The Blackberry Bold 9700 & Blackberry 9000 Review

Bplay theme designers working on animated 9780 themes

I heard from Fraser Cole via Twitter, that they are indeed working on porting their fancy animated themes so they’ll work on the new Bold 9780. Maybe they’ll be nice to me and transfer all the ones I bought over the years for my Bold 9000 to the Bold 9780…

Using the new Theme Editor, transfering old themes to the new Blackberry 6.0 format is easier than ever with the converter included.

I tried making an animated theme for the Bold 9780 fans out there, but it wasn’t so easy. After several attempts I gave up and went begging the powers-that-be at Bplay to release a theme… But alas no result yet. Hopefully soon!

Slow Bold 9700 or Bold 9780 in OS 6?

Are you going snail speed or slower?

I was, until a few days ago when I found out that I could see all programs running in Blackberry 6.0 thanks to a new feature that let me see what was running and what was causing my problem. Mine was Google Maps which had been running for 3 days straight. Ironically, my blackberry got slow about 3 days ago!

Is your Torch, Bold 9780 or Bold 9700 on OS 6.0 going slow? Is it lagging in spots and making text messages, and even contacts and browsing super slow? Pehraps check what’s taking up the CPU in 3 simple steps:

Click on Options:

Then Hit Applications:

Then head on over at the top there to “CPU” and you’ll see a list…

Click each application and you can see their memory use, cpu use and how long they’ve been running for!

Bold 9700 and Bold 9780 Chargers for $0.83

I was surfing amazon today and saw that they have Blackberry 9700 and Blackberry 9780 wall chargers for $0.83!!
Make no mistake, this charger is the same small motorola created mini-usb end that we’re so familiar with that came out with the 9700 and has been stuck with since then on all new models.

Short post, I know, but it was really shocking to me actually.

Cheap Bold 9700 on Amazon

Interesting that Amazon has Blackberry 9700’s for as low as $289 used. Remember that Amazon (like eBay) polices it’s users and has a feedback system etc so the safety of a purchase is pretty likely.

The 9700 isn’t a writeoff in the recent release of OS 6.0 as it too is capable of running leaked versions of OS 6.0 albeit just a pinch slower than the stock 9780 due to a bit less ram than the bold 9780 comes with.

Blackberry Bold 9700 Manual/Book

Have you been frustrated by the manual that comes with the Blackberry Bold 9700? I know I was! It’s quite surprising that so many features get unlocked by the patient and experienced user, and so many users who haven’t had a Blackberry are left in the dust!

There’s plenty of good features to the Blackberry Bold 9700 that you’d only find by buying a good book. Here’s one I recommend
It covers some topics you can’t even find on the web.

You might even call it the missing manual to the Blackberry Bold 9700. It says it’s for beginners in some sections but even an advanced user will find it quite advanced. It covers those using Mac & PC.. OSX issues and Windows…

I recommend buying books from Amazon over any other place because they ship fast, guarantee tracking and have a great feedback and return system. But I bet you don’t need to know that!

Oh… and to give you in the inside juice… This book Coming Soon is really the cats meow… The price is fair, the material will be super comprehensive covering all modern Bold’s.

Dan

UberTwitter for Blackberry Bold 9700 and 9000 Devices

I know, it’s been a while since I posted a ton of material on the site here. This was one of those things where, you’d feel guilty if you didn’t tell fellow Bold 9700 and Bold 9000 users about.

See, when I first got my blackberry the only Blackberry Bold Twitter client program or application available was from Orangatame software and it was called “Open Beak” now, i can’t complain about free software too much, but honestly I think…

…having this software for so long actually HURT My opinion of Blackberry Phones!!!

Why? Because it’s so basic, so ugly and so simple that the very features of Twitter that make it an exciting platform just aren’t there. You don’t get the social interactivity feel of actually chatting or interacting with people… You read other people’s stuff, you read your own stuff… and you post stuff.. whoo hoo? It’s like a blog!

Twitter’s not a blog!??!!!

Well, it’s microblogging, but with the @replies and such its’ alot more than a blog, it’s a social network with active communication going on! But not with Openbeak.

This week, a few minutes before bed, I downloaded UberTwitter and my life changed. Yes in 48 hours my life became a different life. Twitter became people I could talk to, i found a report spam button for all those idiots who keep DM ing me stuff, you know who you are… I mean goodness! I have over 325 DM’s sitting in the inbox, do you REALLY think i’m going to read them? Spammers!

Ubertwitter’s allowed me to see threads of conversations, interact and read other conversations, and actually find MORE tweets fitting on my screen (it seems) then my desktop computer, and easier to read!

If you haven’t tried it your doing yourself a major dis-service, it may in fact actually change your life and grow your business just by installing it. Don’t blame me if you loose hours of precious family time and even have a divorce over how addictive this thing is to use.

Daniel J Deyette

iPad and Blackberry Bold 9700 Play nice?

AP - Photo / Paul Sakuma

When the pictures like the one here started showing up after the iPad launch, i thought man.. I gotta blog about this! I mean but the silly thing is, people just don’t realize how crippled a device this really is. You see these expressions of sheer joy… Like a warrior of the old days finally nailing a deer with a hunting bow, modern man finds joy in forking over their money they feed their families with for toys.

This device is proven incapable of multi-tasking. I mean reading email, checking the web, while glancing at your twitter.. Or even listening to a song while working… All things a Sub $299 netbook can do…

My most recent purchase was a EeePC T91, and it’s truly something special to behold… But I won’t get into the joys of either… How does a Bold 9700 fit in with all this wizardry and devicery?

Well, let me say this much… With a Bold 9700 in your pocket whether you like the proprietary and limited hardware of the iPad or not, you can easily use cradlepoint to tether your blackberry to your iPad and get 3G on the non-3G model, and no doubt without an extra bill you have to pay each month.

So, you don’t like the operating system of the large iPad device but still like the features and functions, some kids have figured out how to hack OSX onto the iPad… Well, not REALLY… But still.. You can easily VPN using the right app into any machine… another mac, another Windows 7 machine and gain all those features wirelessly, even if your on the beach… So theoretically you could run anything you wanted remotely using that strategy.

But, the nice thing about a netbook vs an iPad is that you can have flash, you can run any old program you want and you can carry as many batteries as you want with you. You have a webcam for chatting and conferencing, you can get multi-touch and GPS and 3G internet.

The Bold 9700 won’t sync all it’s data with an iPad, but it would with a netbook of course… It remains to be seen and I truly believe that we’re going to find a generation that goes thru the fad of thinking these are incredibly cool and then finding they’re not using them as often as they thought they would….

I give the device 1 year, before you’ll see them going on craigslist for $200 and under.

Sonic D.

Blackberry Browser Unable To Click On Any Link

Blackberry Bold 9700 Experience:

For a while it became quite annoying… Every time I opened up my blackberry web browser, if i wanted to click on anything i’d have to click the blackberry button, open link, and then I’d be able to open things… And I couldn’t click on search buttons, I couldn’t click on “go” buttons or any form buttons on web pages.

Then, I did some quick googling around and someone mentioned that they’d had theirs go away by simply pulling the battery out, waiting a few mins and then trying again and it cleared up. Well, I didn’t wanna try that at frist because these things take like 5 minutes to boot sometimes…

One day while I was at work I tried it, and boom, everything works fine again.

This really is the only serious glitch I’ve noticed in the Bold 9700 since buying it, although i’m sure there’s lots of quirks others have seen that I haven’t.

It does get slow every once in a while and need a restart, but that’s not common. Overall it’s one of the better phones i’ve ever owned. I have to say though that every once in an while when I see my old blackberry 9000 sitting in my night stand I think about going back. Only for that keyboard!

Daniel J Deyette

Emotions and Your Cell Phone Purchase

It seems that a lot of people fight over the decision between whether to call themselves a blackberry user or an iPhone user. The camps are very entrenched like two different religious views.

When I wrote the top 10 things a Blackberry 9700 can do that an iPhone couldn’t, I wasn’t trying to knock the iPhone. I think the iPhone is a nicely designed gadget. However, I find it tough adding something like that to my daily life.

Something that’s screen smashes out when you drop it… Something that has no feeling when you type on it…

But phones are very much an emotional purchase unless your in business and require your phone for work. Your influenced by your friends, the media, and all kinds of other external and internal motivations. Let me say that the screen on a Bold 9700 and the look & feel has now started to really reflect those of the iPhone, with the scrolling time setting in the Alarm and Calendar… The sleek touch of the track pad…

I had the privileged this last couple weeks of chatting with these underground blackberry theme creators and boy… There are now things a Bold 9700/Tour can do that really make it’s interface look BETTER than an iPhone and not just looks… but practicality.. Some guy at methberry named Chad making themes that really revolutionize what a Blackberry can do.. I’m sure the functionality was there all along, but they’re unlocking that…

Like transparency.. I mean I can actually see what time it is while I set my alarm, how practical and yet sweet looking is that? I think that theme is called Eminence.

And as soon as they give me the word, i’ll be letting everyone know about these innovations and more…

Daniel J Deyette

Bejeweled for the Bold 9700

Easily argued as one of the best games to play with a trackpad.. Bejeweled gives some kind of strange and sickly twisted rush when casually flicking the track pad from right to left as you complete a series of 3 shapes. Not only does it flow so nice and sweetly, but it’s a great way to pass the time and won’t leave you frustrated and upset at yourself due to the lack of control that a non-trackball device can sometimes leave you.

I genuinely believe that Bejeweled may very well be the best Bold 9700 game on the market at the moment. It’s one of the few worth paying for. The arcade modes, the advanced levels and the graphics even look better on the Bold 9700 version than on the iPhone version. (iPhone version pictured to the right..).

Download Bejeweled for the Bold 9700 Today!

They have the OTA option there too via SMS to most carriers.