Shira's Blackberry Bold 9700 Review

It's been almost three years since I got my Blackberry Pearl. Since then, I've used multiple Blackberries for work, and also had the Blackberry Curve (for which I did no review). Being a slight Blackberry junkie (who somehow managed to let the Curve 8900 come out without buying it), I was compelled to go out and buy the new Blackberry Bold 9700 just a few days after T-Mobile released it. While in some ways, the Bold is not a giant leap from my Curve, there are some highlights I'd like to mention given regarding my initial thoughts on the device.

• First of all, Blackberry continues to impress me with how easy it is to transfer from one BB device to another. I simply had both devices plugged into my laptop and the Blackberry Desktop Manager software transferred my data/settings (including to the browser history level) from my Curve to the Bold. Outstanding.
• They replaced the trackball with a touchpad for movement. This works very well. The only downside is that for someone (like Ben) used to a touchscreen phone, he may be inclined to also think that the screen is a touchscreen, and I did have to wipe off an ugly fingerprint from the bright, gorgeous screen.
• Battery life is fabulous. Giving into some old wives tale, I still run down the battery a time or two when a phone is new. Well, it took me 5 days of medium usage to run this battery down.
• There is a 3.2 megapixel camera which takes nice photos (haven't tried the video yet).
• While Blackberry still gets a bum rap for its browser capabilities, running this phone over 3G has definitely increased my browser usage, and I think they have made some slight browswer improvements.
• While Blackberry's operating system/menus/applications remain somewhat primitive, there are certain improvements such as the number of choices you have in constructing profiles, and visual improvements to make the applications and interactions look a little (very little) less stark.
• All in all, it's a slimmed down, souped up, upgraded version of the Curve. It runs faster, it's sleeker and remains true to its Blackberry roots to provide a great messenging phone.

After only 6 days of use, my only negative comment so far is that they changed the USB adapter size from the standard that all of my past Blackberries have had. Thus, while I would have had a dozen extra adapters lying around, I am currently beholden to the one that came with the phone.

Will the Bold 9700 rock your world? No. Will it prove to be a good upgrade? I'm hoping so.