BlackBerry Bold 9790 Review

Now, let's play spot the difference. The Bold 9790 is powered by a different processor and HD video is one of the first things scrapped. To make amends, the phone has what's probably the best BlackBerry still camera to date. Both the screen size and resolution have taken a cut but we haven’t told you the best part yet. The Bold 9790 looks no worse than the Bold 9900 and costs less.

Now, the BlackBerry Bold 9790 is merely the next-in-rank. It doesn't have the premium features of the flagship but it makes sense as a potential replacement of the year-old Bold 9780. What it does is add touchscreen to a classic package, aiming to keep the BlackBerry experience up to date.

Key features:

·         BlackBerry OS v7

·         Enhanced email and data security with BlackBerry Internet Service

·         2.45" 16M-color TFT touchscreen of 480 x 360px resolution

·         QWERTY keyboard

·         Quad-band GSM support and quad-band 3G with HSDPA

·         Dual-band Wi-Fi b/g/n connectivity

·         NFC support

·         GPS receiver and BlackBerry maps preloaded, digital compass

·         5 megapixel auto-focus camera, LED flash (surprisingly good camera, too)

·         VGA@30fps video recording

·         1GHz processor

·         768MB RAM

·         8GB of inbuilt storage

·         Optical trackpad

·         microSD card slot (up to 16GB)

·         DivX and XviD video playback support

·         Office document editor

·         3.5 mm audio jack

·         Smart dialing

·         Compact body and solid build quality

Main disadvantages:

·         BlackBerry Internet Service account is a must to enjoy all phone features

·         No HD video recording

·         No front-facing video-call camera

·         No Flash support

·         No FM radio

·         No haptic feedback

·         Super stiff lock button

·         Poor audio output quality

·         Poor loudspeaker performance

·         Wobbly back panel

The 9790 is part of the premium Bold line but comes across as more mindful of budget than your average high-end BlackBerry. It pretty much does the same job as the flagship but charges less and is not without charms of its own.

Macro Features:

Productivity

This is a space where RIM needs no introduction and device after device they have excelled in sticking to the high standards of productivity (e-mail/office applications) and improving upon it with each software update. Setting up emails on the Bold 9790 was an easy two-step process after which my phone wouldn't stop buzzing as the inbox started flooding with e-mails.

The phone has a bundled a full-version of Documents-to-go app which takes care of all your document apps. It is very easy to edit/create documents on the go on this nifty app.

The bundled earphones are great for calls but the quality left a lot to be desired considering the fact they were extremely flimsy.

Design & Usability

The Bold 9790 is a slim (110 x 60 x 11.4 mm), sleek and handsome phone that is bound to be adorned as a permanent accessory by suited professionals. The design is definitely a win and the icing on the cake is that the Bold 9790 is lightweight at just 107 grams. Ergonomically speaking, the phone sits snug in my palm and single-handed usage is easy.

The volume rocker and the camera shorcut button are on the right and the left has the 3.5mm jack. I particularly like the rubber-finish back cover in grey. It looks extremely classy.

If I know fans of Blackberry, the one thing that they will swear about their device is the QWERTY keypad and it becomes vital that the new device has a great keypad. The Bold 9790, however, falls way behind in this regard. It is good, but the Q, A and Alt keys on the left of the keypad and the P, Del and Enter keys on the right are unwieldy owing to the curved nature of the corners making the feel of the press much different than the other keys. In daily usage, this becomes a hindrance.

The new Blackberry OS 7 looks very similar to OS 6 except for the fact that RIM has done away with the transparent icons which were present on the previous iteration of the OS. I never faced any stability issues with the other devices running the same OS but the Bold 9790 crashed on me thrice during one of those intense messaging sessions. This raises an issue about stability of the device but I believe this could be a problem with the review unit.

The touchscreen on the Bold 9790 was refined and smooth, much to my surprise. The small screen doesn't hamper the experience. Also, the screen has good color reproduction and brightness levels. Visibility under bright sunlight is not an issue.

Browsing, Multimedia, Bottomline

The 5MP auto-focus camera was the surprise element in the Bold 9790 (my astonishment may also be a result of the low expectations). I found minimal chromatic aberration in daylight shots and there was absolutely no image distortion. Though processed, the images had good colours. The light from the flash spreads evenly across the entire subject. The phone captures VGA (640x480) videos in 3gp format and the quality of the captured video is decent. There is some evident screen tearing though.

The great browsing experience continues in the Bold 9790. Pages loaded extremely fast and the single column view for most websites made reading an easy job.

Clarity is the selling proposition for the Bold 9790's loudspeaker. It isn't very loud but I prefer this anyday over sound jarring at maximum volume. The music player has a great interface and the sound quality through a pair of good earphones is crystal clear and loud. The video player played all the videos I threw at it except 1080p ones.

After the battery life debacle with the Curve 9360, I had set me expectations really low with this phone too. And I think it was a good idea because the battery life is fair to say the least. You will need to run to the charger after 20 hours of normal everyday use.

Price: Rs. 26,450 Apprx.