The New BlackBerry Bold 9900

On August 10th, RIM finally released their newest line of phones, The BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930, the Torch 9810 and the Torch 9850/9860. I managed to get my hands on the newest Bold for my own keeping. I previously had a Bold 9700 and I was using a Torch 9800 before this device and I don’t miss the touchscreen space from the Torch at all.

Playing with the phone for the first time at the Rogers Plus Store, it was a new feel, different from previous BlackBerrys. It is a bit heavier than the 9700/9780, but due to the fact that it is slimmer and wider, you don’t feel the difference. This is the slimmest Blackberry to ever reach the market and you can definitely feel it. The screen is only a little smaller than the Torch’s screen but its a nice step up from the 9780′s screen. The screen is extremely clear, probably up there with iPhone’s Retina Display. As for the keyboard, I was a bit hesitant as I loved the Bold 9700/9780′s keyboard and I had never used the 9000′s loved keyboard, but typing on it for the first time was unbelievable. By far, it is the best keyboard ever put on a smartphone. Perfect layout, the keys are the perfect size, just amazing. Coming from a Torch, I loved the combination of Touchscreen and QWERTY as , when I used the 9780 I would always try to touch the screen, only to realise that it isn’t a touch screen.
As for OS 7, coming from OS 6, it will feel like home but with a couple of nice additions, coming from OS 5, it will feel like a massive well-needed upgrade. The OS features some new additions like Voice Searching, liquid graphics, Full Documents to Go suite, BlackBerry Protect, BlackBerry ID, and a compass which uses the new magnetometer in the phone to name a few.
As for speed, the phone is much faster than even the Torch and Bold 9780. The dreaded hourglass has almost disappeared entirely, only appearing when an app is installing. For the first time in my life, I simultaneously downloaded more than one app from BlackBerry App World. Instead of the usual one app download, I downloaded and installed seven apps while the phone still worked flawlessly. As for internet speed, it is a massive jump from last generation’s devices. The phone has a 14.4 Mbps modem and I can properly make use of Rogers’ HSPA network. We have not reached 21 Mbps speeds yet, but I think current speeds can help RIM give Apple and Android a run for their money.
The camera unfortunately is the same 5MP found in the 9780 and 9800 but I think RIM may have made some changes as seen in my article on Britney Spears.  Oddly I was at the concert with someone who had a 9780 and my phone took better pictures than theirs. They also had to sacrifice Auto Focus for a Continuous Focusing Camera due to the thinness of the phone. One change they visibly made is that we now have 720HD video recording which makes a big difference.
The speaker on the back of the phone is probably one of the loudest I’ve heard on any BlackBerry. I usually have all my alerts’ volume set to 10 but I had to turn them down to 8 because they were just too loud.
Another feature added is a new technology called Near-Field Communication, NFC for short. The Bold is the only OS7 device as of now with NFC. Hopefully we will see a roll-out soon, which would allow us to make purchases with our phones and have a new phone-to-phone connection to transfer files and play games.

As for apps, I have seen a lot more new apps for OS7, but its still missing some of the backwards compatibility of other apps. Making use of the magnetometer, an app called Wikitude has been released. Wikitude is an augmented reality app which allows you to use the camera and the compass to look around with your phone and see people, places and articles located nearby. Also, some new 3D apps have been popping up in App World. At first, when I downloaded a couple apps, I was shocked to see I only had 512MB and 180MB left, which was less than the amount available on my Torch when I knew that the device had 8GB of storage. I searched up on the internet and found on the trusty Crackberry blog that apparently the small space it for the core app data and as for extra app data, for example graphics for a 3D game, would make use of the other 8GB space. OS7 uses up most of the space in the 512MB.
Finally, as for battery life, I have found the battery life to be decent, not as good comparing to the 9800 and 9780 considering they upgraded the chipset and didn’t use a bigger battery, but I find it okay to make it through a day without running to find a charger.
Overall, I think RIM did a great job making improvements from last generation, but there is still much ground to be covered if they want to surpass iPhone and Android standards. Though, if they continue to improve their phones at this rate, the QNX phone rumored for earlier next year will blow everything out of the water.