The Blackberry Bold 9700 & Blackberry 9000 Review

TheBoldReview Blackberry Contest BEGINS!!

So for many years i’ve wanted to run a contest. Promote the website, give out some killer stuff and make our sponsors proud. This week is the first of many contests just like it. I’ve designed this contest in such a way that it does two things… (no hidden missions here folks, straight up this is what your helping ME accomplish.)

#1. It gets our lovely sponsor some air time. They’ve worked hard and given us something REALLY cool to give away, so I want to get their name out there big time.
#2. It gets our name, our Blackberry tips and tricks out there and more visitors to our free guides/resources and strategy material.

Sounds like a pretty cool plan, right?

Rock on. So here’s what I’m going to do.

This week’s sponsor is GelASkins. If you’ve never heard of them, oh boy you’ve been in a closet! Time to come out now! They make these super killer skins you put on your Blackberry.

Note, they peel off easy and when you go to sell your phone it’s nice to not sell of a scuffed up one… and to walk a round with a cooler looking phone than everyone elses… that’s priceless!

To Enter, just click this button below!

Tweet

Winners will be picked this friday for a $15 gift certificate to GelASkins!
You’ll be helping your friends find blackberry advice and getting the word out there about a killer company in one shot. Don’t you love it!??!
Hurry up and click the tweet button. All people are invited, the more twitter accounts you have, the more your entered to win

Your chance to win FREE stuff easy!

Ok, so we live in a viral society… Bottom line is that Facebook, Twitter and Youtube pretty much still rule the space. You help me, I help you.

Hint: You don’t *need* to own a Blackberry to *LOVE* this contest!!!

ANYONE can enter, I don’t care who you are, what phone you have, or where in the world your located you could win this crazy amazing super prize!! (That works for MOST popular phones)

Stay tuned for details…

Damn you RIM, I’m excited again.

Ok, so many of you have seen how quiet this website has gotten. It’s no secret. I’ve gotten just plain (&$@^) tired of RIM and their lack of innovation. When I first got started into smartphones in the early 2000’s, the smartphone to have, the best on the block was a Blackberry. Sure, iPhones had a better web browsing experience, but a blackberry was your all around info-powered, hub of business transactions.

User experience, feature sets and popularity quickly died for Blackberry to it’s android and iOS counterparts.

Skip ahead I actually had a very expensive battle between Blackberries and other devices.
I had an iPhone4, Google Nexus One, Curve 8310 and Bold 9700 and Bold 9780 in the span of less than a year.

I started out being a RAVING fan (actually knocking other devices) over the 9700’s power. I would regularly convince non-blackberry users to switch.  At some point, I watched the story of the Nexus One videos on Youtube, and my heart was a flutter. A browser experience like no other, flash support and other fancies took my heart for a spin and I became a Level1 Android user (get to that later).

Then, after months of battery pain, and the annoying typing on a touch screen, I returned to Blackberry (But with a very limited budget) I was forced into a temporary Curve 9300. The thing had a bug where SMS messages were super slow and other features didnt’ work well either. The thing was hardcore underpowered, low resolution (320x something) and super slow. The keyboard made these plastic noises that made you not sure if it would last the week!

My contract was due and I moved into an iPhone4, thinking this is the wave of the future, and this looks fantastic! It was an amazing toy. Incredible in fact, the retina display and many other features made me like it much more than the phones I had in the past… But again, I became frustrated with the typing experience (which was notedly better than a Google Nexus One) so, I traded it for the Bold 9780. I wanted to try Blackberry OS 6.0, and I once again (as I have cried about before) was dying for a Blackberry with webkit….

Anyway,… After using the 9780 for nearly a year… I liked OS 6.0 enough, the battery life was good, typing was “OK” but the web browser SUCKED. The processor SUCKED. The social media was annoying and the screen was in my opinion still way too low resolution for my use.

After what seemed like it should have been their flag ship device, I decided to move back to an android and i’m currently using the HTC Desire. Long story, there’s a million better androids and i’d rather have a Desire Z or a Motorola Charm to keep my physical keyboard, but to be honest, this was actually just the cheapest thing I could find in my friend circle.

A better blackberry arrives from RIM….

NOW, for **years** (no joke, at least 3) the Blackberry community has been BEGGING RIM to release OS 6.0 for the bold 9000, or an update to the bold 9000 unit. I even condemplated making one myself. You’d never match the battery life but other things might be possible… anyway…

THEY Finally have a NEW Bold 9000 with OS 7.0 and as it should be it’s their new flag ship device, and as it should be it has the same sized keyboard for the big thumb users who still want a real keyboard, AND it has a touch screen, and it has a 1.2ghz processor and HD recording.

Now, as a corporate internet marketer who focuses primarily on internet marketing and social media compliance and other jobs, I can’t really go out and switch, but if they sent me a demo device, mark my words… I would litterally make my entire life and every video and every app I use blasted all over the web.

I would:

• Write Reviews
• Comment on other blogs
• Make videos on Youtube
• Write at least another 20 blog posts about it
• Build custom themes
• Show it to my iPhone and Android friends
• Promote on Facebook to my 2,000 peeps
• Promote on Google +1
• Promote on Twitter to my 1500 peeps there

But at the moment, ironically it’s not about money, but… starting off with my blackberry 6230 to the curve, bold 9000, curve 8310, 9700 and 9780 that i’ve had over the years… I don’t think she’d let me justify buying another one. I dunno what that conversation would look like…

But RIM, i’m actually love sick over the Bold 9900. Litteral gut pains, and I wish I could justify switching to my 7th phone in 2 years, I better look away. But – RIM, as the famous line in relationships goes.. .”it’s not you, its me…”

Phone me! 604-626-4820

The 9780 Charging Base for convenience

One thing I love about the 9780 phone is the fact that all of the 9700 accessories (which have been around forever) are completely compatable. Which means some vendors, who don’t realize the newer phone uses the older accessories have taken todiscounting the charging pod down to $5.00!

Gotta love that. They’re affordable and convenient. You just go to your bedside table or desk and shove it in… No fiddling with your charging cable in the dark trying to figure out which is top or bottom. Just slap it in and walk away. Can’t get easier.

Blackberry Bold Montana?

According to some high profile leaks being released, there’s a new Blackberry Bold coming out code named “montana” that’s going to hit store shelves August 2011. Looking at all the specs it’s hard not to say I’m impressed! Anyone woudl have to be, looking at those details. Truth is, there are still some small nagging issues I wish they would resolve in this version but they could be coming to the rescue on those too…

What I do like!

1.2Ghz Qualcomm snapdragon CPU
Ironically, this will still be behind the other manufacturers, as they’re now all currently working on dual core prototypes, but as RIM CEO Mike said, they don’t see a dual core capable of the battery life they’re aiming for and I can respect that.

New Display
A 640×480 display on a bold form factor unit? Now THAT is something to scream home about! I mean even with the Bold 9780’s 480×360 display it seems very restrictive in many ways, while I do miss the 800×400+ displays of the bigger touch screen smartphones, I think I could live with 640×480. Capacitive Touch is a nice welcome too.

Magnetometer, Accelerometer, and Proximity
Sing a pretty song to me! Oh that’s so cool to see in a Bold form factor (the shape of a querty keyboard phone) that’s going to be super nice! Sometimes it’s nice to read something sideways (like blog posts or magazines etc).

720P Video
Yes, recording the kids or even youtube videos for web work would certainly be fun with the right camera. can’t argue about that, and keeping the flash is a good thing.

8GB on board memory and 768MB Ram
That is surprising as that woudl actually have it’s specs above that of say a Google Nexus One in terms of ram and CPU. That really future proof’s the device to some degree.

Wifi Hotspot
You know, I now need this phone! Thinking about it, it’s the only way you can get an iPod Touch (with retina and all the fancies) to play well with a Blackberry and have both worlds to play in without succumbing to the schedule sucking, mind messing, waste of carrying an iDevice everywhere you go. Nice to be able to share your wifi with another device when you feel like it.

Wider Keyboard!!! They Listened!!
The bold 9000 was a 66mm wide device, the Bold Montana is also a 66mm device! Oh my goodness this could be the best blackberry ever!

new BlackBerry Bold Touch: dakota is the GSM version, while montana is the CDMA version

Former RIM exec not betting on PlayBook

Former RIM executive Raymond Reddy, who’s left RIM to start his own company says he’s not expecting the Playbook to survive past launch.

His insider information reveals the device is crippled by its dependance on being tethered to a blackberry and lack of developer support and an antiquated “QNX” operating system that was originally dubbed the first web browser to fit on a floppy back in 1998.

To read more, see the interview with Reddy in Business Insider magazIne.

Blackberry at Consumer Electronics Show

Its the weekend and computer access is limited for me but I just wanted to quickly share two things.

1. CEO at RIM commented dual core blackberries a reality in 2011.

2. Here’s a nice little video of the blackberry booth at CIS

Forgive the brevity and unclean look of this post, it was posted from a 9780 blackberry.

iPhone 4 versus the Blackberry Torch

This week Ive been seriously considering buying an iPhone 4 over the upcoming Torch.  There are several reasons for the thought… and I thought I’d share them with you and see what my viewers think. You must be going through the same emotions that I am…

Blackberry seems to be lagging behind in innovation and popularity. But that hasn’t stopped my love for blackberries, despite the fact that I can’t seem to get most apps that come out first for iPhone and Android over Blackberry, I held on to my dear productivity device… I tried a Nexus One for about 2-3 months and in the end was annoyed by gmail being too slow, (on Google’s own operating system!),  how hard it was to type on, and how after 13 different apps I tried, no popular RSS reader replaced my love for Viigo and my ability to keep up on 60+ RSS feeds with grace.

A friend named Sarah came by and showed me her iPhone 4… She’s been super kind to let me fiddle with it each time she comes over as I patiently await the release of the Blackberry Torch in Canada September 24th with Rogers (way too slow by the way) and I was shocked at the responsiveness in typing. The accuracy on the touchscreen digitizer is far superior to a Nexus One… VERY accurate look at these tests on the original iPhone.

But if you still preferred a physical keyboard as I do check this out…

This lead me to start investigating other aspects of the iPhone 4 that leave me thinking VERY seriously about the move. More and more apps are exclusive to iPhone and there’s still no good Google analytics for Blackberry.

The Blackberry Torch is a killer device… Removable battery, upgradeable storage, but of course the true compliment will be the webkit browser. Truth is though.. their implementation of a webkit browser on a 600mhz processor is questionable and slow… this new operating system may not really have dramatic changes… even Crackberry a noted blog of extreme enthusiasts reviewed Blackberry 6 and said that MOST of the new features of the OS weren’t too useful.

The Blackberry Bold 9700 vs The iPhone 3GS

I read a review recently that said people were still debating this issue, only now they’re searching more for the 3GS than they are so much for the “iPhone” itself. I have to say that although I’m mildly impressed with Apple’s search for perfection in this device range, I’m still not surprised that many tech savvy folks are still cuddling their blackberries to sleep at night after looking at the specs of the iPhone 3GS.

What’s new in the 3GS from the original iPhone?

• Bit better battery life – nothing compared to a Bold 9700 though.
• STORAGE! 16 & 32GB versions.
• Compass (But… who really needs that when you have GPS!)
• Video Camera with video editing software
• Voice control (Free apps exist on nearly every device for this..)
• Improved performance…

So basically it’s no major upgrade. It’s no major improvement in my eyes. It’s improved though, there’s no question.. They’ve done some work under the hood and they’re improving a great device. I don’t hate iPhones, but i can tell ya that just like in our original post on iPhones vs the Bold 9700, you can quickly see they’re not even close comparable feature wise.

Yes, these iPhones are an AMAZING iPod with a horrible phone attached.. I loved that quote.

Blackberry Bold 9700 Finally Here

Well, Despite my worst fears, it finally arrived. I haven’t had much time to throughly test it, yet so I can’t say much… What I *will* say is despite the battery cover being a pain in the butt to operate that this thing is very slick, the keyboard is more than adequate and the web browser is actually very impressive.

What shocked me was this blog loaded perfectly fine, where on my old one it woudln’t load the CSS but I could read the articles… It works brilliantly.

The trackpad definitely takes some getting used to, so that’ll be an odd adjustment… I’ll report later on battery life, picture quality and other things.

I made numerous reports on various sites complaining , and complaining and complaining some more that I had not received it, I ordered it on a tuesday, and 3 weeks later it finally got here… THAT i’m not impressed with. I phoned Yesterday (Thursday) and said that if it wasn’t on it’s way I was going to cancel it. I didn’t need to be bothered and emotionally upset by how long it was taking that badly, I could wait until they worked the bugs out of the silly thing.

I go by Dano77 on most places, and Thumbtyper on some bberry forums.