I am, for one, a hard-core Apple fan and a devoted iPhone 4 user. So when I was given the Blackberry Bold 9900 to review, I was a bit skeptical at first. But after spending a week’s worth of quality time with the BB, I was reluctant to let go of it, and returned the Black Beauty with a rather heavy heart.
So what made me, an iPhone user, fall in love with the BB in such a short span of time?
Let me begin by saying that the BlackBerry Bold 9900 is luxury in itself by design. At 10.5mm, it is the thinnest BlackBerry to date, and fits snuggly into your jeans pocket. The brushed stainless steel band that surrounds the perimeter of the phone and the modified buttons add a touch of class to the device. With the addition of a touchscreen on the outside and hardware platform upgrades on the inside, this phone offers superb performance. The Bold 9900 also supports Near-Field Communication (NFC) and comes with an orientation sensor (Accelerometer), digital compass (Magnetometer) and proximity sensor. In short, this smart phone aims to deliver the ultimate experience in multimedia, productivity, as well as communication.
In the following sections, I will highlight some of the features that set this phone at or above par with the other smart phones:
TOUCH SCREEN: The capacitive touchscreen is highly responsive. A wonderful keyboard partnered with a great touch screen right at your finger tips sets this phone apart from most other smart phones. Now you can choose to caress the screen or to use the optical track pad to scroll so as not to block the screen.
KEYBOARD: Though the phone is quite broad (compared to other smart phones), the amazing QWERTY keyboard, with the chisel shape curved keys, makes typing easier and more luxurious. It is supposedly the best keyboard on a BB phone and I can personally vouch for it. If you are a person who lives and dies by sending emails, texts, tweets, and Facebook messages on the go, the keyboard itself can be reason enough for you to buy the phone. Your thumbs will be eternally grateful to you.
E-MAIL, SOCIAL FEEDS & COMMUNICATION: Undoubtedly, the Bold is the best smartphone for quick and easy communication. It can handle up to ten e-mail accounts of any type, each having its own envelope icon. The pleasant display and the readable font makes it easy on the eyes, and the keyboard shortcuts (‘r’:reply, ‘f’:forward, ‘shift+t’:to get to the top of the list) make a world of difference to those who juggle a lot of e-mails. The Facebook application has recently had an update with the integration of Facebook Chat. If you are a Twitter user, then you have a selection of Twitter apps to download from App World. The Blackberry Messenger, of course, is the best instant messaging client on the planet.
Multitasking has never been easier, as you can have all your messaging and social networking apps running at once and can interact with them as required. The notification light is a very convenient feature as a quick reference for the phone’s status. It saves a surprising amount of time, as you don’t have to interact with the phone at all to know whether or not you have new notifications.
BLACKBERRY 7.0 OS: BlackBerry 7 refines the BlackBerry OS, which has modernized the user experience and optimized it for touch screen displays. It also has the Webkit rendering engine, which adds new features based on the capabilities of the updated hardware platform. In addition to more speed, this hardware platform upgrade introduces many more features including 3D graphics, HD video recording and more. With 8GB of internal storage and an option to increase that to 32GB, this device doesn’t scrimp on memory. The BlackBerry Bold 9900’s 2.8-inch LCD provides a crisp and vivid display. Thanks to the 1.2GHz processor and Liquid Graphics there is now no lag between screen taps or swipes and even complex pages render quickly and are smooth to navigate around. The web browsing experience is quite good and tasks like switching between apps are fairly instant.
NFC: The next big thing on the Bold is NFC, or Near Field Communication, which is a short-range wireless technology that allows a phone to pair effortlessly with an information-bearing target that is 4cm or less away, such as a card, sticker or tag. Sharing of contacts and files are as easy and quick as simply aligning the backs of your NFC enabled BlackBerry smartphones. NFC also has the potential to lead the way to wireless payments in the future.
DOCUMENTS TO GO: The Premium version of the mobile office suite, Documents to Go, now comes free as standard on the Bold 9900. So now you can not only view but also create new Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on the go.
CONCLUSION
Without a doubt, BlackBerry’s latest incarnation is definitely Bold and Beautiful–it is powerful, quick, sleek and packed with a bunch of amazing features. The BlackBerry Bold 9900 is definitely on par with other top-end smart phones and may even tempt some to convert from one ‘fruity company’ to another. Blackberries are one of the most student-friendly phones, because they can go through a lot of wear and tear and still work perfectly.
There are a lot of applications that college students can use to organize their lives and improve their studying habits, such Student Docket, Dictionary.com, FlashPro, and Flashcards. In today’s competitive environment, communication and staying connected along with great social networking are of utmost importance. Having a superb mobile business tool that doesn’t always tempt you to goof around with its silly apps will do wonders for your productivity.