BlackBerry Bold 9700 Review
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 |
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