BlackBerry Bold 9930 Review: Faster, Slimmer, and Totally Overpriced

I reviewed the same first BlackBerry Bold 9000 way back in October 2008, thus I was crazy to get my hands on the latest addition to the Bold fellowship, the high-priced BlackBerry Bold 9930 ($250 with a two-year contract from Verizon, price as of August 17, 2011). The Bold blueprint has come a extended way, finally getting some touchscreen bon while retaining that iconic QWERTY slab look.

Just is adding a touch screen enough to keep the Bold relevant in today's smartphone wars? If you're a longtime Vaulting owner or a BlackBerry rooter, you'll love the 9930's updated appearance and new operating organisation. Along the other hand, if you've been using an Android earpiece OR an iPhone, the Audacious probably North Korean won't catch your eye.

Skinny Profile, Classic Design

At only 0.41 inches thick, the Bold 9930 is the thinnest of the series. Measuring 4.53 inches tall and 2.6 inches wide, the Bold 9930 feels quite a discriminating in the hand, with solid brushed-metal edges, a glass face, and a glossy patterned back. The Overreaching series has always been the most fashionable of the BlackBerrys (healed, the first-class honours degree Bold's leather back was a trifle gaudy), and the 9930 is definitely no exception. The whole phone feels high-quality yet durable–which is gratifying given its hefty price.

The Bold 9930's keyboard is perchance the superfine physical phone keyboard I've used; it's the Bold 9930's biggest draw, in my opinion. Thanks to its sculpted keys and its guitar-fret-same dividers in between rows, I could have it away out long email messages and texts–and torrent my ethnic networks–quickly, accurately, and comfortably, without any finger's breadth cramping. The keyboard is so roomy that even my big-bimanual colleagues matt-up comfortable using it. You get a large spacebar and the usual BlackBerry Alt, Sym, Shift, and Speaker keys. Between the display and the keyboard, you'll discover the Talk, Menu, Back, and Power/Final stage physical keys. You'll also find the touch-sensitive trackpad, which is quite responsive.

The 2.8-inch, 640-aside-480-pixel display is bright, sharp, and responsive. I can't avail just sense a little strange when I utilise a touch display that small, just at least the trackpad and the exhibit are both available. Different the new Blackberry bush Torch models, the Bold 9930 does not have an accelerometer, which wouldn't genuinely make signified along a display that small.

BlackBerry 7 OS and NFC

Like the Blowtorch 9810 and the full-touch Verbascum thapsu 9860, the Adventuresome 9930 runs version 7 of the BlackBerry operative system; for to a greater extent details, read our full hands-happening impressions of BlackBerry 7 OS. Although BlackBerry 7 OS is a lot faster than 6 OS, aesthetically it is precise similar. Same precooled feature article of the Bold 9930, however, is that it's the first BlackBerry to offer Ungenerous Subject area Communication support. When I rung with RIM representatives last hebdomad, they informed me that the Bold 9930 is the 1st of umpteen devices that will have NFC support, and that the company is working with developers in creating NFC-enabled apps for mobile payments and content exchange.

Camera

To some people, camera caliber connected a smartphone isn't a big gun. For me personally, however, it's huge. I wear't always want to tug around my DSLR or even my point-and-shoot, so I want a phone that sack take decent photos (operating room, at to the lowest degree, decent enough for Flickr or Facebook). Frustratingly enough, the Heroical 9930's camera lacks autofocus, which is a must-undergo for high gear-end smartphones. Maybe RIM thinks that clientele users, which the Bold 9930 is geared toward, don't care about autofocus? But in my opinion, if you're paying $250 for a 3G BlackBerry, you should get top-of-the-crinkle specs and features–and that includes autofocus. I've heard rumors that RIM born autofocus in the Bold 9930 to make the phone slimmer. Although I love how thin the handset is, I would take a few spare millimeters over blurry photos any day.

Fortunately, when you're standing perfectly still, photos taken connected the Bold 9930 turn out pretty well. The 5-megapixel camera boasts a 4X digital soar upwards, a flash, and simulacrum stabilization (which almost makes up for the omission of autofocus). The phone also has some churrigueresque New shooting features, such as view modes and face detection, and it presents everything within a clean, easy-to-use user interface.

The Foolhardy 9930 also offers HD video get at 720p, which is one of the big updates in BlackBerry 7 OS. Video quality was jolly good, but I noticed that the Conspicuous 9930's camcorder struggled with fast-moving action shots. Quick-swirling objects were at once blurry and out of rive.

Performance

The Bold 9930 ships with a 1.2GHz processor, plus 768MB of RAM and 8GB of along-board retention (expandable up to 32GB via a MicroSD wag). Overall, I constitute the Steep 9930's public presentation to be speedy and reliable. Apps launched quickly and scrolling was smooth over, though pinch-and-zoom in the browser could have been more fluid. The effect wasn't nearly as bad as the pinch-and-zoom issues in the Torch 9810, but it still stuttered a bit with certain image-heavy websites so much as PCWorld.com and TheBoldItalic.com.

Disappointingly, the Bold 9930 is just a 3G phone–non a 4G LTE twist. It would have been awesome to have an LTE or WiMax BlackBerry this time around, merely for straightaway we'll have to be content with the HSPA+ Blackberry bush Bold 9900 coming to AT&T and T-Mobile. Even so, browsing over Verizon 3G on the Courageous 9930 was quite an fast. Web pages loaded up quickly in the revamped browser, which now includes HTML 5 corroborate.

Call quality, unfortunately, was hit-or-girl. Since Verizon's 3G network is very reliable in San Francisco, I always had reception and never experienced dropped calls while I was examination the Bold 9930. However, my friends' voices sounded a fleck tinny and unnatural, and I detected static on a few of my calls. My friends happening the other close of the line of reasoning reported that my voice plumbed distant and robotic.

BlackBerrys by and large have very good battery life, and the Bold 9930 seems to atomic number 4 No exception. Although we haven't formally tested the handset's battery life, information technology did cargo area prepared over two full days of heavy testing and data employment, with almost 35 pct of the juice left.

Bottom Pipeline

Of the ternary new BlackBerrys sexual climax down this fall, the Bold 9930 is definitely my favorite. The keyboard is superb, the phone's design and twist are pristine, and the newfangled features in 7 OS, such arsenic NFC and HD telecasting capture, are a huge plus. BlackBerry fans will be delighted by the Bold 9930–simply as I mentioned earlier, it doesn't have sufficiency appeal to sway existing Android and iPhone users. On top of that, its monetary value seems fashio too high, especially for a 3G phone. I'm looking at forward to RIM's future QNX OS phones (which will run the same OS as the Playbook), just WHO knows when those models will pertain food market. Right now, the Reckless 9930 and the other new phones are sufficient to hold RIM relevant in the smartphone arms belt along, merely they won't assistant the company gain hot customers.