Send to Kindle"This is possibly the best-built BlackBerry yet. Everything just fits perfectly."
If anyone is to say that RIM (Blackberry) doesn’t produce top notch phones then they should certainly buy the Bold 9900. Competing with many of the smart phones on the market today I feel it could be the phone to get, especially for business customers.
Many users of the original Bold, the 9000, loved the device so much due to its size and it looks like RIM have listened to its customers as the new Bold 9900 is very similar with the added bonus of losing the track ball in favor of the track pad and some other great specs including a capacitive touch screen as well as a 1.2 GHz processor. RIM have made the price suit the specification of the phone and make it the professional handset that they have. Cameras (front and rear), internet browsing, HTML emails – all were included on RIM’s phones years after they’d become standard fare on other handsets.
The front of the device is dominated by both the capacitive touch screen as well as the QWERTY keyboard. At the very top we have a speaker grill and the LED light is located beside it. Under the screen there are the normal call send/end keys as well as the options and back buttons. Centered between the buttons is the optical track pad. Over on the back you will find the camera lens and powerful flash. The back is made from a carbon fiber light material. You really get the modern vibe sense throughout the phone. The design changes haven’t affected the phone’s build quality either – this is possibly the best-built BlackBerry yet. Everything just fits perfectly.
On the right edge you have volume buttons that are also used as a play/pause button and a camera button. That play/pause button allows you to play or pause your music without unlocking the phone, which is extremely useful – this is even more convenient than the iPhone, and is available on many of the smart phones today. There’s also a camera shortcut button, which you can, as always, change to open something else on your 9900 should you wish
That’s your lot, because the left-hand side is reserved for ports, including a micro USB charging and syncing port, plus there’s a 3.5mm headphone slot that it a nice feature instead of Blackberry having their own headphone input. I found that the phone is a lot lighter and slimmer that allot of the blackberry models.
Underneath the works, BlackBerry is making something of a statement equipping the BlackBerry Bold 9900 with a 1.2GHz processor and 768MB of RAM. You cannot criticism the phone for not being powerful enough as it competes with many out there today. The operating system also is no match for phones that run on android too.
This joins 8GB of internal memory, as well as supporting microSD cards up to 32GB. Application storage sits at 512MB, but this isn’t all user memory, as some is given over to existing system apps (all detailed in the Application Management in the Device Options). BB apps are small, so the remaining, small, space may look as though it is rapidly dwindling, but you’ll still get a respectable number of apps on the thing before it is a problem.
Blackberry OS7 may not be the best operating system out there for the phone but it manages it fine and doesn’t cause any issues that I know of when testing the model. Like previous versions of BB OS, assigning your most commonly used apps to the top row of the menu sits them conveniently across the bottom of the screen for easy access, You can easily move the icons around and replace them with more frequently used icons . You can even change the category type from things like media to download.
Of course there are some core control changes that are really useful, being able to access connections and settings by hitting the respective bar on the display, accessing messages from all the main sources on a notification bar. Of course, universal search works when you start typing and is a great feature offering up local results as well as presenting the option to Google for results. The front screen is in no means cramped or squashed and the design fits perfectly with the flow of menus and icons on the screen.
Email, of course, is the service I get most excited about. Even though email is common, and good, across a range of smartphones, on BlackBerry it feels so much simpler for “power emailers”. I love how fast the Bold handles email, even when it is barely registering a GPRS connection. This matches the application connection and I felt that the phone could handle any games from angry birds to applications to help you in your day to day life. The apps remained looking good while being responsive and fast. Overall for apps and the services which require an internet connection the phone does its job and does it perfectly.
In a nutshell if you are looking for a phone that is easy to use and is highly powerful with responsive touch,amazing looks and competes with all other phones on the market I would highly recommended the Bold 9900. The phone hardly has any flaws and remains successful in all of the tests I did. Fitting nicely in the pocket but full with performance RIM have produced a handset that is worth buying and I hope they continue to make more smart phones like it. The interface is smooth, apps are fast and the phone does everything that a phone needs to do brilliantly as well. Although the shape of the phone is the same as most of the curves and bolds out there its carbon fiber adjustment make the phone unique compared to the rest. The phone has impressed us immensely. If I could describe the phone in one word it would be. Amazing.
Overall all I rate the phone 9/10. If you have the chance and have the money you can pick up the phone on a reasonably good contract and buy it for around £320 (or around $79 on contract in the US).
