Blackberry Bold 9700 - Small but powerful

Another champion on qwerty keyboard phone?

BlackBerry Bold was one of the outstanding devices in 2009, and its time for a refresh. RIM has updated their flagship model with a much sleeker and more powerful model – The Bold 2 or Bold 9700.

It's a sleeker, faster and more able device than its predecessor, and it shows. We're talking 16g lighter, 6mm less wide, 5mm less tall and a whopping 0.9mm thinner.
However, when it’s sleeker it only means smaller keyboard, and for big fingers like me would have to some getting used to. Outlook wise, it does have some similarity with Storm 2, but with a whole lot of keys jammed on instead.

The top of the phone houses two buttons: the lock and the mute keys. The former will turn off the screen and lock the keys, and the latter will mute the phone when ringing, but holding it down will put the phone into standby mode.

Using the new BlackBerry 5.0 OS, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 is a more powerful and intuitive device than its predecessors.

Navigation is achieved almost exclusively through the optical trackpad, although the keyboard offers easy to use shortcuts.

RIM has significantly sped up the performance in both the BlackBerry 9700 and the Storm 2, with both of them reacting to inputs and opening applications much faster than before.
You may accuse the Bold 9700 of being a little boring when it comes to design, the impressive thing is that everything is kept simple, which is why users have stick to BlackBerry for so many years.

You may not already know this, but the BlackBerry series is actually pretty good for messaging, what with this new-fangled email and all that these days.
Text messaging is a similar experience to the e-mailing – it just works because the phone is designed to be a communications device.

Threaded conversations are a boon, the keyboard shortcuts are there again (although not as many, as email obviously offers a richer messaging experience) and you can even send an IM or Facebook message to that person too (well, you could if Facebook Connect was allowed on our phone

One last thing that I must comment, the battery life on the Bold 9700 is fantastic compared to others in the range. It can easily last a whole day with normal use, and sometimes you'll even extend it into the next if you shut down Wi-Fi and push email when not needed.

In summary, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 is a fantastic device that replaces Bold, faster, more responsive and lighter. But I do miss the ball track pad though…anyway, it’s a good upgrade for RIM to introduce Bold 9700.