The Bold 9000 vs Bold 9700 – Indepth Review

Written by admin on December 20, 2009 – 6:15 pm -

This review is going to be a work in progress… Especially since it’s Christmas and there won’t be much time to do a complete work, but it’s very much needed on the web… A comprehensive overview of the differences and what you should know…

Size Comparison…

The Bold 9000 is definitely a much bigger unit with a much larger screen physically. The resolution on the Bold 9700 is slightly larger (480×360 pixels) versus the Bold 9000’s (480×320 pixels). Even thought the Bold 9000 is slightly lower in resolution (screen pixels) it’s actually physically bigger making it easier to read and navigate at a glance or for those with glasses.

But the Bold 9000’s larger size also means a larger keyboard making it easier for those with larger thumbs to type on…

Battery Life…

It’s no secret that the biggest innovation of the Bold 9700 was practically DOUBLE the battery life. When I retired the Bold 9000, I was getting a dead battery at 4pm after a heavy 8am to 4pm usage. That meant charging it up when I got home from work if I expected to use it in the evening while out with the family for any reason… Not good! The Bold 9700 started out acting much the same as the Bold 9000 in the first few days of use but on day 3 or 4, it started to last well past the usual… I usually go to bed on heavy usage days with 2/3rds of the battery still left.

Operating System…

The Bold 9000 runs on the original OS 4.7 (although some are actually running 5.0 on it with little troubles), if you want supported OS 5.0 the only option is the Bold 9700 at the moment as RIM has not released 5.0 officially for the Bold 9000.  What’s the difference? There’s some areas of 5.0 that have been improved and obviously battery life is part of that too. The look and feel is a bit slicker and nicer and the browser seems to be faster and crash a lot less. The threaded SMS (Text message conversations grouped by contact) makes communication easier too. Beyond that I don’t think there’s any major differences as – at this point in time – most software titles out there seem to work well on both.

Don’t believe what you read, they both run the same processor and so quite a bit of the guts are no different. Any speed differences are operating system and software related and NOT hardware related at all.

Camera Resolution…

The camera on the Bold 9700 is 3.2 Megapixels and comparable to the iPhone camera where as the Bold 9000’s is only a 2 megapixel. The camera on the Bold 9700 also has some fancy focus abilities making it able to take a nicer picture… However the CCD (Image Sensor) isn’t much improved so the overall quality in low lighting is still pretty bad and pixelated and no different than any other camera phone and neither phone’s camera can take a descent picture at high speed. Trying to take a good quality pic of your fast moving 2 year old is still not an option.

Navigation…

The old debate of the trackpad vs the track ball… I’m sure it’ll be going on for years to come… But there’s reason to be in either camp. Yes the ball is probably a bit easier for gaming and a pinch more accurate and easy to use, but… so easily prone to getting mucked up! A heavy user will find themselves cleaning it frequently and having all kinds of ball issues.. IF you ever have ball issues, you’ll quickly realize how useless the device is without it!

Summary…

As I said, I’ll be updating this with more info and will remove those mentions when it’s complete, but overall the Bold 9700 is a better phone with more features and futureproof for support from RIM and software developers as most developers move to more OS 5.0 Software. But I too miss blogging and typing and even reading articles on the slightly larger screen.

But working with a Bold 9000 at this stage means sacrificing a better camera, longer battery life, dirty trackballs and older OS 4.7… The choice is yours.


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