(English) Blackberry Bold 9700 review, my social media king

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(4.5/5)

Berry talk time! I’ve used the Blackberry Bold 9700 for two weeks now and I must say: I’m a happy camper. This flagship Blackberry isn’t cheap, you’re not going to find it for less than about 480 euro. That’s just a bit more expensive than the Motorola Milestone and the Palm Pre. In my opinion, the Bold is definitely worth its money. I have yet to find something that really annoys me about this phone and after 14 days of usage, that’s rather exceptional!

Let’s start with what annoys me just a tiny bit: the screen. It’s bright and pretty alright and it’s not too small (for me) but it does seem very fragile. Just accidentally pushing the side of the phone or the end call button too hard makes the screen kinda ‘cave in’ and blur. I’ve seen this before on Samsung phones and the PSP Go but I really don’t want to see it on my very expensive Blackberry.

Fast, but lags

The second thing that annoys me sometimes is the occasional system lag. Wait, don’t stop reading just yet, overall the Bold 9700 is remarkably fast and the trackpad really raises the standard for navigation on phones (it’s smooooth). But I did run into a lag here and there while using certain applications or during heavy multi tasking. I can’t be too harsh about this though, I was doing a million things at the same time and running several beta apps.

Many applications

Speaking about applications, I was pleasantly surprised by the large amount of great apps for Blackberries. There’s little you can’t find and apps are widely available in the App World and on other websites. Never think something is not out there for Blackberry if you can’t find it in the App World. Many of the best Blackberry apps are only available on third parties’ websites. Find those!

Battery time

It’s impossible to complain about the Bold 9700′s battery time. I get a good 24 hours out of it but remember: I am using this thing constantly on WiFi with at least 10 applications running in the background for about 16 hours out of those 24 right now ;) Seriously, the Palm Pre died after a couple of hours of this heavy usage and the Milestone barely made it through the day (about 8 to ten hours) and this was the best I had seen so far on an Android phone. If I’d use the Bold a bit less it would probably have enough juice for days.

Phone functions

Blackberries are good phones. You don’t get that ‘small computer, but it can make phone calls too’ feeling like I had with the Milestone. I’ve come to realize I prefer hardware buttons to accept and end calls. I have had problems accepting calls on the iPhone, the Milestone, the Palm Pre and any other device with just a touch screen. It feels so much better to press that red button hard when you wanna hang up on someone ;)

Navigation & camera

I haven’t tested the navigational skills of the Bold 9700. All I know is that the GPS works because it detects my location fast and easy for applications like Foursquare. The Bold has its own Blackberry maps applications but you can easily install Google Maps if you prefer the Google software. The camera works fine: picture quality is pretty good and the device is snappy. That’s good enough for me!

Push

Once you go push, you never go back. Or you do and you try finding a way of making things seem like you have push on your device. But really, there is just no email service as smooth and reliable as RIM’s push email. The additional Facebook and Twitter push messages are just a dream come true for me. I think I have about an hour of free time extra every day because I no longer sit and wait while my phone refreshes my inbox or Twitter inbox.

Social media king

Now, this Blackberry feature took me by surprise and I really like it. I’ve installed both the RIM Facebook application and RIM’s beta Twitter application. These two apps let me choose to receive Facebook messages and Twitter direct messages in my general inbox. That means I do not have to check Facebook or Twitter messages in different applications after receiving notifications about new messages in my mailbox. That. Is. Awesome.

It gets even better though: I can reply to Facebook and Twitter messages as well within my inbox! Just press menu and reply, like with any email or text, type your reply and send! It’s so convenient and so fast. It makes communication through several social media sites so darn easy. You can also create a tweet, DM, Facebook message, Facebook wall message or Facebook poke right from your inbox. The Bold 9700 is my social media king.

I was also very surprised to find the Blackberry OS has the same basic function built in as the Android OS when it comes to sharing things. You can easily send or share a picture/message with other applications on the phone. I can send pictures from the camera application to Twitter and I can forward tweets by email for example. I’ve had to look for it now and then, but it’s there. The only thing I did miss was a native Youtube uploader for video. (The 3rd party app CellSpin fixed that for me.)

Conclusion

Most phones have me looking for hacks, patches, tweaks or homebrew apps within a week. I have a rather annoying habit of bumping into things a phone cannot do within a couple of hours after unboxing it. This hasn’t happened yet with the Blackberry Bold 9700 and I’m as surprised as you are ;) Sure, there’s a lag here and there because I run a kazillion apps at the same time. But because sending messages is so much more efficient on this device, it’s improving my mobile experience remarkably! It gives me more time to check out the real world :)

PS: Oh, speaking of the real world, the Bold is my new favorite music player while showering! The speaker is really good! It’s a crackberry alright!

Tags: 9700, app, applications, apps, battery, Blackberry, bold, bold or milestone, email, facebook, king, lag, mail, media, milestone, motorola, Palm, pre, push, review, rim, screen, social, system, time, twitter, world

Category: Blackberry, Blog, Featured, Smartphones