The BlackBerry Bold 9700 comes from a family with tradition in delivering perfection. This can be a blessing or a curse, it all depends on what you make of it. What I mean is that Bold 9700 comes on a wave of high expectations and has a lot to prove to the fan base.
When you already have an excellent device on the market, sometimes it’s not enough to provide a facelift, a minor upgrade or small incremental change, this can spell failure in a blink of an eye. Let’s take a look at what BlackBerry Bold 9700 has to offer.
Key features:
• 2.44" 65K-color TFT landscape display with a resolution of 480 x 360 pixels
• Comfortable four-row full QWERTY keyboard
• Quad-band GSM support and tri-band 3G with HSDPA
• Wi-Fi and built-in GPS and BlackBerry maps preloaded
• 3.15 autofocus megapixel camera, LED flash
• 624 MHz CPU, 256 MB RAM
• BlackBerry OS v5
• Responsive track pad navigation
• Hot-swappable micros card slot (up to 16GB)
• DivX and XviD video support
• Good web browser
• Office document editor
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• Decent audio quality
• Smart dialing
• Great battery life
• More compact body and lighter weight compared to the Bold 9000
• Good build quality
Full specs here.
It’s hard to improve an already perfect device, but with Bold 9700, BlackBerry decided to give it a shot.
The retail package is rich, it contains a charger with 3 adapters for different sockets, a leather pouch and of course, the hands free set. The good part is that BlackBerry uses the 3.5 mm audio jack so you can upgrade your headset at will. Also in the box you find a USB data cable and a 2 GB micro SD card.
The Bold 9700 measures 109 x 60 x 14 mm and weighs122 grams. The design is sober; the body is all plastic, rubbery on the edges.
The device comes with a 2.44" TFT display, capable of displaying up to 65K colors. The resolution has been slightly increased to 480 x 360 pixels. That's a 4:3 aspect ratio. In terms of brightness and contrast, it is at par with the best displays on the market, it has a respectable pixel density and that helps. Sunlight legibility is also a strong point of the device; overall it’s an impressive display.
The QWERTY keyboard is the trademark of BlackBerry, it uses a four-row layout; apart from the space bar all keys are of the same size and are incredibly tactile.
Below the display we find a touch-sensitive track pad which handles very nice and responds perfectly on any flick of the thumb.
The left side of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 features the 3.5mm standard audio jack and the standard micro USB port. The BlackBerry Bold 9700 comes with a 3 megapixel autofocus camera. Removing the back panel reveals the impressive 1500 mAh Li-Ion battery, quoted as lasting 408 hours of stand-by or 6 hours of talk time.
In real life, the phone lasted for almost a week which is outstanding. Under the battery cover we also find the micro SD card slot which handles up to 16 GB memory cards.
Overall, the build quality of the Bold 9700 is very good and the curved design makes for a sharper look of the smartphone, also for a better grip.
The BlackBerry OS 5 is an upgrade from the previous 4.6 but there are no major changes. The new version of the BlackBerry OS has retained the menu structure almost completely so any experienced BlackBerry users will feel at home. The OS runs smooth and fast, impressive actually, showing absolutely no lag, helped by the snappy CPU.
In terms of telephony, yes, you get smart dial, there are no problems in terms of reception or in-call sound quality, the smartphone performs well in its main task.
The BlackBerry Bold 9700 handles messaging without breaking a sweat, it has support for all common types of messages - SMS, MMS and email. It also has the BlackBerry Messenger and Google Talk IM clients preinstalled.
The music player was face lifted too but there are no major upgrades, it sorts the music library automatically by artist, album and genre and you can search your tracks by gradual typing.
In terms of audio quality, it’s quite good, like its predecessor, comparable to the best in class.
The video player works full screen and has support for DivX and XviD, it has an impressive picture quality.
Camera is average, at 3 Megapixels it’s hardly a performer. The camera interface is basic with few settings; at least you have geotagging as a feature. Image quality is decent but nothing to write home about, the idea is that if you buy a BlackBerry, photography is not your thing anyway.
In terms of video recording, videos are captured in 3gp format at 480 x 360 pixels, pretty pathetic, not worth mentioning actually.
The Bold 9700 shines where it counts, in terms of business and I mean connectivity here. You get quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support secures global roaming and the 3G with HSDPA gives you the extra speed. The Wi-Fi is also present with a nice and easily customizable Wi-Fi manager taking care of all the connections. Bluetooth with A2DP support rounds off the list of wireless connectivity options. The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is also equipped with a standard microUSB port that is enabled for both data connections and charging.
This device is not a toy for teenagers, it means business, the Bold 9700 has superb time-management capabilities.
Mobile office is also fully functional, with preinstalled applications able to open and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.
BlackBerry Bold 9700 is equipped with a built-in GPS receiver and comes with A-GPS support. For navigation you get BlackBerry Maps preinstalled.
In conclusion, if you are a fan of the brand, this is the business tool for you. It is a serious smartphone, perfect for emails, messaging and viewing/editing documents, and even some internet surfing due to its excellent connectivity; by all means it’s not a gadget for geeks or a multimedia center. If you appreciate its strong points, it’s a must have.
You can have one on a monthly contract deal here.
