The new Blackberry Bold 2 is not a revolutionary update to the original Bold 9000, but the new model improves on the original with significant refinements that will make T-Mobile BlackBerry users very happy, especially since it’s the first Blackberry to support their 3G network.
Gone is the trackball from the original Bold 9000, in its place is a new optical trackpad which was first used on T-Mobile’s Curve 8520. The optical trackpad took some getting used too; especially after having been accustomed to using the the trackball on my Curve 8900 but I really – really like it. It makes operating the device and menus much less strenuous.
You really reap the benefits of the optical trackpad when viewing web sites, since its now much easier to move around in all different directions without tediously rolling a trackball under your thumb. The trackball was also notorious for breaking, so now there is one less hardware issue to worry about.
The device has a 480 x 360 resolution compared to the Bold’s original 2.6? 480×320 resolution. Overall, the Bold 9700’s display is excellent, and very colorful, making video playback very pleasant as well as viewing photos.Since the Bold 2 is smaller in size, its keyboard keys are also smaller and more cramped than the original Bold.
The 9700 runs the new BlackBerry OS 5.0 very snappily thanks to its 624mhz processor. We didn’t notice much lag at all when multi-tasking. The 5.0’s U.I. isn’t a drastic change but it provides pretty noticeable speed improvements and some perks like an improved web browser.
There is a dedicated app of reach major IM platform AIM, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and ICQ. You can run IM applications in the background and receive notifications of new messages with a small icon on top of the screen just like you do when new emails come in. It would be much easier if they included a multi-service IM client, but there is always the BlackBerry App World for you to download apps from later.
But oddly enough BlackBerry App World didn’t come preinstalled, so we had to download it and install it on our own. The device also comes preloaded with 5 games including Soduku, and of course brick-breaker.
Call quality on the Bold 9700 is very, very good. And is a big improvement over previous BlackBerry models that we’ve used.When you’re in a call, there is a special option to “Enhance call audio”. Even when set to the default Normal quality, call quality is very good.
Like the previous Bold, the 9700 is a decent multimedia machine. Videos playback nicely and audio sounds good on the 3.5mm headphone jack. The device supports MP3, WMA, AAC, And OGG music files, as well as MP4, DIVX and WMV file support to 640×480 in resolution.
There is a 2GB microSD card included to get you started on saving docs. Unfortunately even the mobile version of YouTube doesn’t work to well with the BlackBerry’s browser even when connected via Wi-Fi.
The 3.2 megapixel camera captures great shots, much superior to most of the smartphones out there with good color reproduction, even in dimly lit rooms. Videos are also good quality but have a low 480×352 resolution.
The Good:
Better camera than the original Bold, excellent display, optical trackpad makes operating the device much more enjoyable, great call quality with call enhancement feature, snappy performance, great build quality and form-factor, solid multimedia device, visual voicemail is always a nice touch.
The Bad:
Keypad is smallish and might be difficult to use for bigger fingers, BlackBerry’s built-in web browser doesn’t do T-Mobile’s 3G network justice, BlackBerry App World still doesn’t come close to the AppStore, and the device still doesn’t come close to the iPhone’s multimedia capabilities.
