BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900 vs Apple iPhone 4

We compare the Apple iPhone 4 to the brand new BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900.

Form:
BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900 – 115 x 66 x 10.5 mm, 130g
Apple iPhone 4 – 115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3 mm, 137g

These two handsets could not be any more different visually, the iPhone is a looker with a design like a shard of sculpted and polished glass, meanwhile the BlackBerry has a squashed and frumpy appearance with both a screen and keyboard squeezed awkwardly into its frame.

It’s not hard to see why Apple’s designs have been so successful to the point of imitation by other manufacturers.

Winner – Apple iPhone 4

Display:
The Bold’s TFT capacitive touchscreen is a little on the dinky side of things at 2.8-inches, the resolution clocks in at 640 x 480 pixels and an impressive 287 dots-per-inch (dpi), it also uses RIM’s ‘Liquid Graphics’ technology for enhanced graphics and a more responsive touch control experience. The screen shares its space with a Qwerty keyboard and an optical track pad, and an accelerometer sensor wraps-up the list of display features.

Apple has used an LED-backlit IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen in the iPhone 4, measuring 3.5-inches with a resolution of 640 x 960 pixels at 326 dpi. It features a scratch resistant oleophobic surface designed to reduce greasy fingerprints, multi-touch, accelerometer and gyro sensors.

The iPhone 4’s screen isn’t vastly bigger than the Bold’s but it’s enough to draw and hold our attention and both the resolution and dpi are higher too. We prefer a solid keyboard but not at the expense of screen space so as the Bold isn’t sporting a slide-out version this isn’t earning it any extra points.

Winner – Apple iPhone 4

Storage:
The BlackBerry has 8GB of internal storage while processing power is boosted by 768MB of RAM and Micro SD cards are supported up to 32GB.

Meanwhile on the iPhone 4 there are options for either 16 or 32 GB of onboard storage capacity, which is much more generous than the Bold, however, things start to go a little downhill from here with 512 MB RAM and no card support.

There’s nothing wrong with 512 MB RAM but the BlackBerry simply has more to throw around and no card support for the iPhone 4 is disappointing, though not exactly surprising.

The wealth of storage space on Apple’s device is a big plus in its favour though and in our view is of primary importance when it comes to phone storage, so in this round the iPhone 4 wins.

Winner – Apple iPhone 4

Processor:
Both handsets are powered by single core processors, the iPhone 4 uses a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor on the Apple A4 chipset and paired with a PowerVR SGX535 graphics processing unit (GPU).

The BlackBerry Bold, meanwhile, runs with a more powerful 1.2 GHz Qualcomm 8655 Snapdragon.

Not only do both these phones have a decent amount of muscle but they’ve been nicely optimised with their respective operating systems too, both therefore offer silky smooth performance as you navigate round the interface and multi-tasking with a selection of apps is also well handled.

On paper the BlackBerry should win with a more powerful processor and more RAM but in actual use both deliver equally satisfactory performance and we’d be hard pressed to pick a favourite between the two.

Posted in: BlackBerry Bold 9900