2009 has been a banner year for mobile phones, as their evolution continues to bring them to a more direct level of involvement and integration in our daily lives. Where once we merely regarded them as the status symbols carried by the new rich to show off, the increased pace of our lives and rampant multiplicity of the tasks we need to accomplish has coincided with the advent of more affordable technology to place more mobile phones in everyone’s hands. Mobile phone manufacturers have continued to try new things to improve the services and features provided by their mobile units, turning many users onto a new type of mobile phone, the smartphone.
BlackBerry is one mobile phone manufacturer that has evolved with the times. Ten years ago Canadian company Research In Motion was mainly into putting together simple two-way pagers, but within a span of three short years they released a smartphone whose minute keys resembled berry seeds clustered below a comfortably large viewscreen. With advice from Lexicon Branding Inc., RIM set forth to craft more “BlackBerry” [instead of “strawberry”, which is said to have been another name considered] units that would go on to become well-known for allowing its users to make and receive text messages and voice calls, as well as for supporting push email and Internet browsing.
This year BlackBerry has released the Bold 9700, a new iteration of its already impressive Bold units. It performs better on the whole as a standalone phone in its own right as opposed to when it is viewed in comparison to previous units. While the 9700 does have a few issues, it tries to break new ground with a smaller and lighter form and ranks as one of the best smartphones of the year.
At first strikingly similar to the Curve 8520, a fellow 2009 release, the Bold 9700 features an optical touchpad below the screen instead of BlackBerry’s typical jogball. The overall steel-rimmed frame is noticeably smaller than 2008’s Bold 9000, with the screen [now 2.4 inches diagonally at 480x360 resolution] following suit in the shrinking but not by much. Nevertheless, the pixel count is actually higher than the 9000’s, and everything in the onscreen display from text to icons remains sharp and clear. The keyboard, while also having shrunken somewhat, remains easily used with some practice – the keys are noticeably smaller but are still uniquely shaped. Despite the shrinking footprint, the 9700 nevertheless comes with a 3.15 megapixel camera, an improvement over last year’s 2-megapixel module.
The Bold 9700 runs on BlackBerry OS version 5.0.0.321, and is the first [aside from the 3G BlackBerry Tour] to feature HSDPA data speeds in 2009. It also supports downloads at up to 3.6Mbps, as well as Wi-Fi browsing, Bluetooth and USB connections. Web browsing is serviceable for readings news sites and watching Youtubr videos, although tricker webpage design can stymie the browser. Call quality and battery life are good in general, with up to six hours of 3G talk time. Reading Office documents [editing is a separately-purchased feature] and sending emails remails the BlackBerry unit’s core strength, and a VPN client allows office intranet connections as well.
The Bold 9700 may have a somewhat cramped and crowded keyboard, and its optical trackpad might not be the game-changer BlackBerry was hoping it would be. However, it manages to get the job done in about as effective and efficient a way as one may come to expect from BlackBerry overall, and that combined with its variety of features, good battery life and an easily-used interface make it a good solid purchase.
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