George Boone, NS
The RIM BlackBerry Bold 9700 is 3G capable smartphone which offers a Wi-Fi with UMA support, GPS and Bluetooth etc. It is an upgrade to Blackberry OS 5.0 with a faster processor. It抯 sleeker design has an optical trackpad, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a brilliant display, surely a lot of improvement of its predecessor with a sleeker design and more power.
The new design outdated the old bulky body and replaced with a compact sleek smartphone that is popular to both men and women, consumers and professionals. It is even smaller and lighter than the Blackberry Tour at 4.29 inches tall by 2.36 inches wide by 0.56 inch thick and 4.3 ounces. The Bold 9700 has a 2.44-inch display (compared with 2.75 inches) and its 480x360-pixel resolution at 245 pixels per inch certainly keeps things very clear and sharp.
The shift from trackball to trackpad is extremely easy, and not to mention it抯 super responsiveness (you can also adjust the sensitivity to your liking through the Options menu). Scrolling through lists and navigating menus feels smoother with the trackpad and you can select an item just by pressing down.
So, it is certainly a more pocketable, smart sleek phone that is overall an awesome phone. Battery life is really incredible during typical daily usage with both the 3G and WiFi radios on.
Ken Lee, BC
I am glad that I have one of this smart sleek gadget in my hand that I love and very happy about. It is a great reliable phone that is for both business and personal use.
I love the ease of using this phone and it抯 efficient messaging system which include SMS, MMS, Emails, MSN messaging and it's very own Blackberry Messenger which will keep you connected seamlessly. The design is very elegant and sleek on the front and the leather finishing on the battery cover gives it a nice feel. I find it's optical trackpad easy and efficient to use. The battery life is one of the features of this phone that anyone would fall in love with. Use it for straight 3 days however you want to: browsing, messaging, calling without charging at all.
There is a new feature called Visual Voice Mail and I find it awesome. I track my voice messages in the same way that text messages are handled. When a call goes to voicemail, you can see who called and left you a voice mail. You can visually scroll to the message you want to go to, listen to it by pressing the play button, rewind, pause, and even delete it right from your phone key pad, exactly the way you handle a text message.
I am not too crazy about cell phone cameras but this one has a flash, which makes it great. So it definitely come in handy when you really need to take a picture and not carrying your digital camera.
Best features: Stellar touchpad, brilliant screen, awesome look and feel, super fast, longer tracked call log, bedside mode with face clock, lightweight, and price.
Ronald Leblanc, BC
It seems to me that BlackBerry has found its fashion sense in the last few years. I've been impressed with some of the designs and the most impressive changes were in the Bold 9700. First 3G BlackBerry, the Bold 9700 not only offers a sleek new handset but it also offers versatility with UMA support for Wi-Fi calling. Bold 9700 comes with a faster processor than the old one, an updated OS, and a sleeker design. It also has an inbuilt camera with a 3.2 megapixel sensor and a flash and the ability to record video. The color of the phone has contrasts of black and chrome with the black leather finish on the back. The BlackBerry logo in chrome is also a nice touch, especially since it pops out in contrast to the black leather background. So, without getting too muchinto details, I love the look of the BlackBerry Bold 9700.
Among the good features the new Bold 9700 offers quad-band world roaming, a speakerphone, voice-activated dialing, smart dialing, conference calling, speed dial, background noise suppression, and text and multimedia messaging with threaded chat view. The address book is only limited by the available memory and holds room for multiple numbers, e-mail address, work information, and more. For caller ID purposes, you can assign a photo, group ID, or custom ringtone.
The Bold 9700 comes with a 1500 lithium ion battery with a rated talk time of 6 hours and up to 19 days of standby time which I find amazing!
Another thing I must mention is it抯 built quality. I managed to drop the phone a couple of times since the time I have had it and I noticed no damage so far. Sturdy yet slim and sleek!
Brian Thompson, BC
The new Bold 9700 is simply amazing to look at and to have. When you actually put the older one and the new one together you actually see the difference in the size.
Besides the size reduction, there are quite a few changes to the design, such as rubberised buttons on the sides, a new chrome finish around the edges and a redesigned battery cover. It gives a nice elegant leather look on the back which I love.
There is an upgrade on the camera too; from 2-mega-pixels to 3.2, with flash. I feel that for a phone camera it抯 pretty good and the picture quality is pretty good too with decent sized images that can be printed, uploaded to your favourite social networking site or emailed. The flash is powerful enough to light up things nearby, and the video recording part is good too.
Other changes include the integrated support of Google Mail, including contact and calendar synchronization. There抯 an additional security process to complete now before you can start using your BlackBerry with Gmail, but the result is instant delivery of Gmail in the same way as using a BlackBerry email address.
It has a faster processor and WiFi with UMA support. Even though there抯 a faster processor, power consumption is surprisingly low I find and the battery can now keep you going for two to three days easily without charging it in between and I guess this is probably the biggest improvement over its predecessor which is great for me and for the people who are on business trips all the time.