Gerrad

* 480×360 High Resolution Screen

* Touch Sensitive Track PAD Which is FANTASTIC (the track ball on previous models was always a problem)

* A new upgraded CPU which makes this device SCREAM with speed.

* 3G and EDGE Cellular Service

* Wi-Fi (Which can be used for UMA on T-MOBILE – allowing you to use your internet connection to make/receive calls and email, etc).

* 3.2 MP Camera with Auto Focus, Image Stabilization and a LED Flash.

* A new operating system – Version 5.0.x to be specific.

* Includes a 2gb Micro SD Card for storage of Music, Images, Videos, and Applications.

* Super clear speaker both in the handset and as a speakerphone. Loud and Clear… (Note, the previous bold had stereo speakers, this one does not)

* Micro USB Charging (Industry standard – previous bold had mini-usb)

* Elegant design with leather embossed battery cover

If you are looking to find a negative here then you will not…I have used these devices ever since the first one was introduced in the mid/late nineties and I can say will full confidence that it is the BEST BLACKBERRY I have ever used.

All of that being said…my only gripe is with T-Mobiles lack of 3G coverage, at the moment. I sincerely hope that with a superb device like this that they will invest in their network and improve it quickly….

Please ask me any and all questions via the comments system and I will answer them as best as I can.

PS: Quick Note: I have a leather holster for my 8900 – the 9700 fits in it perfectly.
Rating: 5 / 5

My first foray into smartphones was a Samsung Moment, which I returned. You will find Android phone users spend a lot of time figuring out how to maximize battery life: many people run widgets that let them turn on and off WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth in order to get extra time before the battery dies. Placing calls with an Android phone involves multiple steps, which I thought took too much time.

The Bold 9700 performs the main functions I need extremely well. Some highlights:

1. Calls are easy to make and receive. I can pick up the phone and press one speed dial key and the call is made. Or I can enter a few letters of a contact’s name and the phone finds the match. Making a call is much faster on this phone than on an Android phone.

2. Battery life is terrific. I never worry about turning off GPS, WiFi, or Bluetooth. They run all the time. With full use of the phone – voice, messaging, streaming music – I can use the device for about 36 hours.

3. Messaging is great. Emails, SMS texts, chats on various services, ie Blackberry Messenger and Gmail, are all simple to use.

4. Google integration. I use and share Google calendars, and they’re automatically synced.

5. Great international performance. I took this phone to Haiti after the earthquake, and used it to talk, chat, text, send back pictures… it worked flawlessly. (Go to the Blackberry website and look up the specs – I think it worked so well because it seems to support about every cellular band there is!)

6. Polish. There are a lot of little things that show how well developed this phone is. For example, if the phone is ringing in the holster and you pull it out, it stops ringing. A silence key on top of the device is accessible through the holster. The keyboard is terrific, the screen is terrific. There’s a message indicator light. It’s got a great camera. At home, it routes calls automatically over my router.

Negatives? The web browser is pretty terrible. It’s very slow. Free alternatives, like Opera, are available, but the BlackBerry is not nearly as good a web browser as the iPhone, Palm Pre, or an Android phone. There is also a lack of applications that are available on the iPhone. You won’t be able to AutoTune your voice with this phone, or play an Ocarina.

I would recommend the Bold 9700 to anyone who needs a device that first and foremost works great as a phone and handles email, texts, instant messaging, and calendars very well. It may not browse the web or play games as well as some other phones, but at the end of the day, my phone still has plenty of battery power and is keeping me in touch – just what a phone is supposed to do.
Rating: 5 / 5

This isn’t just the Blackberry. While Apple and AT&T and Verizon Wireless limit the communications applications you can use, T-Mobile does not, and on its Blackberrys you can use both 3G and UMA to make calls and connect to the internet, UMA being a way to use GSM telephony over WiFi – this device lets you “tether”, as well, using your mobile phone as a wireless broadband modem for your laptop or PC. UMA lets me call back to the US over WiFi from abroad as well, for free (!), so for me, this is a totally gorgeous combo. It turns the Blackberry from a cellphone with internet into communications central. It isn’t just Skype, either. I am one of the lucky owners of a Google Voice number, still an invite-only affair, and that works brilliantly too, on the BB 9700. Google has a native Blackberry application available, and so everything you can do in Google Voice on a PC using a browser can be done in the Google Voice app, including downloading, playing and forwarding Google voicemail. Works even over the slower EDGE network, Google Voice gives you all the follow-me-calling, caller screening and centralized voicemail functionality those of us who worked for large corporations are used to.

Why is this important? Unlike Apple and others, T-Mobile, Blackberry and Google do not restrict functionality. Blackberry does not censor what you can install on your phone, T-Mobile lets you make calls on your 3G handset using their networks, like Google and Skype, and Google provides a plethora of useful communications and professional tools.

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Here is my original review, from December 2009:

I can’t say the BlackBerry Bold 9700 is pretty – it looks to me like a cheapie, bits of chrome and leather on a plastic casing, with a “keyboard” whose keys can only be operated by a kid. Blackberry used to make more fashionable phones.

But then, as they say in the world of motor vehicles, we get under the hood. This thing (in the version that T-Mobile sells) has: WiFi (a.k.a. wireless networking), 3G, GPS (free) and: UMA! This is too cool.

I am going to assume you’re well familiar with the jargon by now, except perhaps for UMA. UMA, or Unlicensed Mobile Access, is a technology that lets you use a wireless Ethernet (WiFi, in common parlance) network for voice calls, using an otherwise standard GSM cellphone. It’s been around for a while, and I’ve used the service for several years, but what excited me so much is that the Blackberry is the first phone T-Mobile offers that has both 3G and UMA. The terms I am using – 3G, EDGE, GPRS, UMA, all belong in the European GSM technical cellular standard, the same system that is used by T-Mobile and AT&T Wireless, in this country, a system that is in use in over 90% of the world. Verizon and Sprint are using an American developed technology called CDMA, which is, to all intents and purposes, dead outside the USA. American wireline companies, back when, had no option but to use this technology when cellular telephony was introduced, for very valid legal and regulatory reasons, but Verizon, Sprint and Nextel did not switch to GSM when they could, while other North American carriers did, and so their CDMA phones are unusable on anybody else’s networks (with exception of a few specially designed hybrid handsets, which are effectively two cellphones in one, using two different carriers). A GSM phone you can buy anywhere, and use anywhere, provided it is a modern quadband phone, and it is “unlocked” (or “no-line”, as it is called in parts of Asia) – all GSM phones can be.

But back to Blackberry’s new Bold 9700, which I just began using. There is a lot wrong with it – the keys are too small, the display is too small, Blackberry has been trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole. I understand they want to get as close to a “regular” cellular phone form factor as they can, while retaining Blackberry’s PDA features, but they have gone too far, IMO. It is functional and usable, but a pain. The old Blackberry 6230 I got in 2004 is the smallest form factor that is comfortable to use as a PDA.

But there is a lot right with the Bold 9700, much more so than there is wrong. For one thing, I live somewhere with little cell service, so UMA, for me, is the ideal solution – when I get home my UMA phones automagically switch to my wireless network, and then I receive and make my calls using that. Additionally, calls made over WiFi do not count toward your airtime minutes, all calls within the United States are effectively completely free of charge. I can’t tell you how wonderful this is – T-Mobile (the only carrier in the United States that offers UMA) charges a flat rate across my account to put UMA on all lines – and “Hotspot service” is available at most MacDonalds and Starbucks outlets in the US, too. The only problem was that the choice of handsets was limited, and no handset was available that offered 3G as well as UMA. They do exist – an LG phone available in Europe has UMA, but that is enabled only when you buy the phone from Orange in the UK or France.

Enter the new Blackberry. It has 3G and UMA, and more besides, like WiFi and GPS, something I have gotten used to as I have been using the Nokia 6110 Navigator 3G phone for this purpose since 2007. GPS shouldn’t be in cars, it should be right in your hand, and go where you go. We stopped buying carphones, too, nobody in their right mind would have a phone locked to their vehicle, right? As I had not seen the magic “3G” indicator on the screen of one of my cellphones in the US, I drove out towards Fredericksburg after receiving and setting up the Blackberry 9700 I just bought. Much to my surprise, I got a good 3G signal on T-Mobile’s network much closer to home than I expected – at the local Giant store, which sits in a nearby shopping center built only two years ago. That is actually on the edge of the semi-rural area I live in, where cellular service is spotty at best. And it is quite a bit farther from Fredericksburg than I had expected.

What is important about 3G? As many teenagers and students already know, you can have reasonable speed internet, voice and your primary life databases all in one device. There really is no longer a need (depending on where you live) to have anything “wired” any more. Especially a device like the Blackberry, coupled with a technologically savvy phone company like T-Mobile, gives you everything.

The device itself has 3G internet as well as WiFi internet, and it can, in T-Mobile’s version, be used as a digital modem for your laptop or desktop computer – something called “tethering”. Having a separate data card for your laptop is completely obsolete – using Google Voice, you can even have a secondary phone ring when the primary does, so you don’t have to break your data connection when a call comes in. The cost of the second line is only $10 per month, good if you do a lot of talking as well as a lot of internetting at the same time. Having said that, with your laptop connected to the internet using a 3G connection on a 3G phone, you would be able to use Skype for voice communications, and need not bother with the phone in that respect.

Now, I gotta talk to you about GPS. You know the GPS units we’ve been getting for the car – standalone GPS, maps loaded on the device, etc. And then there is the GPS mobile phone companies are trying to sell us, which actually isn’t GPS at all, but just a clever application that uses the GPS chip that has to, by law, built into a cellphone in the US, these days. Its sole purpose is to let the emergency services know where you are when you make a 911 call.

Unlike “true” GPS, this method relies on the phone using the chip to figure out your location, then downloading local maps, provided yours is a wireless broadband phone – 3G or EV-DO. That’s fraught with problems – if you lose your network connection your GPS is dead, I’ve just experienced that with the LG phone I was trying out, whose GPS application spend most of its time not working, when it cannot get a data connection in the rural area that I live in. When I leave the house, where it uses my WiFi connection, it dies as soon as I am halfway down my driveway.

So: if you want a phone with GPS, you’re best off getting one that can function as a standalone GPS unit. Like the Nokia 6110 Navigator I picked up in the Philippines in 2007 (they weren’t sold in the US), which has a complete GPS unit, with Route 66 navigation software, and preloaded maps, those that are not included with the phone you can buy and download from Route 66. The Nokia (its successor is the Nokia 5800, which Nokia does sell in the US, but the 5800, too, uses instant download mapping) does the “on the fly” GPS as well, where you can access free maps from Nokia itself. Nokia does let you download maps to your PC using the Ovi Map downloader, but once you have them on your handset you have to buy a subscription if you want to use navigation with them.

I will be trying out RIM’s own application, Blackberry Maps, which comes with the 9700, and which, from a quick peek, uses the on-the-fly download principle, but has a cache you can set the size of. I am hoping that cache will retain maps after they have been downloaded, obviating the need for 3G where there is none. At least this application comes with the phone for free, and can use WiFi as well as 3G and EDGE. With T-Mobile’s Hotspot service, you could stop in at a Starbucks or McDonalds, I suppose, and download local maps using their free WiFi. Something I had gotten used to with my Nokia, using an external Bluetooth GPS antenna, the 9700 can do too. Using a GPS antenna built into the handset in a car, where the metal prevents the GPS antenna from functioning properly, is a headache – the external antenna you can park on the dash, against the windshield, its rechargeable battery will easily last a day or so, and the phone does not have to power its built in antenna. I am using Nokia’s LD-3W antenna, which set me back $100, a couple of years ago. Holux M-1000 32 Channel Wireless Bluetooth GPS Receiver is a cheaper version, that works in the same fashion, providing a Bluetooth serial port.

For the moment, that is really all I can tell you, not having used this unit extensively. I have moved all of my email addresses to the Blackberry, although final storage of my email happens on one of my laptops, but it is very convenient to have the mobile alert me to all emails, and being able to weed out the spam directly from the phone. I’ve tried to get rid of all of the links and applications I don’t need, loaded a very few apps that are central to my life: Tivo, Maps, Google Voice, Google Maps (just because I like seeing a picture of my house from satellite , synchronization is now set to go to Yahoo rather than Outlook (which means you can sync your life even when you’re nowhere near your laptop or PC) – Yahoo and Blackberry both use Intellisync to synchronize PDA data, if you want to know why it is Yahoo and not Microsoft’s Live attempt at gathering even more marketing data from you.

I am genuinely not interested in running a million apps on my PDA. Its primary function is that of a phone (Blackberry’s Bluetooth audio implementation is a cut above the rest, by the way), I run applications on my travel laptop, a tiny 10.5″ Acer. Having GPS, calendar, address book and a secure document available is part of what I must have, even the Tivo app I do not need, I can log into my Tivo from my laptop using the Blackberry as a data modem. This is not a religion for me, it is a tool…
Rating: 4 / 5

I was hesitant about purchasing this smart phone because I was never a fan of Blackberry’s (RIMM). I had a BB during their initial boom in the early part of the new millennium. However, the poor browser, poor cell phone network, lackluster screen color, non desirable keyboard, awful battery life, whack OS, & lack of T9 predictive text just couldn’t win me over.

After I realized that I couldn’t text on a touch screen phone, unless it was the iPhone. I decided that I must have a cell phone device with an actual qwerty keyboard, if I expect to survive my text message & email addiction.

I picked up the Blackberry 9700 with my corporate discount and walked away with a nice high end phone at a very reasonable price. I have to say that I really enjoy the web browser on the new BB. You can zoom in & out with ease. I thought no browser could compare to the iPod Safari besides the Android G1, but after getting this device – I can safely say that this browser is also one of the best. Its right behind the safari and G1. Prior models were confined to small screens, thirty-five dollar internet only data plans, and no ability to zoom in or out. You were subjected to a small screen and reading small text till your eyes was squinting like grandmas.

Pros:

3G

New Optical Trackpad (Over the old Trackball)

Big vibrant screen

Threaded Text Messaging

3.5 MM headjack

New OS (Runs a bit quicker without the lag time)

Decent call quality

Excellent new broswer

Mini SD up to 32GB

Use your songs as ringers

Wi-Fi

Personal Email (Up to 10 accounts can be added)

IM

Themes

App Store

My Favs

Full HTML Web Browser (Sometimes)

Excellent Multimedia Player (Accepts every format possible)

Includes 2 chargers (Wall Charger & USB charger)

Includes ear phones and carry case

Cons:

For long time BB users, this device is really just a cosmetic upgrade with a new OS (Flashier Icons)

Micro USB (No more Mini USB)

Video & Camera (3.2 Megapixel as oppose to 8.0)

Cheap plastic rubber casing

Non RIMM Consumer Changes Mind!

For anyone who has wanted a BB but held off on getting one and want an entry level Blackberry at a decent price – this is the model to get. Everything about it is an upgrade. The device is basically the BB Bold with a different casing. The battery life could still use some more juice. With excessive email checking & non stop texting, the phone usually needs a charge after a day and a half of usage (Sometimes i can go a charge for 2 days before a charge so thats not bad). I did set the brightness of the phone to the lowest brightness available and it has lasted for a little over 2 days with no charge needed. Even on the lowest brightness, the screen is still very bright, sharp, & crisp. And i still do unlimited texting & web browsing. However, AT&T doesn’t offer the best mobile minute plans on earth & their data plan is probably one of themost expensive around. They are fully aware that their signal is one of the best & in doing so, make up for it by charging their non-friendly services at non-friendly prices, which usually doesn’t offers an abundant amount of minutes, unlimited data, internet, email, text etc will end up costing you a lot!

I pay under seventy bucks a month for a decent amount of mins & unlimited everything else. My friend has a similar plan on Verizon, its not unlimited, and her bill is always over a hundred each month.
Rating: 5 / 5