BlackBerry Bold 9700 (Onyx)

So early last month I made a bit of an impulse buy. I went past Vodashop to ask if they had the new BlackBerry Bold 9700 in, even though Vodacom's marvellously up-to-date website didn't mention it. In fact, Vodashop did have it in stock. I wanted to think about it, being the careful shopper I am, but when they mentioned it was the last one in stock, impulse took over and I bought it. I was due a cellphone upgrade last year in July, but hadn't found a phone worth upgrading to compared to the BlackBerry Bold 9000 from work, and had been waiting for the 9700. The 9700 is being sold on the same contracts and at the same price as the Bold 9000; this meant I could continue on my BlackBerry 100 contract and pay in R1900 for the phone, or have no pay-in amount and pay an extra R80 per month. I took the latter.

The BlackBerry Bold 9000 (which I posted about a while back) was a really, really good smartphone, and it suited me well, with big keyboard and screen. The 9700 is a smaller phone - virtually identical in size to the BlackBerry Curve 8520 and 8900 phones - with a smaller screen and smaller keyboard.

This is what it looks like (though it does look better in person):

I rather like it - very elegant looking, but robust too.

The upgrade was dead easy: plugged in the 9000 to my PC, used Device Switch Wizard on the BlackBerry Desktop Manager, plugged in the 9700, and everything was copied over. I re-downloaded a few apps just to make sure I got the right version for my phone.

Compared to the Bold 9000:

• With twice as much on-board RAM for applications (256MB vs. 128MB), it's noticeably faster (despite the same CPU), and can run and store more applications. I typically run around 10 apps at the same time, and I found that after I upgraded the 9000 to OS 5.0, the low amount of memory left caused some stability issues (and that was after removing some apps!).
• The screen is marginally smaller, but with a 480x360 resolution, vs. the Bold's (and iPhone's) 480x320, the screen is remarkably vibrant and crisp.
• The keyboard is smaller than the 9000's, but I'm adapting to it.
• Instead of a trackball (which could apparently be problematic), the 9700 has a tiny trackpad which work really well. It's a far better navigation device.
• The camera is 3.2MP vs. the 9000's 2.0MP, with image stabilisation and much better colour. It's still not Sony Cybershot league, but is much improved.
• Sound quality of the external speaker is excellent - better than the 9000, which was good anyway.
• The 9700 only has 256MB of on-board storage, and it's apparently not addressable as mass-storage, vs. the 9000's 1GB of on-board storage. That's not a major problem since I'm using my 8GB micro-SD card anyway, and it's certainly less confusing.
• Battery life is way better on the 9700 compared to the 9000, despite the same CPU and battery.
• Speed is very impressive; it flicks through things with the hourglass only showing very rarely.

I do wish RIM had put media previous/stop-play/next buttons across the top, like on the Curve 8520; that's an unfortunate oversight. Built-in apps are decent enough, but the same as previous BlackBerrys. I had to hunt around to find the Vodafone Sat Nav application; it wasn't in the most obvious place.

I just had some fun with Bluetooth - I connected it to my PC, and discovered that I could play stereo music from my phone to my PC, via Bluetooth; that's kinda neat. I can use my PC's audio/mic for calls too, from the looks of it.

I've been customising things a bit; I downloaded and installed the BlackBerry Theme Builder, and built a theme that I like, with an emphasis on showing off the phone's wallpaper (I use Wallpaper Changer to change my phone wallpaper every 15 minutes). A very helpful person resized and cleaned up a whole bunch of icons for me (taken from the open-source Crystal icon set) to replace the dull Blackberry ones.

This is what my main screen and main app screen look like now, with the revised theme (actual screenshots from my phone):