BlackBerry Tips

I’ve tried a few phones. I hated the Tytn II – It had a lot of potential – a Windows operating system, Excel, Word, PowerPoint and a really nice keyboard. But it was slow and crashed often. With great happiness I moved to the Nokia 97.

It was good, great keyboard, etc. and was much faster than the Tytn II. It wasn’t, however, cool enough for my kids and when Orange (yeah, that was a mess. See my Cellular Agony blog if you don’t know what I’m talking about) gave me the offer of a free iPhone 3G, I took it. Well, Orange didn’t live up to their promise and was quietly charging me a fortune, and the iPhone didn’t really live up to my expectations either. I didn’t like being limited to doing only one thing at a time, for example. I’m not hyperactive, at least I don’t think I am, but I do multi-task and the iPhone is not for those who need to be doing more than one thing at a time.

When we left Orange in disgust and went to Pelephone, I was again faced with the phone choice. I went with BlackBerry, and I’m not sorry. The BlackBerry is not a toy – it is truly an excellent business tool for communication and I’m really enjoying it.

I’m still learning my way around it, but finding tremendous help as I go along. I configured the BlackBerry to download email easily enough but then I got stuck. I get upwards of 1,000 emails a day. How do I delete them in a massive group?

No problem…there has to be a way. Almost 2,000 emails later, I wasn’t finding it. Social media to the rescue. Within minutes, I got three excellent responses showing me two ways:

    * Hold cap key and roll trackball to highlight and then hit delete key. Easy, simple, and effective for deleting a large group.
    * Highlight the date at the top of a box of messages. Select Delete Prior. This will delete all messages from that date and all prior dates.

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BlackBerry 9900 Bold Review

It feels like we have been waiting a long time since learning about this device at BlackBerry World 2011. But finally we have managed to have some hands on time with it before the launch in August.

The BlackBerry 9900 Bold is a touch and type hybrid and continues on (in terms of size) from the Bold 9000, which is still a favourite among corporate customers the world over. While the BlackBerry Torch offered both a touch screen and full QWERTY keyboard, many users complained that the keys were too closely positioned together. So although the touchscreen was a nice addition, typing was a bit of a nightmare for all involved. The Bold 9900 has rectified this.

BlackBerry has really built some hype around their new device and for good reason; without doubt this device looks good, performs well and rectifies issues found in the OS6.? The Bold 9900 has a woven glass back panel which not only looks great but adds a touch of class and sophistication. The device has aluminium highlights around the edging which also add to the solid feel, and all whilst claiming the crown and title of slimmest BlackBerry device to date. You can really feel the difference when holding it, the Torch, the Curve; they all feel oversized and heavy in comparison to the 9900.

Around the edge of the 9900 you will find a slight redesign to the buttons. They are all aluminium to begin with, long gone are the nasty tacky black plastic buttons of the Torch. The screen lock button is now lowered into the aluminium casing, the media keys are positioned on the right with a Camera shutter button lower down on the same side. The left hand side is home to the 3.5mm headphone slot and the microUSB port. Around the bottom of the device you will find 2 charging points for usage with a desktop charging stand.

The woven glass back panel removes easily to reveal a slim, lightweight battery, which despite the rumours before BlackBerry World 2011, is removable. Underneath the battery is the SIM card slot and access to the microSD card slot, which is actually one of the more annoying things about the 9900 Bold. With the battery in the device it seems like you can add and remove microSD cards at will, however the battery is just a millimetre or 2 too big. Something the BlackBerry Torch and old Bold 9000 did very well was allowing access to the microSD card slot without needing to remove the battery every time. It is only a small grumble, but a grumble nonetheless.

he display on the Bold 9900 is 2.8inches, ever so slightly larger than the 9780s screen which was 2.4inches. Originally I was worried that the touchscreen would not feel natural, but after only a few minutes I felt completely at home, in fact I have found myself trying to tap the screen when troubleshooting older none touchscreen devices since. The only downside is the screen is slightly small compared to what we are used to on touchscreen mobiles, therefore it does take a little concentration to make sure you are aiming your fingers correctly.

The screen response time was impressive, and responded to my gestures without fault or error. When it comes to actually displaying icons and items on screen, the 9900 is miles ahead of any other BlackBerry on the market. It is super crisp and ultra sharp when browsing, reading emails or updating your LinkedIN status. In summary the screen is a TFT capacitive touchscreen with 640 x 480 pixels. It includes touch sensitive controls, proximity sensor for auto on and off controls and an accelerometer sensor for auto rotate.

Under the hood there is a 1.2GHz processor ensuring BlackBerry OS7 runs as it should. The processor is a step in the right direction for RIM and a huge improvement over the 624Mhz processor that was shamefully included with the 9780. I experienced very little lag when testing the device, and when I did it was whilst switching between processor hungry applications like App World, Protect and Foursquare. The sharper graphics on the 9900 Bold are highlighted by the new fresh look of BlackBerry OS7 which includes some redesigned icons and ultimately give the OS a classier, more up to date look and feel. RIM are advertising the browser on OS7 as 1.6 times faster than that of OS6, something I noticed immediately when trialling the device. The zoom was smooth and pages load quickly and cleanly with little or no lag whilst the resizing the page to fit the screen.

The QWERTY keyboard on the 9900 Bold is one of the biggest features in terms of how user friendly the device really is. It feels more spacious than the 9780 and the keys almost bounce as you select them and type out short or long messages. Even whilst typing and send lengthy emails, you wont get that nagging feeling of cramp that smaller keyboards give you.

In terms of connectivity the 9900 performs as you would expect of a flagship device. Tri-Band HSDPA 3G support, GPRS with A-GPS support, EDGE, 14.4Mbps HSDPA, HSUPA, Wi-Fi b/g/n and dual-band support and not forgetting support for NFC Technology.

The 9900 Bold has some impressive specs including weighing in at 130g and is 115 x 66 x 10.5mm in size. The internal storage is 8GB with 768mb RAM. The microSD card slot can support up to 32GB cards. The camera is a 5MP with autofocus and LED flash, Geo-tagging, face detection, image stabilization and supports video recording at 720p.

Conclusion

With all the bad press surrounding RIM recently and a disappointing start to the launch of the BlackBerry PlayBook, RIM needed to deliver a device that stood out from its existing line up. The BlackBerry 9900 Bold does just that. With a new look OS, speedy web browser, sleek look and feel and better performance; the 9900 is a great device to take over as the flag ship model.

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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.

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Verizon BlackBerry Bold 9650 Review

Coming off my 8330 I was more than excited to pick up a Tour 9630 the day it was released. I was one of a dozen or so people in line at my local Verizon store, and was in and out in a few minutes. I rushed home to get up and running on my new device. I fell in love with the higher resoution screen, keyboard and all around design. Thankfully I didn't have the trackball issues like some, but my battery door did come loose at times. I was happy to finally have the latest device on Verion's network (not such a big fan of AT&T or T-Mobile here in New Jersey).

Enter the Bold 9700. The feel of the device combined with the trackpad and overall "smoothness" just left me thinking "where is my CDMA version"? Rumors started flying, and sure enough talk of the Tour 2 popped up. Wifi and a trackpad on my Tour? Yes please. As with everyone else I was asking why Verizon didn't do it right the first time with the release of the 9630, but hindsight is 20/20. Months down the road, doubled memory, a trackpad, Wifi and a bit of rebranding leaves us with the newly released Bold 9650. Read on for my review.

Straight up out of the box you just think "Tour". The trackpad is the obvious difference, and aside from the Bold branding on the back it's the same device ... on the outside. On the inside we have juiced up memory to 512MB (in preparations for BlackBerry 6) and the addition of Wifi. The Bold 9650 feels great all around. Its a bit bigger than the Bold 9700 I've been using for the past few months, but nothing I won't be able to get used to. Holding the device is a bit different as it takes up more "hand space", but again I'll get over it. I love the 9650 keyboard (as I did the Tour) and mostly that I can get back on Verizon since the service is sooooo much better than that of T-Mobile where I live. Having the Wifi on a CDMA device is kind of a first for me since I never used a Storm2 and only rocked out the 8530 for a week or so. I was never a big believer in it in the past, but after having the Bold 9700 I really can't see myself without it. The back of the device has the large battery door, and thanfully it isn't loose and wobbly like my old Tour 9630. The site buttons and convenience keys are in the same place, with the exception of the micro USB port having dropped down a bit for some unknown reason. The placement of the port still is a mystery to me since it gets in the way if you try to type with the device plugged in.

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