Blackberry Bold 9900 Review

Extreme situations calls for bold measures and that is exactly what the Canadian phone makers of Blackberry “Research in Motion” intend doing by rolling out five of their new handsets, enhancing the specs and hardware. This includes 2 Bold series and 3 Torch series, all of them ushered in with the new OS 7, calling it their largest ever global launch. The Blackberry Storm, Bold and Curve devices codenamed Monaco Touch, Montana and Sedona respectively clocks the OS7 under the hood. With BlackBerry being challenged from all sides, is RIM putting in enough efforts in luring users to their handsets and perhaps most importantly, retain the existing users? Read on to find out!

Despite being a literal royalty with corporate handsets and push email, BlackBerry has only been catching up all these years and has been struggling to lead the way with not so popular handsets such as the Bold 9780 and 9700. So, it was time for RIM to take the situation more seriously if they had to be in the Smartphone race for long. These above-mentioned 5 feature-bumped handsets has the following on offer – supports NFC (near field communication) chips, a zippier WebKit browser, enhanced HTML5 performance, additional preloaded apps like the famous Documents To Go, physical keyboards complementing the touchscreens (in the Bold), etc., to name a few. RIM boasts the Blackberry Bold 9900 and 9930 to be their thinnest Smartphone ever with a fairly sleek frame of 10.5mm. Also, RIM has finally decided to take the initiative of incorporating a relatively new technology – the Near Field Communication chip – something that has been talked about only for a while now, while its competitors are still dilly-dallying about the same. Now, with such overwhelming choice of handsets, we sure do understand it is kind of dicey to determine which of these form factor suits you the best. Well, we tried to ease out the problem a wee bit by reviewing the Blackberry Bold 9900, the thinnest of all, which might prove to be of little help in deciding if it is the phone for you. So, are we all set to determine whether the Bold 9900 Smartphone can pull together in this already crowded and competitive Smartphone arena? Join us in unboxing the 9900 and inspecting its controls, design and display!

Box Contents

• The BlackBerry Bold 9900
• A charger
• microUSB cable and headset
• A leather pouch
• Cleaning cloth
• Europe continental and UK plug adaptors

Hardware Impressions

After having seen quite a number of BlackBerry Phones, it takes just couple of minutes to hold the 9900 in your palm before you realize the fact that this could possibly be the slimmest BlackBerry designed by RIM. It sure does come as a premium offering from the BlackBerry family, proving to be the best of the “Bolds” unveiled till date, truly living up to its name. While the sizeable keyboard and dimensions of the Bold 9000 sure does make a bold statement, it looks kind of overdone with its faux-leather and plastic-chrome trims yielding an image of a BlackBerry bejeweled in cheap jewelry. No offense meant, but it is still grabs your attention for sure. With this next generation Bold, looks like RIM has decided to take a conservative approach with downsizing the handset and giving it a more Curvy look. In terms of styling even as it looks tasteful, it perhaps is still a little too modest to be called Bold.

The new Bold 9900 Blackberry Phone epitomizes what the brand is all about – “luxury by design” by getting back to the 9000’s favorable wide-body design, but with the usage of premium materials and in a much sleeker design. So, it is Hello Metal and bye-bye plastic-chrome! Well, with the addition of hardware platforms on the inside and touchscreen on the outside delivering outstanding performance that has been witnessed ever, this is exactly the Bold from RIM that users have been waiting for.

Design/Form Factor & Build

When you hold the Bold 9900, it would be seconds before it dawns on you that it isn’t really feather-light at a 130g. Measuring 115 x 66 x 10.5 mm, it easily slides into any pocket without much fuss, which is also the 9900’s vital selling ingredient – being the slimmest BlackBerry ever, claims RIM. But the design at the rear that protrudes a little would make you think otherwise, making it look little hefty. It looks more like a smaller version of the 9780, but is a tad sleek, with a trackpad taking the place of a trackball. While there is a brushed metallic border surrounding the high-gloss screen, the rear comes in a blend of glass and matte plastic, which doesn’t really act as a cover but is a door that can be easily flipped to house your SIM and memory cards. Unfortunately, it isn’t hot-swappable!

The Blackberry Bold 9900 handset is fairly magnanimous when it comes to memory with default storage of 8GB that can be extended to 32GB. You will see 4 buttons towards the right of the 9900, three of which are clustered with the top and bottom serving as Up/Down for volume and the middle serves as a pause button for media, a neat touch that saves you the hassle of messing with the screen.

The camera has a shortcut button that can be changed, as always, to do another task on the 9900, as per your wish. But then the second convenience key toward the left has been excluded in the handset, which is kind of disappointing. Well, that’s about it on the left hand side, with a couple of ports that has been reserved for a micro USB charging and syncing port together with a slot of 3.5mm for the headphones.

What is really amazing about the headphone jack is, even as it gives a weird look to the rear contour of the handset, it really helps with resting your fingers against the gadget as you use the 9900.

Getting to the top, you get to see the lock button that has been aesthetically located right in the middle such that your fingers hit it seamlessly and doesn’t really require any effort. Bravo RIM! It is such minor neat touches that go a long way in attracting users.

Coming to the front, you are welcomed by an amazingly sharp touchscreen with 640 x 480 pixels and is 2.8 inches wide, easily the best with the ‘Retina’ branding, something that is a real feast to the eyes with icons floating over the wallpaper. Whites look white with nice and bold text, particularly blacks looking brilliant on white background. The Capacitive touchscreen is only too eager to respond to your commands with the trackpad proving to be extremely handy, particularly while surfing.

There are no controls or ports towards the bottom of the handset with the mouthpiece being located right inside the keyboard

A 5Mp camera lens together with a LED flash prove to the main attraction on the rear with a loudspeaker grill housed under the hood of the battery cover. The single convenience key in the Bold has been set to serve the camera by default with Portrait being the default orientation. Well, matter of time before you assign it a different duty. There is shutter key housed low towards the side, which makes no real sense. Again, as it is fixed focus camera, there wouldn’t be a necessity for the half press button. Hence either the trackpad or just the keyboard’s enter key would be just fine.

Beyond doubts, the gadget has the best QWERTY keypad that you might find and is relatively easy to type on the phone as against a desktop keyboard, giving you a seamless ride right be it causal texting or lengthy mails.

Finally, getting to the usual BlackBerry suspects below the screen would be the Call, Menu, Back and Terminate keys which might trick you into thinking that they are touch sensitive. While they certainly look they are, but in reality aren’t.

So for a SIM-free model of the 9900, you must be forking out something roughly around £500 depending on the online retailer. This places it on the top-end BlackBerry range, that doesn’t really surprise us, as this is where the Bold has been since its induction in the BlackBerry family. Again, contract prices are no cheaper and might prove to be a bit of a struggle at roughly £30-£35 a month, if you are looking at a two-year plan.

In terms of competition, BlackBerry has always been that rich kid looking desperately to blend in with the cool kids, but has a tough time shaking off its tag. Nevertheless, RIM has been ruling sectors like security and e-mail for quite sometime now. Exactly the reason why we never see the Men in Black carry anything other than a Berry. Then again, true to the saying that nothing lasts forever, so does the above strategy, as we witness a change in this trend with the unveiling of the Curve range. The BBM messaging app is a fast growing tool among teens with the desperation to possess a BlackBerry growing by the day – thanks to the ever growing social media sector.

So, to windup, despite the Berry wishing to be a cool kid, it is any day going to have that classy-ness tagged to it, which is not a bad thing. Guess RIMs significant competition would pretty much be their own Bold 9770/9780 as there are no other business-oriented communicators at the moment to command the market, the way they do.

User Interface

The best selling point about the Bold 9900 Smartphone would be pretty much similar to what the Torch flaunted of the year before, that it was the first device to run the new OS6. So to speak, the 9900 runs the even better OS7 with lot more on offer. Aesthetically, looks like the OS 7 takes its cues from the PlayBook. Well, there is no longer the conventional blue-white grid adorning the Homescreen anymore (which we saw in the OS5 and got carried on the OS6 too to a decent extent). Now the icons that the OS7 boasts look to be individual and actually looks to be more of a mixed bag reminding us of the busy app draw of the OS4 in the good old days. But then, we fail to see some kind of clarity of icons here giving it a clumsy look. Yeah! We do realize that this opinion is going to leave all BlackBerry patrons a little upset, but guess first impressions really do matter!

That aside, despite some tweaks it doesn’t really feel that avant-grade and by any stretch of imagination fails to give the impression of a brand new OS. It rather looks to be an update to the OS6 and doesn’t really do any justice to acquiring a new number.

As always, there are abundant app drawers on offer like the Recent, Favourites, Downloaded, so on and so forth that can be swiped through, together with the new option of managing what you wish to see via the Menu. It would prove to be extremely useful for those who find the drawers as distracting and pointless. Again, RIM has chosen to slash down one row off from the Homescreen, which means you no longer have two row icons on the Homescreen and will have to manage with just one. Again, search can happen anywhere within the phone, as before, similar to smart dialing only that it searches beyond the phonebook. While unveiling the OS7 RIM claimed that it would be more rapid and easy to use, and rapid it is, no doubt, but then it is a mystery if it’s owing to the 1.2GHz processor ticking inside or the tweaks that the OS underwent or probably both. Well, one thing is for sure compared to the ageing 9780, the 9900 blazes along leaving the older sibling gasping for breath while it attempts to keep pace.

Again, an original press release promised a search option that is voice-activated, both in your content as well as the web, but alas looks like it did not make the final cut or could be a pending update. We are still waiting on that RIM.

Wrapping up, #7 looks to be the last OS upgrade before the switch over to QNX. Though it brings with it barely any features (of course the HD video and NFC are significant ones) it would be worth mentioning here that its high-end requirement wouldn’t allow its older siblings to run the OS7.  Well there is a trackpad and there is a touchscreen too with the former helping with precise and sharp navigation, as almost everything that you see is clickable and works just fine. Again, you are better off accessing minor elements like the Homescreen Profile and Search icons via the trackpad than the touchscreen. Bottom line, the Bold 9900 succeeds in keeping existing and new users happy with the touchscreen and trackpad blending well in their own natural way.

Chipset/Performance/Processor

The whole line-up of newly announced BlackBerry Smartphones (the above-mentioned 5 models), which includes the Bold 9900 have the MSM 8655 Qualcomm Scorpion processor ticking under the hood clocking a 1.2GHz on the Snapdragon chipset. Also onboard is the Adreno 205 Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) that powers the Berry’s hardware-accelerated graphics. A processing power or 1.2GHz would mean double the pace of the last generation BlackBerry Bolds. Together with enhancing the speed it is good to know that this upgrade of hardware platform also addresses many other nagging issues that has been around for a while now including the HD recording, support for 3D graphics (that the GSM BlackBerrys are devoid of till date), to name a few. With endless high-speed processors and even dual-core gadgets on offer in the Smartphone arena, at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter what kind of processor is ticking beneath a BlackBerry OS (be it a 1GHz/2GHz/1.4GHz), what really matters is the kind of experience it manages to deliver. And that it does – we mean the 1.2GHz on the BlackBerry OS is literal dope and trust us it would be sometime before you get used to the receptive touchscreen and general promptness of the phone. Do not surprised if you really can’t cope up to it in the first few days of use because basic tasks like opening and closing of apps takes place within a blink of the eye and you might barely experience any slowdowns or hitches. There might very very few instances when you might encounter the hourglass, like installing an App from the App world or with loading specific pages, but otherwise you will be amazed at its expeditiousness.

Using the Keyboard/Typing Experience

Looks like the original Bold 9000 just lost its long-held title of being the Best Keyboard Ever to the new Bold 9900. Honestly, we never thought that there would be anything at all that can beat the easiness of handling the keyboard like the 9000, but looks like RIM has proved us wrong. The 9900’s keyboard is essentially 5% wide in comparison to the 9000’s keyboard with thoroughly enhanced keystrokes. It only takes feather strokes to do a key press yet with extremely prompt rebound. There is an explicit click sound and action that gives out a fabulous rhythm while typing, which is truly magical. Do not be surprise if you get absolutely blown away by the 9900’s ease and speed of typing. After a point in time, it would dawn on you that the keyboard doesn’t really exhaust you despite pounding away some REALLY lengthy emails and by the end of the day it doesn’t really feel like your fingers have put in some effort. Long story short, if you are someone that spends a great deal of time on a daily basis texting, tweeting, doing mails, BBMs etc., you might want to do yourself a big favor and try the 9900’s keyboard – your fingers will be grateful to you.

Contacts/Telephony/Messaging

So getting to the contacts section of the 9900, well if you are looking some kind of innovation here, well it is an unfortunate NO. RIM is pretty much happy the way it has designed the contacts section and decides to stick by it, and it is pretty much the same what we witnessed in the OS 6. We definitely are not whining here because there is nothing really wrong with the current offering here. RIMs contact handling has always been excellent and it still is, albeit looks monotonous cosmetically.  For starters, importing your contacts on the handset is a cakewalk, thanks to the synch software/BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) this happens in seconds and we are highly thankful to RIM for improvising this over years. Contacts take the form of thumbnails, regardless of you having a picture of your contact. If there are pictures for all your contacts, great, else you might want to be ready to stare at an untidy phonebook with missing images in between the contact list. Any bit of info can be keyed in within a particular contact’s field, even their dog’s birthday, if you wish to. Calling a contact is also relatively easy – just typing a name from the Homescreen kicks in the smart dialing or the same is possible even via the contact app. In fact, it is the Bold’s smart dialing feature that gives it some extra brownie points; Isn’t that indeed the most preferred way of locating contacts. Just select the suggested name with the trackpad or tap directly on it to initiate a call. You can also add shortcuts to the Homescreen. Then there are the usual options of Hold/Add participant while in a call. Voice dial also is onboard via the Universal Voice Search.

Call quality-wise, as expected from the Berry lineup of phones, it is a solid performer, loud and clear on both handset and speaker modes. There is also an option to increase the bass. The Bold 9900 Touchscreen Phone doesn’t have any issues holding onto a signal, something very obvious and that is expected by default. No dropped calls or reception issues either.

Well, do not be in a hurry to take everything for granted, as you might be disappointed to know that regardless of being a 3G gadet, the 9900 doesn’t support video calling. Looks like RIM doesn’t really attach much importance to FaceTime. Also there isn’t much of integration happening with social networking either as both Twitter and Facebook are two separate entities. While we understand BlackBerry to be a business handset, but having built an OS that is supposed to attach importance for social networking, this looks to be a weird omission. While you are allowed to input Twitter/Facebook info to contacts, you might have to do this manually via the app as it is devoid of automatic and simple integration of other OS.

Last but not least coming to the Messaging part of the 9900, it is equipped to handle all sorts of messages like MMS, SMS, there is support for email right out of the box with couple of preinstalled IM apps. Then again, you need to have a BIS account if you are looking at using emails on the 9900. While we do endorse the pros that is tagged to the BlackBerry Internet Service, we would have appreciated if users were given a choice, like we will offer the security while you can choose your internet plan, something like that. Also let us not forget the fact that not every carrier world over offers BIS, that minimizes the reach of the 9900. Despite all this, if you manage to obtain a subscription, you might want to check out the neatly organized and customizable client that has earned its place over years now. Entering recipients for messages or mails is relatively convenient and rapid. All you need to do is just begin keying in and watch smart dial take over, providing you the suggestion list. Also you can resize photos to be attached in an email and can also be filtered and flagged by Colour, Request and Status. Additionally, you can Create, Edit or Delete folders on the phone itself. While the Message Editors look alike for all kinds of messages, it is fairly easy to use with a nice interface. There are two counters at the top – one indicating the remaining characters and the other which indicates into how parts your message gets broken down prior to being sent. The same gets transformed into a data counter in case of emails or MMS. The phone performs the given task – texting- with great ease and is complemented by the expedient QWERTY keyboard. We would have loved to see some visual gimmicks, but then what matters at the end of the day is getting your job done, isn’t it?

Touchscreen on the 9900

It has finally dawned on RIM to incorporate a touchscreen to the traditional form factor of BlackBerry! Ultimately, it is here and it is smooth, prompt, and does really add to the general usability of the phone. Together with the touch functionality, the display seems to have gotten few nice tweaks by way of physical colour, size and resolution in comparison to its older Bold siblings. The 9900’s 2.8-inch diagonal 24-bit display has the VGA for 287ppi running at 640 x 480 pixels proves to be far better than the Bold 9780 that had a 2.44-inch display delivering half VGA running at 480 x 360 pixels. The display also looks to be real neat with vivid and crisp colours and a bright display even at a default setting of 70%. Well, the good news here is RIM claims the display to be made of extra hardened glass, meaning no plastic here.

Memory

RIM ships the BlackBerry Bold 9900 with 768MB of RAM with an extra 8GB onboard memory for storage of media. Also there is an expansion slot supporting up to 32GB microSD cards (but then inclusion of a microSD card is carrier dependent). The RAM storage is up from 512MB to 768MB on the newer version of the BlackBerry handsets, but unfortunately this increase in storage capacity doesn’t seem to be applicable to the additional Application Storage as the free space for the same out of the box looks to be 230MB, which is comparatively less than the Bold 9780. Well, RIM seems to have a valid explanation for this drop in memory. Apparently, the additional RAM goes into powering the capabilities of Hi-Res displays and Liquid Graphics found on the BlackBerry 7 devices. Also the amount of the Free App space retained on the handset depends on the amount of preloaded languages on the phone, user data and applications in memory. Users are allowed to manage/delete their apps in the Application Management Screen as and when needed deleting unwanted language packs. Additionally, there seems to be many apps that utilize both the Media card as well as the on-device phone memory in storing part of their apps. This goes true for the bigger, graphic-intensive apps like the Jurassic 2 and the 3D Roller Coaster Rush.

Hmm, fair enough huh? So would this tiny drop in App Storage Memory prove to be a big deal? Well, with just a RAM of 512MB in the BB6 handsets, you generally don’t run out of memory that easily, so we guess this shouldn’t be that big a deal for a majority of BB patrons. Then again, it sure does be of some disappointment from a value proposition perspective, because majority of the users would have built castles in the air as soon as they see a whopping jump of 768MB of RAM waiting to be taken advantage of that is an additional memory of 200+ megs. Sorry guys, that is not gonna happen here!

The 5Mp Snapper

Frankly, the camera on the 9900 doesn’t look to be RIMs strong selling point owing to its very average quality. It is the same old 5Mp camera that we saw in the older sibling Bold 9780. We wouldn’t really categorise it as messy, but then it is neither adventurous, given the fact that there are other handsets out there with the relatively same specs. At least there is an LED light that is a saving grace particularly with dim lighting. There is nothing changed about the camera app, but for the missing option for Autofocus. We would like to assume the reason for this is because it has turned automatic. Again, we generally expect that the touchscreen would prompt the tap-to-focus functionality, but that was missing too. It would be nice to get some answers for the above misses. The snapper modes on offer includes Sports, Face detection, Party and Landscape. It looks to be manageable as a phone’s camera, but you might want to think twice before taking it as your only camera on a holiday. It is very unfortunate to note that RIM managed to pack an average 5Mp camera with a last season’s software ticking inside in their so-called flagship model of theirs.

Music Player

The Music Player icons have been refreshed alright, but that is all RIM has managed to do. With a fairly traditional styling, majority of the functionality looks to be the same from the OS5. Tracks get searched pretty fast with automatic sorting by Genre, Artist or Album together with support for Custom playlists. There is Album art, Single Track Repeat Option together with Equalizer Presets on the feature list. Obviously, you can minimize the player in the backdrop and then get back to it via the Main Menu or Task Manager. Yet another thing worth mentioning here would the placement of a central button that is sandwiched between volume controls, which is neat in working as a Play/Pause button, despite the screen being locked. Not many Androids offer this kind of a glorious lockscreen nor do they allow for easy media access without getting back to the music player app.

Video Player

If watching videos are your priority, then it is kind of hard to overlook the 9900, as it does an amazing job, so it is a big tick on your wish list. Well, the styling might not be really that impressive, but functionality-wise, it is all here. Again, there are the conventional controls for playback upon tapping or hitting the screen with a dedicated button for zoom and fit. The video player supports formats like XviD, DivX, WMV, H.264/MPEG-4 with a resolution of 720p. With the overall performance being more than decent, guess users would really have nothing much to whine about here.

NFC

The NFC Antenna is cleverly placed on the battery door. … Nice Move RIM!

This BlackBerry Bold 9900 would be the first among the Berry lineup of phones to support Near Field Communication (NFC), a short-range wireless technology, 4 cm or if anything less that helps communication between two gadgets and has an initiator and a target. This technology also supposedly allows you to use your handset to pay for your purchases, by just rubbing them against a sensor. While the other manufacturers have only been talking about it claiming it to be the future, RIM steals the show and takes the credit of being the first ones to introduce it in the Smartphone arena. Especially on a gadget like the Bold 9900, it could mean a lot more like pairing accessories, getting the device closer to complete actions such as downloading apps or making wireless payments too. With RIM being extremely committed to the NFC you might get to see a lot of progress here over the years and might end up using it for more and more actions. The above image makes it clear as to how RIM have managed to build the NFC right onto the battery door of the 9900. The NFC can be turned on from the homescreen by just dragging the Manage Connections menu down. All said and done, since it is still not much in use, we are not really sure what good would it do aside from flaunting it to your friends? But beware, you might cut a sorry figure when your friends challenge you to show what it is actually capable of.

Connectivity – GPS/Bluetooth/WiFi/Other Sensors

In terms of connectivity, you have the usual suspects onboard the 9900 HSUPA, HSDPA 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth,

W-iFi: There is Wi-Fi connectivity onboard the Bold 9900 in the form of Dual-Band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/n at 5 GHz and 802.11 b/g/n at 2.4 GHz and includes Wi-Fi hotspot too.

Bluetooth: These days Bluetooth is definitely not something that we can get excited about, as we expect it by default in any of the current “Smart” phones, but Kudos to Blackberry 7 for making it rock solid and solving any issues with pairing it to the car. Its utility doesn’t just stop with calls and also doubles up in streaming music wirelessly to your car stereo, which sure does seem impressive.

microUSB port: The conventional microUSB port that comes in handy for charging doubles up for data connections too. Having been connected, you data can be synced with the BDS (BlackBerry Desktop Software) that allows for synching of your collection of iTunes together with saving for files with DRM.

Other Sensors: There are a few other sensors onboard the Bold 9900 adding to the capabilities of the phone that includes a magnetometer acting as a digital compass, an accelerometer that helps with device orientation together with a proximity sensor, which turns the touchscreen display off while you are using the handset.

Maps/APPS/Web Browser

Nothing groundbreaking here, as expected, the Bold 9900 is shipped with a GPS receiver onboard together with A-GPS support. You have the BlackBerry Maps installed for navigational purposes. Before you can heave a sigh of relief, hold that though right there! Yeah, sadly all of the above works only with the BIP (BlackBerry Internet Plan) activated. So if you are wondering what comes for free then you just get directions as a part of the navigation option. If you are game for the above, and require directions then key in the address that you are looking for straight from your phonebook or better yet save your favourite spots so that there is no hassle of typing it each time. BlackBerry Maps also permits you to send people your location via mail or SMS and that concludes this decent, yet not so amazing app.  Or if you want to save yourself from all this hassle just download Google Maps and get it over with. Because the good news is if you manage to install a decent mapping software, the 9900 manages to get a GPS fix real quick. But of course, nothing in comparison to the Galaxy S2, that has been matchless to date. Despite being indoors, the 9900 is supposedly smart enough in guessing where you are in 10 seconds flat or even less.

Apps – Speaking of apps in the Bold 9900, we get to see a couple of newbies like the Smart Tags programme that looks to be related to the NFC technology onboard which tracks most of the tags read by your phone utilizing the new tech. Then there is this BlackBerry Protect that helps with security of your data and especially security being RIMs greatest plus point, it doesn’t really surprise us to see it cashing on it.

Also present are the standard Calculator, Tasks, Password Keeper together with a premium variety of Documents To Go that has been catering to the corporate crowd for a while now.

Now there is something that we would like to see RIM update namely the games section that has the World Mole and BrickBreaker. While the former has been around for only sometime now, the latter has been around for quite long. It is high time RIM thought about a new set of games, as there are no hard and fast rules that say the corporate crowd cannot have a time-out every now and then.  Thankfully, there is the App World that comes to your rescue though it cannot really be compared to the Android Market or Apple’s App Store.

But the fact still remains that the Apps are, in our opinion, ridiculously overpriced with the only saving grace being the improvement in choice. Additionally, there are also third-parties like Handmark offering BlackBerry downloads for quite sometime now and still continue doing so.

The web browser in the 9900 works like a real charm, but is devoid of Flash support. Despite the petit display, it looks to be the best that we have come across off late and does an excellent job in serving you diligently. It is fairly prompt, fast and supports text selection, multi-touch zoom, mouse cursor, text reflow and the likes. If you choose to use the trackpad, there is a virtual mouse cursor together with scrolling and automatic panning as you reach the bottom of the screen. There is support for multiple tabs and toggling between them also looks to be a real cakewalk, all you have to do is tap on the tab key that you can find at the top right corner of the screen. Now what can be told of the Page Rendering, it is amazingly perfect and displays every page that can literally be compared to a desktop browser. Getting to Text Reflow, it is yet another thing that waits obediently for your taps. But for the tiny display and missing Flash support, the 9900 makes user experience in terms of browsing a fairly memorable one.

Accessorizing Your BlackBerry Bold 9900

With the all new design of the Bold 9900, we are sure that you are going to be busy accessorizing your handset particularly with those fancy new cases and battery chargers hitting the market. (Guess you should do just fine with that microSD card of yours and we assume that most of the microSD chargers should work just fine). RIM have decided to give a makeover to the Bold’ Charging Pod too from the boring old silver design to a stand-like black finish, akin to the BlackBerry PlayBook. We think that the BlackBerry Playbook is perhaps the best accessory for the 9900. There is whole host of accessories to choose from for your Bold like Leather Holsters, Extra Battery Chargers, MicroUSB Travel Chargers, Case for Playbook, Soft shells, Waterproof Cases and Arm Packs and Charging Cradles to name a few.

The BlackBerry Playbook certainly looks to be the best accessory of the lot!

Battery life

In terms of Battery Life the BlackBerry lineup of phones have always been literal workhorses, but it left us kind of disturbed when we learned RIM had decided to downscale the 1500mAh battery that clocked beneath the older versions of Bold to a 1230mAh JM-1 ticking under the hood of the Bold 9900. We somehow believe in the strategy that bigger the battery, better the life. RIM quotes up to 6 h and 30 mins of talktime or 307 hours of stand-by from the 1230 mAh Li-Po battery. It supposedly is believed to last roughly for 2 days with heavy usage, by heavy we mean continuously being hooked to the 3G and Wi-Fi networks, minimal shoot of stills and videos, a little bit of browsing together with some music and video playback and about 30 minutes of talking on the phone. The downsizing of the new Bold’s battery looks to be more of a compromise ingredient to help the handset get the thinnest device ever status.

Again, the 9900’s faster process and Hi-Res display got us worried on the performance of the battery life, but then RIM claims that it was no way going to interfere with the longevity of the battery life and was targeted at a full day’s use. Despite shrinking the battery size RIM knows exactly how to hit their target and yet continue gaining in on their power management. The 9900 typically gets you through the day with a wee bit of juice left behind even for the gadget-lust kind of usage and with average usage the indicator is well above 50% come nighttime at the end of an 18-hour day; fairly decent huh? In which case guess average users don’t really have to worry about a daily charge. On the contrary, heavy users could land more than often in the low battery arena than they would ideally prefer to, but for the most part guess would mange to pull through a day. Now for a hardcore phone addict, no battery would really suffice.

Pros

• Enhanced Web browser
• NFC support is real cool (though we are yet to figure out ways to use it more effectively)
• Blazing 1.2GHz Processor
• Best ever Keyboard
• A welcome change to wide-body design
• Awesome build quality
• Lavish usage of materials
• Finally, we see HD recording
• Touchscreen enhances the usability of the iconic form-factor of BlackBerry

Cons

• Downsizing of battery in comparison to its older Bold siblings
• Camera lacks autofocus
• Less usable memory despite sizable RAM

Verdict

Well, this part of the review has always been the hardest, so here goes! One must have found the review to be a mixed bag with a lot of whining and praising, all at the same time. The Bold 9900 sure does have its own flip sides, but it is kind of hard to write it off completely, because areas where it excels, it excels extremely well. Only that Research In Motion seems to have thoroughly forgotten about certain aspects. Probably they were under the impression that by taking care of few features the rest would solve on its own. That said, it definitely has some core compelling features like the QWERTY keyboard, premium looks, unmatched security and sleek size. Even as the inclusion of a touchscreen sure does make a huge difference, there is nothing revolutionary that drives this phone into the competitive arena owing to the following glitches. The camera performance places it behind its rivals, the loopholes in the app offering is hard to ignore, and neither is it a multimedia timewaster that can be compared to the latest offerings from HTC or Samsung. On the flip side, it is THE BEST in what it has been offering all these years – Communication, where it really excels, but isn’t really interested in making any progress in the adjoining areas. Apart from the corporate users and die-hard BB fans having security and unchallenged mailing capabilities as their priority and also those would like to brag about possessing the thinnest BlackBerry ever, we don’t really think the rest of crowd would get attracted to this phone, as there is lot more on offer at a much competitive pricing in the Smartphone arena.

Blackberry Bold 9900 – Phone Specification Details