The Blackberry Bold 9700 & Blackberry 9000 Review

Blackberry Wireless Presenter Caught On Video

Thanks to Crackberry, the Blackberry Presenter was completely demoed at CES 2010 and on display for all to see. Seriously check it out, it’s actually a really neat video. The interesting thing is that each presenter has a unique ID so you could actually run several at once. Shows all the animations it’s capable of and more.

Valentines Day theme for Bold 9700

Are you ready for Valentines Day?

If your the type that gets right into the holiday in every way… Perhaps this new theme is right up your alley since February is not that far away. I honestly don’t get that much into that holiday from a theme perspective, but regardless this one is really cool. The graphics are amazing.

Download Valentines Day Theme for Bold 9700

Writing an ebook on a Bold 9700 or Bold 9000

Any new years resolutions for 2010?

Perhaps one was to write an ebook? I have the killer app you should consider owning that won’t cost the price of a 300 word article but could save you all the time in the world…

What if you could utilize that 5 minutes in the car waiting for someone or that 15 minute walk to create an ebook and sell it online? But typing on a bberry aint your thing right?

After buying a voice recorder, and forgetting it at home. After buying a laptop, an organizer and a palm pilot… perhaps even a netbook… this concept could be your 2010 life saver!

Dictate to your email until you save up enough emails to convert it to a word document!

DOWNLOAD Voice Recognition for Bold!

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.

What’s Inside A Bold 9700? Technical Specs

A few weeks ago, I was looking for games to review and was kind of sad to see any descent graphics on the games for the Bold 9700. With a higher resolution screen like this one, games would look brilliant. Video does, after all. That led me to do a series of searches on Google for “Bold 9700 graphics chip..” etc. I of course did read about the whole curve got OpenGL and Bold’s didn’t.. yadda yadda. But that got me thinking… What capabilities DO these things have?

First off, the Bold 9000 and Bold 9700 contain the exact same processor. Let me give you a bit of background on the XScale microprocessor. Marvell currently own’s the design although Intel sold it to them in June of 2006 so it’s still safe to call it an Intel PXA930 as that’s what it really is. It’s the 5th generation of the ARM processor that is so famous in so many windows mobile devices running at 624Mhz – it’s a pretty snappy cpu.

PXA930 was code named Bulverde, and has several interesting features available such as Wireless Speedstep (system can downclock the cpu to save power), Wireless MMX - allowing multimedia, Also has SSE and can act as 16 extra 65bit registers that can be treated as an array of 32-bit words, or four 16-bit halfwords. Additional peripherals are also available such as USB host interface, and camera interface.

Intel announced a successor to the PXA930 in 2005 called the Monahan but it died quickly. At 1.25ghz there was only a 25% increase in horsepower overall. The blackberry bold 9000 and 9700 processor itself is actually based off a processor from 2004. Now nearing 5 years old it’s still surprising what a processor like this can do.

This is the test board for the PXA930. Just from looking at it, you can see the processor’s actually capable of handling a 640×480 LCD, compact flash port, PCMCIA (which you see on older laptops), serial port, audio in and out, usb host port, usb client, sim card, ps2, ethernet port (that’d be nice!), IDE interface, SD port, GPS, touch panel etc…. This is no weak unit.

When the Bold 9700 “Aka Onyx” was announced, it was supposed to be a completely different phone – but I think with the re-use of the PXA930 and some obvious other internals, including the battery, it just made more sense to call it the Bold 2. Yes, sure smaller, faster (OS improvements not hardware improvements), more ram (256MB vs 128MB) and higher resolution screen and camera. But the core structure of the phone itself hasn’t changed. Phonewreck has a complete diagram showing the complete block diagram of how this chip is used and what services are attached to it.

GelaSkins – Special Blackberry Bold 9700 Skins

Blackberry Bold 9700 Skins With Matching Themes From GelaSkins

Probably nothing cooler than having something no one else you know in your circle of friends has! This would be one of those purchases. Not only does it make your unit much more unique than your next door neighbors, but it also protects the surface from scratches, and supports independent artists who design these packages. Very nice indeed! No blog about Blackberries would be complete without mentioning these interesting designs.

Keep in mind that this concept is a much wiser alternative to actually pulling apart your blackberry and putting custom colored plastic pieces on that void the warranty and ruin your resale-ability and wreak havoc on your chances of getting any repair by the carrier or manufacturer. These mods make you the coolest guy around and still protect your investment…  At $600+ USD, it’s not exactly something I’d go modding myself without considering the loss of that money.

You can browse their entire selection by visiting their website.

Amazon App For Blackberry – Can’t wait for Kindle!

Apparently, Amazon recently released “Amazon for Blackberry” but they’re working hard on Kindle for Blackberry… It’s all over the news sites, trust me.. I’m watching so many sources on that and we’ll release that as soon as it’s available…

<— See why you should sign up for email updates on the left!!

Yeah, you can sign up to have Amazon update you too on their site, but we break news for all cool things Blackberry Bold!

Handango Offers 25% Off All Blackberry Bold Software for New Years

Handango, a popular merchant among smartphone users, is now offering 25% off all purchases between now and December 31st.
Shopping cart code to enter is YEAREND .

There’s quite a bit in their store and they do have their own Mobile App Store that I was going to profile in the distant future… I like their version of the Blackberry Appworld because it has a nice news reader built in. I love news, so the more I can get of that going the better in my eyes. Plus it lets you download from a selection of Blackberry software that very much rivals the real Blackberry appworld.

You can also read reviews of various software titles and screenshots too.. but overall the handango App store is quite a nice little utility and worth playing with. I guess I should stop being lazy and post some pics, i’ll do some screenshots up and update this later at some point. Meanwhile – go get your 25% off, if there was something you were thinking of buying before, now’s the time. Yeah, I know 25% aint much, but they usually don’t offer more than that so a discount is a discount!

Missing the old Blackberry days? Make your Bold 9700 retro!

Funny how the years have passed when Blackberry devices didn’t have home screens with pretty graphics on them… They were just a pile of icons to navigate and a jog wheel on the left to find them with… I miss that some days because it really was convenient.

If you miss those days too, you might wanna give this new feature from Handango a try! Click on the image to the right and experience the 18 icon tool which lets you have no home screen and just a pile of icons.

Try it out! Download 18 Icon for Bold 9700 Today!

Chess Game For Blackberry Bold 9700 Smartphones

Currently the ONLY Blackberry Bold 9700 Chess game available on the market… (which I’m sure will soon change..)

Chess is one of the best strategy games of all time. It has been entertaining millions of people throughout the world for centuries. Now you can enjoy it in its full richness on your mobile phone. The new Chess 2.0 features a Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) client that allows you to play your favorite game online against people all over the world.

Download Blackberry Bold 9700 Chess Game

Tags: bishop, blackberry, bold 9000, bold 9700, checkmate, chess, download, Games, king, OTA, rook, tips
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