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.

Nah, seriously that headline was just a joke spun from that famous college kid video getting pulled away as the cops “Taze” him. I’m not knocking this product, not for 20 seconds. It’s probably one of the most best kept secrets (and it shouldn’t be!) of the online community. If they sent me one of these tomorrow, I would document the whole process of use and how powerful this thing is and probably write a post titled 47 ways to get the most out of your Tazzle.

This brilliant device is truly remarkable. Just as it says on there, view, print and send. I’m pretty sure this works via Bluetooth, but regardless… How many times have you fumbled to find your uplink cable? I know I have…

How many times have you been out and about and don’t feel like carrying that big bulky USB cable around? This thing would easily hide in your wallet or somewhere and any time any place you can pop it out and send pictures, documents or emails or anything to a PC. You really gotta check this out for yourself to see all the benefits of the Tazzle product.

Tazzling Saves Time!
Get the Tazzle IT USB-Key!

I had no idea that services like this existed, but it sure is comforting to know that they do…
Check out their home page by clicking on the banner on the right there…They have a picture of a Bold 9000 on a stretcher that looks like it was made in the 1960s haha.

Whether you dropped your Blackberry into a toilet, a water fountain or some dish water – Or you drove over it with your car, stepped on it or some other tragedy – these guys can get your data back…

Why is that so critically important? In today’s day and age, It’s too easy to break a smartphone and loose everything. Paid for applications, precious pictures of your little ones, or videos of your friend doing something worthy of future blackmail that you just can’t afford to loose! (Grin).

Regardless, what’s most impressive about this Californian company is their “can’t recover it, money back guarantee”. These guys got started in the business reverse-engineering other pda and cell phone type devices so there’s little doubt they can’t recover yours should you require it.

They currently don’t’ have a Bold 9700 Option, but I’d recommend using the Bold 9000 option as it has the same internals, processor and memory and would really be a similar process to recover in a smaller case.

If you do end up requiring their service, email me and let me know how it goes and how smooth the process is, I’d love to update this post with more information.

UPDATE: Just spoke with Tim Goggin @ Recoverymysmartphone.com and they DO service the Bold 9700 and even the Tour2 Essex 9650 (same technology essentially as the original tour but with better camera & trackpad instead of trackball).

Don’t hesitate to work with these guys… My first hand experience with data recovery outfits always winds up with a costly bill. These folks are simply not the case… You can expect to pay up to $1000 for detailed and engineer level data recovery, so being under $200 is impressive.

(GET My Broken, Water Damaged, Cracked, Distroyed Cell Phone Data Recovered – Click Here)

Bplay – Magmic – World Series Of Poker

Probably one of the best Texas Hold’em style games available for blackberry, and made by Magmic it’s not surprising the graphics are probably the best your going to get on this one. The game play is unreal and this one won’t slow your unit down.

World Series of Poker: Hold’em Legend

Ace’s Texas Hold’Em No Limit -

Thought of as one of the hardest games to master, this game has reasonable graphics, but that’s not really where it shines. It has many more deep level options and settings that can be adjusted, learning opponents that get harder and harder and bluff and do real human emotional trigs as well. Worth checking out, but definitely not as pretty as Magmic’s Poker Game.

This game also wins in the statistics department, there’s much detail of hands played, hands won, folds, raises, tournament wins, etc. For the price, it’s the most affordable poker game for the blackberry available on the market at the moment.

Aces Texas Hold’em Download

Hard Rock Casino Collection Poker

Graphics galore, I swear the collection doesn’t get any better with intense graphics, but this one takes out the human element entirely. They’ve got a poker game that’s really emulating the VLT or Video lottery terminals you see everywhere. Yes, video poker sounds boring, but when you combine that with amazing graphics for blackjack, and realistic roulette you have yourself a package that’s really under priced. For $9.95 you get poker, blackjack, roulette and slots with extreme detail… beat that anywhere with this level of quality, it’s hard to do.

Hard Rock Casino Collection Download

I bought this sleve from Staples here in BC (Canada) and was completely unimpressed with it.

This thing continued to slide off the phone every time I put in my pocket or any tight place. I also love sliding my phones up into my visor in thecar (the CD holder with the mesh part) to talk on speakerphone while driving, but it wouldn’t go in there without causing a car accident with this rubbery thing on there.

I have to say when I first put it on I loved it. It made the 9700 feel just a little bit bigger and somehow gave me a bit more respect for the device, but after a few weeks it really got on my nerves.

Anyone else recommend a better sleeve or skin for the Bold 9700? Wanna send me one to try for two weeks and then give a full unbiased review? I won’t argue!

Daniel J Deyette

The E-mobile Live Aquarium is certainly a sight to be seen, and can easily rival anything Bplay’s got going on for their saltwater app. This is a must see… Like having your own fish tank right on the screen. Impressive and shocking color and animation with no slow down. Breathtaking graphics… Any Bold user who loves to show off will really like this one.

These guys also make these too:

e-Mobile Live Deep Sea

e-Mobile Live Windmill

e-Mobile Live Spring

e-Mobile Live Waterfall

e-Mobile Live Seashore

e-Mobile Live Halloween

e-Mobile Live Night Sky

e-Mobile Live Sky

e-Mobile Live Lake

e-Mobile Live Snow

e-Mobile Live Bird

e-Mobile Live Butterfly

e-Mobile Live City

e-Mobile Live Stream

Download E-Mobile Fish Tank Today!

If you are, I’ve got an amazing theme software to show you! Don’t worry, I’m not knocking blackberry addicts in this post… This is more of a here you go!

The home screen even with the 18 icon home screen is probably not supporting enough instant updates and constant action to help you with the feeding frenzy of contacts and information flowing to your berry each day, is it?

Think about it…

• MSN Messenger
• Blackberry Messenger
• Skype
• SMS
• 4 different email addresses
• Gmail
• RSS Feed updates
• Yahoo messenger

If you wanna keep tabs on absolutely everything that might update, or that you might miss… You have to check this out. I’m trying to tone down my constantly checking blackberry self… It’s not good with social interaction and such and people get really upset by it… But this at least prevents digging thru your BBerry for all your apps which may be buried somewhere deep in that long list of icons when they could be on the home screen.

This is available for the Bold 9000 but I would imagine this would work fine on the Bold 9700 as well. It’s a little stroke of genius to have all that available to you in such a simple, elegant design.

Download Executive Speed Theme Now

This theme at Mobihand is arguably one of the best themes available for the Bold 9700 (and of course a ton of other phones supported by it). And no, I’m not saying that just because I’ve gotten to know the creators of it, although I doubt I would have tried it or stumbled across it had I not met them in A BBM conversation.

What’s special isn’t just the looks that you see in the screencaps I’ve decided to post here on my blog… That’s really nothing. What’s wild and outstanding is the menu animations, the transitions and the transparency that make you feel like you’ve got a next generation blackberry in your hands. I can show you these screenshots all day long, but at the end of the day they won’t say much to you like installing it will.

So, I encouage you to download and try this thing.. I betcha that MobiHand (Aka Onlyblackberry) has a great refund program if you find you don’t agree with me (which I strongly doubt will happen) but what you’ll see when you start playing with this will blow your mind.

There are all kinds of little peculiar reasons you’ll love transparency… One classic example is when setting your alarm before you go to bed, or for a quick nap, don’t you often wonder… Wait… What time is it right now tho? How much sleep am I gonna get, when do i wanna wake up etc… Transparency lets you set your clock while still seeing the clock behind it. Transparency lets you have calendar updates that don’t annoyingly block what your doing. It’s weird to say, but Transparency on your Bold 9700 could change the way you think and use your phone. (strange? yep!)

I’ve run this theme now for about a month since when it went Beta and now is actually available for purchase, and I honestly love that it’s guaranteed to not slow down your blackberry. Speed is way more important than some junk fireplace glowing on your screen.. Ya, those impress your friends for a little while, but a real man values performance over looks.
Download Eminence From Only Blackberry Now

Also available for the 85xx Curve Series and 8300 Coming soon.

Features:

• *** QuickLaunch Shortcut added to SpaceBar***
• Weather Slot on Home Page (7th Icon in Applications’s)
• Hidden Today
• Custom Transparent Banner works with all wallpaper colors
• Transparent Menu’s and Dialog Boxes
• Custom Changing Icons (Folders Open and Icons move/change when Highlighted)
• Large Clock on Home Screen
• Smooth Transitions
• User Defined Font and Font Size
• User Defined Home Screen Wallpaper
• Custom Percentage Battery Meter
• Guaranteed Lag Free

The big question on a ton of bloggers minds! I know it’s bugging me, fact is I wanted badly to know the answer and a few seconds ago it just hit me in the face like a ton of bricks!

No way!!!

What’s the Essex (Tour 2) 9650 device made of anyway? Apparently it’s really more of a mistake being repaired… The gyst was that due to timing they couldnt’ make the original Tour with a trackpad and Wifi just due to trying to quickly get the thing on the market… Now the Essex Tour 2 9650 does come with these features…

But what’s under the hood, you ask?

A Qualcomm 528Mhz Processor… Same as the original Tour.. Meaning that The Bold 9700 is still nearly 100Mhz faster than the Tour and Tour 2 models giving it more power and speed to run OS 5.0 applications.
It does have the same 3.1 megapixel camera as the Bold 2 (9700) and many other features are notably the same except of course size and asthetic design. The Essex has a bit more chrome going on than the Blackberry Bold 2 9700 packs.

The big question that will drive the dividing line between folks that keep the 9700 and those that don’t will probably be OpenGL support, and it’s still questionable whether this one will have the feature or not.

I think the Tour2 Will support OpenGL… It’s running the same CPU core as the Curve 8530 (which apparently should have OpenGL) and a very similar platform… Only time and new info will tell.

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