The new BlackBerry Bold 9700

Blackberry Bold 9700

The BlackBerry has quickly become a very popular handset in South Africa. Not only because of its ability to send free messages to other BlackBerry users but also because the latest handsets are actually very nice. Having said that I am not the biggest fan of BlackBerry and looking at most of the new models, having used a few, I still feel like I am using a phone that was made 5 years ago. This is unlike the feeling I get when playing with an iPhone or the latest Android release.

The new BlackBerry Bold 9700 offers the features that you expect from a smartphone; built-in GPS, Wi-Fi®, a 3.2MP camera and a sharp display that is bigger than your normal handset. What does set it apart from a majority of the smartphones on the market is the fully fledged QWERTY keyboard that most South African’s have become used to and refuse to try their hand (or rather their finger) at a touch screen keyboard.

“The BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone builds on the success of the original model with new, top-of-the-line features in a smaller and lighter design,” said Deon Liebenberg, regional director for Sub-Sahara Africa at Research In Motion. This does sound great even though the trend of smaller seems to have been thrown out the window with the need for bigger screens to display the endless multimedia possibilities.

Key features of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone include:

• 4.29″ x 2.36″ x 0.56″ (109 mm x 60 mm x 14.1 mm) and weighing only 4.3 oz (122 grams)
• 2.44″ light-sensing display (480 x 360 resolution at 245 ppi)
• Highly tactile full-QWERTY keyboard
• Innovative touch-sensitive trackpad
• Built-in Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g)
• 3.2 MP camera with variable zoom, autofocus, flash and video recording
• Built-in GPS for maps and other location-based applications, as well as photo geotagging
• Access to BlackBerry App World™, featuring a broad and growing catalog of mobile applications developed specifically for BlackBerry smartphones. Categories include games, entertainment, IM and social networking, news, weather, productivity and more

We are hoping to get a review phone to put it through it’s paces and compare it to the HTC Hero that we were playing with at the end of last year.