BlackBerry 9700 Bold Unlocked Smartphone with 3 MP Camera, Bluetooth, 3G, Wi-Fi, and MicroSd Slot –International Version with no Warranty (charcoal) Reviews
08. Apr, 2011 
6 Comments
BlackBerry 9700 Bold Unlocked Smartphone with 3 MP Camera, Bluetooth, 3G, Wi-Fi, and MicroSd Slot –International Version with no Warranty (charcoal)
- This unlocked cell phone is compatible with GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile. Not all carrier features may be supported. It will not work with CDMA carriers like Verizon Wireless, Alltel and Sprint.
- Quad-band GSM cell phone compatible with 850/900/1800/1900 frequencies and US/International 3G compatibility via 800/850/1900/2100/ 1700/2100 MHz, UMTS/HSDPA plus GPRS/EDGE capabilities
- Wi-Fi networking (802.11b/g); 3.2-megapixel camera/camcorder; Bluetooth stereo music; microSD memory expansion to 32 GB; access to personal and corporate email
- Access all your email and messaging as well as social networking sites; full QWERTY keyboard with touch-sensitive optical trackpad
- Up to 6 hours of talk time, up to 360 hours (15 days) of standby time
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List Price: $ 999.99
Price:
Nokia N97 mini 8 GB Unlocked Phone, Free GPS with Voice Navigation and Navigation/Car Kit–U.S. Version with Full U.S. Warranty (Black)
- Unlocked quad-band GSM cell phone compatible with 850/900/1800/1900 frequencies and US/International 3G compatibility via 850/900/1900/2100 UMTS/HSDPA plus GPRS/EDGE capabilities
- Smaller version of N97 with 3.2-inch touch-enabled screen and flip-out QWERTY keyboard; GPS with free Ovi Maps navigation; Nokia Navigation Accessory Kit
- 5-megapixel camera/camcorder with Carl Zeiss optics; Wi-Fi networking; Bluetooth stereo music; 8 GB internal memory; expandable via microSD (up to 16 GB)
- Up to 7.17 hours of GSM talk time (4 hours on 3G networks), up to 320 hours (13-plus days) of standby time
- What’s in the Box: Handset, Nokia Navigation Accessory Kit (mobile charger, mobile holder, holder easy mount), rechargeable battery, charger, connectivity cable, wired headset, cleaning cloth, quick start guide
Following in the footsteps of its bigger, older brother, the Nokia N97 mini sports new homescreen widgets and a host of usability improvements. While the N97 mini still packs 8GB of storage, a 3.2-inch touchscreen, and full QWERTY keyboard into its 14.2mm thin frame, it’s also the first Nokia device to offer Lifecasting with Ovi–a new partnership with Facebook that enables users to update their Facebook status directly from the device’s homescreen. It doesn’t stop there though, as location de
List Price: $ 579.00
Price:
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Can’t go wrong with the Bold 2….,
Alright, let me just say off the bat that as a former Bold 9000 user, I’ve been looking forward to the new Bold 2 for months since pictures were leaked on the internet. Since I get my phones through my company, I’ve had the phone since Nov. 18, when it was released on AT&T’s network for Premier people. Unfortunately, my friend decided that after playing around with my phone, they wanted one, so I bought them an unlocked one.
The new Bold 9700 is a sleek phone – no doubt about it. RIM apparently has decided, though, to somewhat standardize their phones’ look, a direction that bothers me to a great extent. One of the things I loved about the Bold was that it was different – you saw any other phone, and then you saw the Bold – and you thought “Wow, that phone IS bold!!” Size I couldn’t care less about – as long as it looked good, and worked awesomely, what else matters? And the Bold 9000 fit those well. So when I got the new 9700, and I compared it to my coworker’s Tour (for Verizon), I was quite surprised at how similar they were. It’s actually somewhat hard to tell them apart (the 9700 is a bit smaller, and also has the trackpad). Just an observation….
Alright – to the review:
Pros:
Trackpad – this is definitely a most welcome upgrade. RIM outdid themselves on this part – I thought the trackball was good, this trackpad is great! The older Bold’s trackball was great, as long as you kept dirt and dust out of it. Which turned out to be somewhat difficult, since there was a depression surrounding the trackball, and so if too much dust or dirt got in, the ball needed to be replaced. Also, if you used it too much, the ball would lose its grip, and become less responsive, also – once again – needing to be replaced. Both those problems are now gone with this new trackpad. For former trackball users, it may take a little use to get to know it, but once you do, trust me – you’ll never go back.
Speaker – the speakers on the Bold are nothing less than stunning. My friend has an IPhone, and my speakers for playing music and speakerphone blow his out of this century. Not only can they get very loud, but they also are quite clear and crisp, for the volume you can put them to. And, if that wasn’t good enough, RIM includes AudioBoost – for when you hook your Bold up to your car or stereo system, which bumps the output sound even higher. Excellent….
OS – the new BlackBerry 5 OS, which comes preloaded on the phone, is a major improvement over the 4.6 version in most other phones. It’s snappier, and quite more responsive.
Camera – RIM upgraded the camera from a 2 MP in the older Bold to a 3.2 MP in the Bold 9700. The pictures that the phone takes are quite good, even in poor light conditions. Of course, if you try to take pictures in the club with it – prepare to be somewhat disappointed. Ha. But for regular, everyday camera uses, that “quick shot”, the Bold 9700 actually takes decent pictures. Nice for when you forget to bring that digital camera with you.
There’s a couple other pros I can think of, but they’re more along the lines of business users, or based on networks (you could get 3G speeds on AT&T’s network since the first Bold – T-Mobile just got their first 3G BlackBerry with this phone). If you’re interested in them, drop me a comment, and I’ll get back to you.
Now, for the cons:
Battery – battery life is still somewhat bad, although it definitely is an improvement over the older Bold. I normally use Pandora – an App that plays Internet Radio, trust me, this should be one of the first apps you download, it’s free – the other is Google Maps, also free – anyway, back to the review, so I normally use Pandora, and I can get about 6 hours out of the battery, with small breaks in-between receiving phone calls. So, in normal use, you could probably get about a day out of the battery, which isn’t terrible, but also is somewhat worse than comparable phones out there.
Hardware – this is probably my biggest negative I had. Normally, when they say upgrade, you would think they would put better hardware in the thing, right?? Well, think again. With the exception of the upgraded camera and trackpad, there is NO difference in hardware between this and the older Bold.
Zero.
Nada.
I would’ve liked some upgraded hardware in the phone. But again – this is just my thing. You may not care.
My last negative is more hit and miss – some people have been reporting that BlackBerry Maps – the app that RIM ships with the phone for navigation, doesn’t work on the 9700. Myself included. This appears to be at random, but it just irks me. It may be dependent on the network you’re on. Fortunately, there’s a workaround – get Google Maps.
So – overall, the phone is a nice update. It works, takes nice pictures, looks sleek, and can be used…
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|Few good improvements but…,
I have been using this phone for about a week now. And while this device beats previous bold 9000 in many aspects there is still much to be improved. So let me first say things that I do like about the phone. Of course the greatest improvement was the addition of the trackpad, at first it was kind of unusual to navigate with it but I got accustomed to it very quickly. Second thing is the screen resolution, it was improved from the old bold by 480×360 vs 480×320 pixels. The screen is really crisp and bright and sunlight legibility is very decent. The camera also experienced an improvement and while I was taking pictures outside on a bright day and later comparing them to the previous bold, there is a very noticeable change, pictures look somewhat close to my wife’s 10 megapixel canon camera. I was also surprised by the improved quality of the videos this device shoots. Much better and less pixelated than the original bold! Now for the things that I don’t like or wished to be improved. Despite of the fact that everyone raves about “amazing” battery life on this device, I must say I am disappointed. At best, the battery lasts me a day and a half but not two day as many reviewers say. Perhaps I do extensive web browsing and chatting via instant messaging. I usually like to read various blogs and news on opera mini 5 browser and I noticed that this application along with IM+ drains battery like crazy! Of course at least now I don’t have to carry a spare battery with me like it was with the previous bold since I am sure this one will last me for the full day. But most often I still have to charge it every night. Which is kind of a disappointment and not what I expected after reading various reviews. Now about the browser: It sucks…. It simply sucks so much that any other smartphone’s browser will put it to shame. But another annoying problem now that I noticed is that I can’t get to mobile version of citibank online at all! No matter how I would reconfigure the browser… So it means no banking online for me as I used to do on my previous bold. Very annoying… The browser is still slow as hell and only the fact that I have opera on this phone doesn’t make it a deal breaker. I must say though that I am running a latest .405 version of the software and perhaps the issue with banking online maybe be fixed in later versions. Which I again, doubt very much. Now another disappointment is the absence of many supported languages. For example there is no Russian support whatsoever. But than again, it may be released in the later versions. I hope so. And now last but not least is the speaker quality. In the first day of use I noticed that the speaker has been downgraded. Instead of the three speakers which previous bold had, this device has only one and when you bring the volume all the way up you can hear a rattling noise. Not a very nice experience… Overall I like the device especially it’s size, I was skeptical about it as I liked the bold 9000 big screen. But this one seems to be slim and looks more eye appealing. Also I like the battery cover design, you can not accidentally open it and whole device seems sturdy and has a look of a professional tool. Hopefully with next updates there will be support for more languages. But as of now I am giving it only 3 stars.
UPDATE:
Couple of weeks ago I noticed that phone would randomly delete data, but today was the worst: In the morning I discovered that all my contacts were completely wiped out!!! by itself! And when I tried to restore them from the backup file it would not do that saying that the file is read only. I tried this file in my old curve 8310 and it worked flawlessly. So I suspect that there are serious bugs in the OS 5.0 and AT&T is not coming up with any updates as of yet. In a mean time I am lowering score for this phone because I am very disappointed by the poor implementation
UPDATE 2:
As five months passed since I got this phone, I must admit I like it much more than I did before. True, I still have some issues with it, but these issues are just too minor comparing to lots of useful features that this device delivers. Previously I wrote that it deleted all my contacts from the phone book, and last week it just happened again but I noticed that it happened after I added an another gmail account to the phone. So after I gooogled a bit I found out that gmail actually will sync your contacts with your gmail account but for some unknown reason remove them from the phone book. So basically all you have to do is to download google sync on your phone and transfer contacts back to the phone book. So I tend to believe that this issue has more to do with google gmail setup rather than the phone itself. Also the issue with the Citibank mobile site have resolved mysteriously, and now I am able to do banking through the native browser (which still sucks by the way in many aspects) I am also looking forward to the…
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|Quite an amazing phone!,
I’m not your typical reviewer when it comes to phones. I’m a principle staff mechanical engineer who has spent 15 years designing phones, first for Moto and then for Nok. As part of my job, I get paid to buy competitor phones, try them, tear them down, take notes on design, performance, and then write 100-page internal reports on each product. It is a fun job. I’ve done this on roughly three or four HUNDRED different phones during my career. I do not work for RIM.
I did a complete tear-down on this product, and I also have been using the phone for three months.
This is one of the most incredible phones I’ve ever used. Seriously.
The build quality and design are best-in-class. The user interface is excellent. It is also has an elegant, very expensive look about it, helping earn its current undeniable position as an “iconic” phone that’s become a must-have for everyone from investment bankers to Hollywood’s power elite to rock stars. I do not overstate that. I have friends who are investment bankers, people who make over a half-million a year. They can afford any phone but they don’t carry an iPhone, or a Nokia Virtue ($20,000). They ALL have this exact phone. They won’t be seen without it.
Take your iTunes, move your music-of-choice into a “Blackberry” playlist folder, then sync to this phone using Media Sync in the Blackberry Desktop Manager. Even your album artwork zips into and shows up as you browse on the Blackberry! Plug your Bose QC3 headphones directly into this phone and listen to music. The audio chip on this 9700 produces awesome sound.
You can put a 32 GIGABYTE memory card into this baby. Yes, I’m serious. That’s a lot of music, and movies! My Apple iTouch and iPod are now on a shelf collecting dust.
Take your home videos or entire DVD movies and convert them to Blackberry 9700 resolution using the free Roxio Media Manager, and you’ll be amazed how good they look on this phone’s amazing 480×360 LCD.
The camera is amazing. The thing auto-focuses on your subject in a fraction of a second; a phone that actually takes FOCUSED photos!
The phone syncs to all your Outlook data super fast. Contacts, tasks, calendar, etc.
Did I mention the optical navi mouse? You have to try this. You will love it. Swipe your finger over it, and that is sensed optically, and the cursor on the LCD moves with same fast response as a PC mouse. Even has the mouse click. Now you run Opera Mini web browser, and you have a better web interface than an iPhone – because with the Blackberry you can zoom in / out, and at same time use the navi mouse to scroll web pages and mouse-click hyperlinks, just like web surfacing on a PC. Sorry Apple, but this Blackberry has a more efficient interface than an iPhone for web surfing.
Google maps! This phone’s GPS is so fast, it updates your position in Google maps while you drive. Also, you really must see Google maps “street view” run on this phone. So cool.
The processor is damn fast. You can stream your custom radio station off Pandora, while Google Maps is auto-routing directions, and then switch to browse photos, then back to Google Maps. Can you multitask that on an iPhone? Nope.
But it is the wonderful little things that Blackberry has done with the UI that really make a difference. Exchange an SMS with your friend, and the Blackberry is smart enough to immediately switch that into an SMS chat thread where you’re seeing the entire conversation thread out, as if you were using Yahoo Messenger (which you can use as well on this phone). I’ve never seen SMS message real-time chat threading like that, except on the Blackberry products. So cool.
And the available apps, both free and paid. So many amazing apps you can add to this phone.
You will love this phone.
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|Seriously well put together phone – with one goof,
January 9 2010: I amended the review to add some details about a couple problems I’ve had with the phone, slowdowns which lead to lockups and twice it suffered a system crash that leads to wiping out the phone’s memory. I devoted a lot of the amended review to a hassle I had with Nokia’s customer service. I realize that’s unfair and irrelevant to the review of the phone, so I removed it.
Although it says I bought the phone from Amazon I actually bought it direct from Nokia. I canceled the Amazon order when I thought they had the wrong color. I’m sorry that happened because buying it from Amazon would have been a better experience. (another edit: since installing the new firmware, any stability issues the phone had seem to have been solved)
My original review:
The quality of the materials and the fit/finish & construction is the first thing I noticed, taking this out of the box. It has nice surfaces everywhere, a shiny steel bezel on the front and highlights around the bottom section, a matte black (brownish) metal finish on the bottom with a steel battery door and camera lens bezel. The battery door latches securely (and easily) unlike any phone I’ve ever owned. The phone feels heavy in a high quality way. It fits in your hand in a way that makes it feel much thinner than you would expect from the measurements. The flare at the bottom makes it feel more secure in your hand. The raised lens bezel makes it easy to avoid inadvertently using the camera lens as a finger grip.
so many pros…
– Touchscreen is very responsive and has kinetic scrolling and it’s easy to stop the screen without accidentally launching something.
– Browser is full screen and looks great. (embedded con – I’m not sure I like the controls that pop up for some basic stuff like “back” or bookmarks. I can’t find an easy way to backtrack in sites without bringing up the clunky set of controls.)
– The 3-row back-lit keyboard is easy to see in dim light, and it looks awesome with the gray and orange illumination. The layout works great for me, I’m already comfortable with how it works and find it much nicer than keyboards with 5 rows of keys.
– 16 x 9 screen has excellent color and brightness, even outside. Perfect format for watching movies full screen.
– Has native support for Flash and java so Youtubes and flash based websites look like they should. (does not support Flash 10 – hopping for an update)
– When you open the keyboard the screen tilts into a good viewing angle, either for typing with your thumbs or setting it on a table. Works great for watching videos, you don’t have to prop it up on something.
– Stereo speakers sound great for speaker phone. (edited to add: the speaker quality continues to impress me. They also work good for listening to the FM radio.) Music sounds outstanding through headphones, it sounds like a high-end MP3 player. Music Player has the best sorting, album art, searching, Playlist creating and ID3Tag editing I’ve ever seen on a phone – wow.
– Accelerometer is pretty fast and all menus and screens and all but a few third-party apps have a landscape mode. You have to turn it on, it’s off by default. The keyboard forces a landscape mode.
– This is the most customizable phone I’ve ever had. Nothing is locked in place, put it wherever it works best for you. I’ve already downloaded about a dozen themes and love how much you can personalize the appearance of the menus and screens, even the icons.
– The widgitized home screen is of course just as customizable but has another feature I wasn’t expecting. You can swipe your finger across it and hide all the widgets so your phone display is just the wallpaper you chose and the clock at the top. Another swipe brings them back.
– Call quality and signal strength is very good – what you would expect from Nokia. I’m replacing a Samsung Eternity and this phone is a dramatic contrast, it’s so much better.
– All the phone stuff, voice dial, speed dial, endless contact list with all the fields you could ever need, excellent contact list access/search, full MP3 ringtones, etc. It’s all there and implemented very well.
– It comes loaded with apps, all of which can be removed if you want. Email is available in a couple different ways, a pay push system or free mail client in the messaging bundle. POP3 or IMAP.
– App stores for Symbian S60 are plentiful and there are loads of free apps and themes as well as ones you pay for.
– GPS is fast to fix on a location and stays locked on very well. Works much better outside than it does indoors.
– WiFi was easy to set up with MAC address and WPA security on my home system. It seems a bit flakey about staying connected or the phone deciding which network to use for certain apps, GSM or WiFi. I haven’t found the way to configure this yet but I’m sure it’s in there somewhere…
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|The Swiss army knife of the phone world,
I have had this phone for a little over a week now and am quite happy with the results so far. Before I begin though, I feel like a few caveats are in order. 1) If you are expecting an Apple iPhone UI experience in terms of simplicity and whistles and bells, you will be disappointed with the OS employed by this smartphone (Symbian S60 5th Edition). 2) You definitely need a data plan to get full use of this phone – preferable through AT&T to take advantage of 3g speed. 3) This phone uses resistive touch screen technology – as such, it is not as sensitive as that used in many commercial touch screen smartphones on the market in the US. If you’re coming from that background, you’ll find this a little difficult to get used to. That said, if you live in a colder environment, you’ll be able to use this phone while wearing gloves.
With that out of the way, here are the impressions I have:
1) This is a well-built phone with nice use of metals and higher quality plastics. It feels great in the hand – solid and compact. There is no creaking whatsoever (you can’t even tell straight up that the phone has a keyboard) and the hinge seems durable and well designed – time will tell. On the negative side, I have noticed that there is a little light leak coming from a couple of the keys and the camera key also feels a little stiff.
2) I found the keyboard to be tactile and I was able to adapt to it pretty quickly. There is enough space between the keys to make typing a relatively accurate experience. The space key is slightly offset which may throw some people.
3) The overall feel of the OS is pretty zippy. Coming from a Nokia N95 8gb, I am definitely experiencing a speed increase in menu transitions and application load times.
4) The out-of-the box firmware appears quite stable. I’ve had the phone for over a week and have not experienced a lock-up yet. My previous phone would crash at least once every couple of days so stability is a key issue for me and this phone (so far) appears to pass muster.
5) The home screen is completely customizable. This is a great feature and gives you virtually one touch access to the things you use the most – be it applications, contacts, music player and a whole range of web widgets (facebook, email, weather)
6) The GPS gets fast locks especially when use the assisted GPS function (allowing the phone to access data from the internet to obtain a quicker GPS fix). The phone also comes preloaded with map data for the US and Canada. For voice navigation you’ll need to purchase a license from Nokia. I find their service to be accurate and okay value for money.
7) The camera takes excellent pictures for a phone and is one of the main reasons I bought this phone. I am noticing a slight improvement on the camera module from the N95 even though the specs are virtually the same. I imagine that Nokia have tweaked the camera processing software somewhat. Worth mentioning though is that the quality is never going to be as good as even a rudimentary compact camera – especially in low light conditions. That said, always having a camera on your person for on the fly photography is awesome. It’s also great to be able to upload to flickr or facebook upon capturing a photo you want to share.
9) Connecting to a computer is simple. Nokia provides the OVI suite which helps to sync your calendar, music, photos/videos etc. You can also download new maps and backup your phone data using this software. Unfortunately, you’ll need a PC to install it. Using a Mac still allows you to access the phone in mass-memory mode so you can drop down music to the phone manually.
10) Battery life is pretty good. Ultimately of course it depends on how you use the phone as to how long it lasts. If you’re using data heavy widgets and GPS, you’re battery will become depleted quite quickly. It easily lasts a full day of average use (couple of calls, 10-15 text messages, an hour of music while browsing the internet on Opera Mini, reviewing some emails from my Gmail account and taking 2 or 3 photos)
11) You can get a whole range of 3rd party apps for this phone – free and paid for. I recommend downloading Opera Mini (an alternative browser), Fring, (a VOIP application which allows connection to the Skype network) and Joikuspot (a app that turns your phone into a wireless hotspot and comes installed on this phone). Nokia’s own OVI store can be used for downloading apps but I have not had great experiences with this method – I find their app store to be poorly organized and the access point is slow and klunky. There are other…
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|At last!,
I’m a gadget nut, with a particular affinity for Nokia and Symbian, which I find far more robust and user friendly than many of the other options out there. I’ve used a number of Nokia E-series products, and returned to my E71 again and again – like many people, I think it’s one of the best smart phones ever made. Nonetheless, I recently tried the N97 (twice). I returned the first one – it was clearly not ready for prime time. The second time around was better, because the firmware was more evolved; however, the phone was just too big for me, particularly after using the E71.
When the N97 mini became available, I was initially put off by the negative reviews, including those that made it seem like less than the n97, but for about the same cost. I’m glad I ignored those reviews. This is a phenomenal phone, starting with the phone. In my opinion, Nokia is matched only by Blackberry when it comes to signal strength and call quality, and I don’t understand why professional reviews just gloss over the phone capability – for me, it’s one of the most important features of a phone. The home screen is highly modifiable – something that was a deal killer for me re: iPhone (I don’t want to know that I have an email; I want to be able to see the email itself without having to dig down through four menus). The web browser is snappy and excellent. The size is perfect. Build quality far exceeds that of the N97, and is on par with the E71. The touch screen is very responsive – I’ve read a lot about resistive vs. capacitive; however, I was never comfortable with the iPhone but feel that mini works very well.
If you’re on AT&T and are bemoaning the fact that you can’t get a decent Android phone, then get this. You’ll be happy you did.
All and all, very pleased with the purchase. The only cautionary note is that if you use all of the widgets and leave things on, like greader, facebook, etc., you’ll def. run into battery issues. But you would with any phone.
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