BlackBerry Bold 9700 Review
The BlackBerry Bold 9700 might be in the later stages of life right now but it’s still very popular as far as this iconic range of smartphones goes. At first glance the Bold 9700 is very much a BlackBerry. It’s solid bar form, small screen, QWERTY keypad and wide feel are all familiar sites. To be fair RIM has moderened the phone up a bit with some chroming about the sides and sharper angles, giving the Bold 9700 much more of an up-to-date appearance. We also love the leathery battery cover that adds an element of class we find lacking in most modern smartphone designs.
Of course the BlackBerry range has always been fantastically successful in the business world. Its push email system, ready-to-use keypad and general structural sturdiness have always been great bonuses for those who are always on the go. However, with more and more big names making a push in to the world of enterprise it’s becoming harder to find reasons to side with the BlackBerry.
The Bold 9700 ships with BlackBerry OS 5, which is a bit of a let-down. OS 5 has become an out-dated operating system in many respects and really does give the feeling that you’re using a phone from early 2008, rather than a more modern example. OS 5 also means that the phone’s browser is rubbish; it’s laggy, has trouble loading java and just about any kind of video. In short you won’t be using this badboy for web-based multimedia too often.
You can, of course, upgrade to BlackBerry OS 6, which fixes a lot of the browser problems and updates the interface. We recommend doing this as soon as possible.
There’s no touchscreen, RIM opting instead to employ a touchpad for phone navigation. The touchpad replaces the old trackball and does work well. But, once again, this would have been great a couple of years ago. Now that we’re all used to multi-touch interfaces it really just seems to give the feeling of being held back.
The 2.7 inch screen looks great, packing in a 480 x 360 display in to a very small area. The colours are crisp, blacks are true and there’s really little lost when viewing in direct sunlight. However, the small viewing area does make it even more difficult to surf the web, even after updating to BackBerry OS 6. This isn’t a huge problem for media junkies who spend all their time viewing vids, but for the average news reader this is a big issue.
One thing BlackBerry has always excelled at is emails. If you’re a big email power-user and need to organise your emails into folders/files and track them efficiently then BlackBerry devices will be a huge bonus. The small screen does come in to play here again, though. Those of us with 20/20 vision aren’t affected, but anyone with less than perfect eyesight might have trouble reading their incoming web messages.
The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is certainly a solidly built device with great email integration. But if you’re a BlackBerry fan, for any reason, we’d suggest going to a BlackBerry Torch if possible. The Torch boasts a bigger screen, multi-touch interface and ships with BlackBerry OS 6. The Bold 9700, while dripping with visual class, just doesn’t feel like it can hold a candle to some of the new releases we’re seeing these days like the iPhone 4, Android phones or WP7 devices.