Amazing keyboard, excellent screen and smooth operations.
Good: Beautiful screen, best keyboard for a Smartphone, really fast in everyday usage.
Bad: Updating apps still requires a reboot, Camera slightly slow, battery capacity could’ve been higher.
Price: AED
* The price is the Suggested Retail Price at the time of review. Please call a retailer to confirm the latest price for this product.
The camera on the Bold 9900 remains at 5MP like the previous gen devices, however, RIM has added 720p video recording to the mix. I found the camera to be a tad bit slow side- it usually took about a second between me pressing the button to take the picture and the picture being taken. The quality of pics taken is about the same as previous BlackBerry devices- good but great like the Nokia N8 or the iPhone 4. The following is a sample pictures taken from the Bold 9900- it’s an indoor picture with medium lighting.
I was a bit surprised at RIM’s choice of battery for the Bold 9900. Even though the phone is equipped with the fastest CPU they have ever used and a reasonably big screen with the highest resolution they have ever used, it comes with a 1230mAh/4.6Wh battery that is lower in capacity than some of their older models. The first day, I unplugged the device at 7:30 AM and by 8:30PM, the battery icon had turned red. It took another hour and half for the radio to switch off. During this day, I had WiFi and 3G always on with push email but Bluetooth and NFC was switched off. I also used the Bold to take over 30 pictures and about ten minutes of video. The second day, I unplugged the device at 7:00AM and the radio didn’t shut off until 10:30 at night- although I didn’t use the camera. I’m sure that with a little more conditioning and possibly better software, this will further improve.
Overall, the BlackBerry Bold 9900 is the best BlackBerry RIM has built so far. But keep in mind that it is still a BlackBerry so don’t expect it to compete with the iPhone or the Android on the number of Apps. That doesn’t bother me at all as at the end of the day, I prefer to use a device that has a good keyboard and screen while being fast to operate with a decent battery life . The BlackBerry Bold 9900 succeeds on all those accounts and creates an excellent touch and type combo. In fact, the experience is so good that I can easily see RIM moving most of their devices to such a form factor. The BlackBerry Bold 9900 will be my primary device of choice for the foreseeable future. RIM has delivered.
Want the Bold 9900? Try your luck with the competition we’re running with RIM for giving one unit away.
