensions of Curve 8350:
Blackberry Curve 8350 retains the same shape and design of the earlier curve models, but as the new model is packed with a load of features, the size is somewhat bigger. The dimensions of the smartphone are as follows: 4.4 inches high, 2.4 inches wide and 0.7 inches thick with a weight of 4.7 ounces. It is a bit bigger compared with RIM Blackberry curve 8330, which measures 4.2 inches high, 2.4 inches wide and 0.6 inch thick and weighs 4.2 ounces. Unlike the Nextel phones, for instance, the Motorolai365 which has the rugged casing, the new model is a solid handset carrying a soft touch finish along the outer edges to make it easy to grip.

Sharp-looking Screen:
A 2.4-inch, QVGA, non-touch display with 65, 536-colour output and 320X240-pixel resolution is sported by Curve 8350. The screen has got a sharp-look which is complemented by the updated user interface of Blackberry OS 4.6.1. The only small issue about the design is that all of the icons look similar, although there is description when we scroll over the icon it is very difficult to use on the fly. Similar to the earlier models, RIM Blackberry Curve 8350 is also incorporated with light-sensing technology which adjusts the display’s brightness depending on the natural light or environment. RIM also allows you to customise your home screen with different themes and background images.

QWERTY Keypad:
A group of traditional navigation layout of Talk and End keys, a Menu short cut, a Back button and a trackball navigator can be found beneath the display. As the trackball is placed a little deeper than earlier models, it is not very easy to move it side to side and pressing-in, to select an item also requires a little more exertion. Some acclimation should be taken for the users who are upgrading from the Blackberry Curve 7100i, which bears a side jog wheel. The Blackberry Curve 8350 Smartphone is incorporated with QWERTY keypad which is more attractable than SureType keypad of Curve 7100i. The new model’s keypad sports small buttons but as there is a fair amount of space between the keys, many may find it easy to use.

Connections:

A 2.5 mm headset jack, a mini USB-port and a Direct Connect button are present on the left side of the Smartphone, where as the right side bears a volume rocker and a user-programmable short-cut key that is set to camera by default. On the top of the device a mute button is present and on the rear side is a camera, flash and a self-portrait mirror. Last but not the least, under the battery you will find microSD/SDHC expansion slot and SIM card slot. Again, the memory cards have got the inconvenient place.

Features:

Key Features of Blackberry Curve 8350:
With a two years gap between RIM Blackberry Curve 7100i and RIM Blackberry Curve 8350, finally the new model has brought the its customers with a number of betterments and additional features.
Some of the key features of Blackberry Curve 8350 from Blackberry Curve Series includes incorporated GPS functionalities, 2 Megapixel digital camera with 5x digital zoom, flash and video,  DataViz Documents to Go to edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint docs, Internal Antenna improves the design appeal and durability,  Speakerphone optimized for great sound quality with Direct Connect, Advanced Media Player - for music, videos and pictures, Removable or Rechargeable 1400 mAH Battery, microSD memory card slot allows for plenty of storage, Bluetooth version 2.0 with support for (A2DP) stereo Bluetooth and more, Additional Messaging Capabilities - support for instant messaging and multimedia messaging including audio, pictures and text to email addresses and capable phones.

Direct Connect:
With the new Blackberry curve 8350’s Nationwide and International Direct Connect, its customers will be capable to instantly connect within UK and also to users in other eligible countries. The Blackberry Curve 8350 is also the first smartphone to offer Group Connect, permitting its customers to set-up group conversations with up to 20 other users. In addition to this, there is also something called as Talkgroup which connects you to groups of up to 200 people within same local market.

A real Smartphone:
Principal Analyst with analyst firm In-Stat, David Chamberlain said that “Smartphones in general and Blackberry products in particular have become more important to both business people and consumers”. The Blackberry curve 8350 with its PTT capability filled the communication needs of many industries particularly for those in the blue-collar segment of construction, field services, transportation and manufacturing.

Multimedia Features:
The Blackberry Curve 8350 offers rich multimedia, organiser, internet browsing capabilities and access to thousands of other mobile applications along with its capability of delivering unmatched push email and messaging feature of Blackberry Solution. The latest design includes a built-in media player which supports files like MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB and MIDI music files, and MPEG4, WMV and H.263 video clips. The new model allows the customers to browse the Internet and download email attachments quickly and easily with its newly included built-in Wi-Fi. The customers can easily send and receive emails or surf Internet even while talking on phone when it is connected to Wi-Fi network.
The other multimedia features comprise of a search function, playlist creation, shuffle and repeat, and you also get a full screen mode for video playback. A software CD included bears Roxio Easy Media Creator, which allows you to create MP3 from CDs and add audio tags. The device carries a 128MB flash memory but if we load multimedia files on microSD/SDHC card the memory space will be conserved. The expansion slot can take up to 16GB cards.

Blackberry 8350 RIM Smartphone:

Vice President of corporate marketing at RIM said that “The new Blackberry Curve 8350 smartphone offers customers an exceptional communications and multimedia experience along with the power and convenience.”

2-mega pixel Camera:

A 2-mega pixel camera with digital zoom and video recording capabilities is sported by Blackberry Curve 8350 smartphone. It provides three size options and three quality selections for still images. Along with flash you can also fine tune white balance and add colour effects. The smartphone also offers geo-tagging photos with its in-built GPS. First microSD card must be installed in the device to use video recording otherwise it will not allow you to start recording a clip. However video options are limited for Curve 8350. You can only get two formats (normal and MMS mode) and colours-that is it.

The picture quality in particular is really not exhorting. Though the objects are clear, colours are flat-looking and gray. As the clips are very blur the recorded videos are also not of a great quality.

Bluetooth 2.0:

Bluetooth 2.0 incorporated in the new model is also on-board for use with mono and stereo headsets, hands free kits and Bluetooth peripherals. As the Curve 8350 has built-in GPS, a Bluetooth GPS receiver would not be necessary. The Built-in GPS can be called as both autonomous and assisted, which uses satellites and cellular triangulation to find your location. Through the apps like BlackBerry Maps and Google Maps for Mobile you can get maps and text based, turn-by-turn driving directions, but you will have to use a location based service like TeleNav GPS Navigator for real-time tracking and voice guided instructions.

BlackBerry Internet:

Voice is not the only means of communication for BlackBerry Curve 8350. Multiple email solutions are provided. To deliver corporate emails, this smartphone can synchronise with the company’s Blackberry Enterprise server, with support for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell Groupwise. You can access up to ten personal or business POP3 or IMAP4 email accounts with Blackberry Internet Service. You can also open Microsoft word, Powerpoint, Excel, Corel WordPerfect, PDF, JPEG, GIF and many more by using the attachment viewer which is incorporated in it. Many popular instant messaging clients like Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Google talk and Blackberry messenger are also included in Curve 8350.

Blackberry OS 4.6.1:

Due to the updation of Blackberry OS 4.6.1, more advanced productivity tools and multimedia capabilities are brought by Curve 8350. Now you can edit word, excel and powerpoint files as smartphone first transports with Dataviz documents To Go Standard Edition. You will have to upgrade to Premium edition, to get an ability to create new documents. Some other PIM applications can be listed as a calendar, a task list, a memo pad, a voice recorder, a password keeper and many more. You can also always download applications to a great extent into the smartphone.

HTML Web Browser:

We should thank Curve 8350 for providing an ameliorated, full HTML web browser. Still it is not very easy or advanced as compared to its competitors, but it is better than earlier models. You have two options to view, such as Column view or Page view. There is an on-screen cursor which can be moved around in any direction and can be placed at any part of the page where you can click a link, along with zoom-in and zoom-out functions. As there is the integrated Wi-Fi you can browse at some speed. You can manually add a network or the smartphone automatically can search for the available network. Some Wi-Fi tools also exists such as diagnostics, DNS lookup and site survey.

Miscellaneous features of Curve 8350:

Some other phone features includes a speakerphone, a voice-activated dialing, speed dial, text messaging and lastly multimedia messaging. Limitation is applied on the address book with available memory only, with plenty of room in each entry for multiple phone numbers that include direct connect numbers, email addresses, work and home addresses, job title and many more. You can assign photo to a contact as well as to a group category-business or personal or you can add one of the 45 polyphonic ring tones for the call identification.

Performance:

Call Quality:
Though the audio quality is clear, sometimes the calls sound hollow as if the callers are talking in an empty room. Though there was plenty of volume, same problem was encountered the speakerphone was activated. Still they were able to continue conversation with an airline voice automated response system without dropping any calls during the testing period. The tests also proved that we can pair the Curve 8350 smartphone with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth Headset and Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.

GPS Navigation Performance:
Though most part of the Curve 8350 is found responsive, it was also found that you will experience some lag with even simple chores like menu navigation. You may also find some instances in which the device may get stuck for few seconds on the main menu page, making it difficult to scroll to other items or launch apps, after exiting out of the video player. Coming to video, let us say multimedia experience will sound good. As most of the smartphones, we cannot watch the full length movies on Curve 8350, but as the playback is smooth it would be fine if you watch short video clips. If you try listening to MP3 files, you will experience it hollow on speakerphone. As you expect the sound quality is much better on head phones. As the new model is not fitted with 3.5 mm headphone jack, you will need to connect an audio adapter to use ear buds or headphones.

Internet Service:
If you try use Blackberry Internet Service to assemble your Yahoo email account with the device, the process will be done without any arrest and can successfully receive and check mails in the inbox. Nevertheless, the Curve 8350 got trouble sending emails. It should be resend many times in order to be send to the recipient. The promising thing is that smartphone did not have any problem connecting to a Wi-Fi network.

Battery Life:
The RIM Blackberry Curve 8350 comes along with a 1,400mAH Lithium ion battery with a talk time of up to 4 hours. In battery drain tests performed, it was found that one can speak continuously for 8.5 hours on single charge. It was found that the device has a digital-SAR rating of 0.88 watt per kilogram, according to FCC Radiation tests.

Package Particulars:

The pack of RIM Blackberry Curve 8350 comprises of the RIM Blackberry Curve 8350 smartphone, a travel charger, a USB charging/sync cable, a wired stereo headset, a SIM card, a 1GB microSD card, a swivel belt holster, a software CD and reference material.

Warranty:

RIM offers Blackberry Curve 8350 one year standard warranty.

Verdict:

With Customers looking for a fully features smartphone with Direct Connect push-to-talk capability, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS can be served by the new RIM Blackberry Curve 8350. It also provides an updated OS, advanced multimedia capabilities and a full HTML browser. Sometimes Blackberry Curve 8350 made get struck in between of the operations but that would not necessarily stop anyone from buying it. It is the first smartphone without an external antenna.  For the user who is waiting to switch to a new smartphone with many advanced features the new model will be the best suit for them.

Blackberry Curve 8350 Smartphone - Technical Specifications, Features

Manufacturer	Research In Motion Ltd.
Model Number	Curve 8350
Series	Curve Series
Product type	Blackberry with digital camera
Dimensions (H x W x D)	4.4 x 2.4 x 0.7 in
Weight	0.3 lbs
Technology	iDEN
Band	iDEN 800/900 (dual band)
Phone Design	Candy Bar
Vibrating Alert	Yes
Phone Navigation Method	Track ball
Wireless Interface	IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, Bluetooth 2.0
OS	Blackberry Handheld Software
Camera Quality	With a resolution of 2-mega pixels, this phone will give higher quality images than other phones.
Sensor Resolution	2 mega pixels
Digital Zoom	5
Light source of Camera	Flash
Features of camera	Video recording, self-portrait mirror
Display type	LCD
Technology	TFT
Resolution	320×240 pixels
Colour Depth	16-bit (65000 colours)
Connector Type	1xheadset jack, 1xUSB
Slot Provided	1
Power Type	Power Adapter
Mobile Email	Yes
Internet Browser	Yes
Battery Type	Rechargeable Lithium Ion
Capacity	1400 mAH
Talktime	Up to 240 min
Package Details	The RIM Black Berry Curve 8350, a travel charger, a USB cable, a wired stereo headset, a SIM card, a 1GB microSD card, a swivel belt holster, a software CD and reference material.
Warranty	One year