BlackBerry 9700 Review: Part 1
Posted by
Boy Genius on Sep 21, 2009 2:53 pm
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Oh you thought we fell off. Nope — we’ve just been tearing apartBlackBerry’s latest flagship over the past week or so and our review isfinally perfectly crafted. The BlackBerry 9700 replaces the Bold asRIM’s newest flagship device. Even though it’s not released yet — lookfor it anywhere from mid-October to mid-November depending on what partof the globe you reside in — it’s BlackBerry’s most advanced QWERTYdevice to date and combines all of their next generation featurestogether in a smaller and lighter package. We’ve already detailed
our thoughts on RIMand how they are doing on the software side of things and this reviewwill be mostly hardware focused. We will also follow up with a Part 2review as we did with the
BlackBerry Tour since this model is not a production unit.
Hardware / Design:
Gorgeous. How do you like that description? From the beveled edgesto the powder-coated keyboard, this is one good looking BlackBerry. Themuch loved (and hated) fake leather textured battery cover makes areappearance here as does a trackpad to handle the navigational duties.
The 9700 makes the Tour look like a bloated 8-month pregnant singlemother. Shave about 24% of the surface area off the Tour, bevel theedges, round the corners, and you’ll have something close to theBlackBerry 9700. It’s the most gorgeous BlackBerry on the planet. Andno, that’s not up for debate or discussion. Early units had thestraight RIM color theme on the keyboards (white letters with redaccents/symbols) but the unit we have which is most likely whatAT&T will receive is all white. This looks great meshed with thetitanium chrome finish on the bezel and the high gloss black finish onthe front of the device.
This theme is always brought up in our reviews of BlackBerry devices— RIM really keeps innovating in hardware design and manufacturing. Itseems as if each device they make has a brand new manufacturing processand technique, and while you might view this as a negative, we view itas a positive. Unlike a car maker, RIM can’t make a chassis, so tospeak, that they use for all their models in a series. Since eachdevice is unique, it’s great to see RIM experiment with differentplanning and assembly options to deliver the best product possible.Eliminating the number one failure point on a BlackBerry (thetrackball) and replacing it with something that’s not just going tosave money in the long run, but is actually a better solution is great.Making desktop chargers that use battery contact points to save wearand tear on the mini/microUSB port is smart. Speaking about thetrackpad, we’re not sure what’s up because there’s a nice and daydifference between this one and and the one on the BlackBerry 8520. Itmight be the exact same hardware revision, but something about it feelsbetter to use and after a day of not using the traditional trackball,we can’t imagine not using the trackpad. It’s a worthy successor to thetrackball.
What about something that’s often overlooked? Vibrate. We’d like tobe the first ones to report that the vibrate function on the 9700 isstraight up violent. It’s possibly the most downright disrespectfullyloud and obnoxious vibrate mechanism we’ve heard in recent memory. Andwe love it. Switching gears to the physical buttons on the 9700, itwill make a BlackBerry user feel right at home. Two-stage camerashutter /convenience key on the lower right side of the phone withvolume up / down buttons towards the top of the right side. Leftconvenience key on the opposite side with lock and mute buttons on thetop of the handset. There’s the now-default 3.5mm headset jack andmicroUSB port sitting above the left convenience key. Below those are alanyard hole. Thrilling, we know.
The 9700 is very much like the 9520/9550 in terms of industrialdesign and gives us a glimpse at where RIM’s styling is headed for thenext round of handsets. Things like soft-touch rubberized finish on themiddle of the handsets with matching rubberized buttons (instead ofchrome), darker chrome finishes, high gloss black — all these lead tomore pronounced and edgier designs for a historically conservativecorporation.
Screen:
RIM really moved in a brand new direction with the Bold’s displayand ever since, they’ve been continuing the tradition of awesomeness.We’re really happy to report that the BlackBerry 9700 has the bestscreen to date of any BlackBerry handset. It’s that good. Theresolution, which is the new RIM gold standard, is 480×360 and whileyou wouldn’t expect it to be any better than the Tour’s or Curve 8900’sscreens, it is. Pictures appear as if they’re floating on top of thedisplay, blacks are black and colors are crisp and vibrant. There’s apretty decently-sized black border that goes around the entire displaymuch like how the BlackBerry Tour’s screen looks, and while people havemoaned about this ad nauseum, it doesn’t really phase us.
OS:
The latest versions of OS 5.0 (which have leaked for existinghandsets like the 9530, 9630, Bold, 8900, etc.) show a slight UIrefresh with more blues, more gradients, updated icons and buttons andeven — *gasp* — kinetic scrolling on some devices. Here’s where it getsa little tricky, though. AT&T’s BlackBerry 9700 evaluation unitsshipped with OS 5.0.0.169. The unit we have originally came with thatOS and worked magically. It, however, didn’t have the updated UI thatlater OS 5.0 builds contain. After upgrading our unit to OS 5.0.0.215(internal builds for the 9700 are up beyond .249, we’re told) it’s nowrocking out with the updates features and sexified UI elements. Whywe’re going into this so deeply is because there’s a good chance thatif AT&T’s 9700 passes technical acceptance without issue (we don’tanticipate the same issues that plagued the Bold’s release), theversion that will ship with the 9700 will be 5.0.0.169 or somethingclose to it. That means that you’ll be running an “old” 5.0 build andit’s interesting to see this play out. You’ll obviously be able toinstall different OS versions for yourself that have been released byother carriers, but we just wanted to give you guys a heads up that therelease unit’s OS might be a little different.
We don’t have to keep reinforcing it (well, we just did, we guess):we take those keyboards seriously. Throw the BlackBerry 8900 keyboardout of the window on this because it’s completely different. Imaginethe BlackBerry 9700 keyboard as a mix of the Bold and the Tourkeyboards. Tour-shaped (little better) with the bounce and feel of theBold keyboard. It’s really fantastic. Definitely not as large as theoriginal Bold’s mammoth boat-sized chiclet pad, but it’s great. We’dprobably go as far as saying out of the current generation BlackBerryhandsets, the BlackBerry 9700 is the best. You’ll see that theme appeartime and time again in this review. Each little key has a nice carveddesign that allows for precision typing at its finest. Keys have adecent amount of space and even though the shift keys at the bottomlook a little small (they are tiny), they’re completely usable andreally don’t turn out to be a hindrance when it comes to getting yourtyping on.
After a couple hours of usage we have no doubts that you’llabsolutely fall in love with the keyboard. The feel of the keys coupledwith the shape and proper layout that’s standard on all BlackBerrysoffer a truly excellent typing experience on the BlackBerry 9700.
Phone:
The unit as a phone is fantastic. That will obviously depend on whatnetwork you sign your life away to, but even on AT&T, when thenetwork worked, the 9700 made for a great phone. The actual ear speakerseems less recessed than previous BlackBerrys and we could hear callersloud and clear using the ear speaker. Speakerphone also worked well (asit should) with minimal distortion at maximum volume. Quiterefreshingly, the device didn’t get too hot during long voice sessionsand we really had no problems using the phone as a phone.
Browser:
While the browser in OS 5.0 comes with some improved Javascriptsupport, it’s still no where near any of the top dogs like Apple’smobile Safari, Android’s webKit browser, or Palm’s webKit browser.Using the browser with the trackpad as the cursor is definitely a greatinput method (remember when the trackball made use of the cursor backin the day for the first time?) and feels natural to navigate websites.The browser seems like one of the things that changes most as OS buildsmove further and further along so we’ll reserve our hatred for thebrowser in our final Part 2 review.
Speaker:
While the Bold offered three different audible speaker ports (one oneach side and one at the top) for pretty accurate sound reproduction,the BlackBerry 9700 uses a single opening towards the top part of theback of the device. This works fairly well and sound, uh, sounds good.We did notice a volume decrease compared to the Bold, but not by much.Maybe around 15% lower? Nothing is going to beat that Storm 2 speaker,though…
Battery:
We’re not sure how they did it, but the BlackBerry 9700 has the bestbattery life of any 3G BlackBerry in recent years. It could probablyeven rival the BlackBerry 8900 — truly unbelievable. The BlackBerryTour was the king of battery life, and that was odd seeing as how CDMAdevices usually are a bit worse than their GSM brothers and sisters,but the 9700 has one-upped the Tour. For some rough statistics, theBlackBerry Bold with normal usage patterns lasted me around 7 hours ofusage until the battery was dead. How long do you think the 9700 lastsusing the exact same BlackBerry Bold battery? Try around 15 hours.We’re talking more than double with a faster CPU and using the samebattery. Really remarkable and will help those on-the-go warriors.
It’s funny to see RIM use such a wide range of batteries in theirdevices. Then again, for a company that has 15,000 different models,4,000 different screen resolutions, and 2,000 different form factors itdoesn’t surprise us. What you’ll be happy to hear is that your existingBlackBerry Bold battery will work perfectly in the 9700 and will yieldyou better battery life than you’ve ever imagined.
Note: Battery life was based on OS 5.0.0.169. It’s dramatically worse in OS 5.0.0.215 which the unit is now running.
Conclusion:
It’s pretty hard to make a general recommendation nowadays with anydevice, let alone a BlackBerry. With four form-factors in theBlackBerry family, it complicates things.
The BlackBerry 9700 is a much-needed refresh to the aging BlackBerryBold. To date, RIM has released only a single 3G GSM device in theUnited States and with competition heating up, the BlackBerry 9700looks to be their answer. We absolutely gushed over the BlackBerry Tourin our review and until the 9700 came along, that was our daily driver.Is the BlackBerry Tour still the best BlackBerry on the market? Wethink so. But as good as the Tour is, the 9700 is better. There seemsto be a drastic difference between CDMA and GSM hardware on BlackBerrydevices (we’re guessing it’s the Qualcomm processors opposed to theMarvells) and it’s actually exhilarating to be back on a GSM device.The BlackBerry 9700 combines the most-loved features that have beensprinkled about on BlackBerry phones over the last year (3G, 3.2megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, trackpad, QWERTY keyboard, smaller size,faster CPU) and combines them into a single sexy and compact package.
“So you’re saying the BlackBerry 9700 is the best BlackBerry ever?”
Yes. It’s the finest BlackBerry ever crafted and if you’re askingwhy it’s so much better than the Tour, it goes back to that CDMA vs.GSM argument as well as the fact that the 9700 is simply a year newer.We nailed the Tour all the way back
almost two years ago,and sadly the internals seem to be a little outdated. There’s noofficial CPU specifications on the Tour, but if we had to guess we’dguess it’s running at around 500MHz give or take. Rumblings have peggedthe BlackBerry 9700’s Marvell Tavor CPU running at close to 800MHz!It’s a lot faster in normal usage than the Bold (both running OS 5.0)so in addition to the RAM being doubled, we’re pretty sure there is afaster CPU dropped in there as well.
Every single thing about the BlackBerry 9700 screams high-end to us,and for a device that’s a part of the Bold-series (the Bold won’t goanywhere, we’ve been told), it should. It’s the best of the best tocome out of Research In Motion to date and we can’t wait untileveryone’s able to use one.
Check back for Part 2 when we follow up with a review on an AT&T release unit.
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