BlackBerry Bold 9650 User Reviews

The build quality is alright. The phone is all plastic and gets dents really easily but the back looks the greatest with some soft touch and nice plastic design. The reception of the phone really good. You don't have to worry about losing connection and the connection is solid. The call quality on the phone is really good with good volume strength and clear tones, my only complaint though is when you put it on speaker. The internet on this phone is horrible. It is very slow and takes forever to load up. All my multimedia is within the app world which honestly really doesn't have good apps. The camera on the phone is really good and takes crisps shots that are clear. The U.I speed is alright. It freezes once in while and sometimes has a delay when opening up apps. The keyboard is really amazing. I was able to text really fast and and hardly made any mistakes. The display is also really nice because of the brightness and the really nice colors and how crisp it is. The battery life is really good and lasts you just about the whole day even with heavy usage.

Installed OS 6 soon after I got this phone so this review is based on OS 6 running on it.
The browser is laggy and renders pages too slow. Has javascript though so u won't feel the absense of a flash playing.
The UI is beautiful for a blackberry phone. Good email management as usual.
Not many apps available for customization. Crappy media player, okay photos.
The trackpad of the phone usually comes in the pack deformed in some way but it still works and my louspeaker stopped working after the fifth fall, hasn't happened to any of my other phones.
Its average compared to other phones but amongst other BBs its great!

-I have had this phone for about a year now. I was first in line to get it when it came out. I am a huge Blackberry fan, I have had almost every model to date, Storm2, Curve, Pearl and Pearl Flip. This phone has made me the most consistently happy. I have also had an iPhone (Hated it) and a Droid (hated it) and I can honestly say this is my favorite phone I have owned. Its very solid and feels good in your hand, the keyboard is pretty much magical, I can type without looking at this point and rarely mess up. OS6 adds some very nice features such as BEING ABLE TO TYPE MORE THAN 160 CHARACTERS IN A TEXT!!!! Which I love, but I do feel like OS6 slowed the phone down some what. I almost wish I could go back to OS5 with the texting feature bumped up. I think this phone is getting some what dated though, and its time Verizon releases a new one for sure.

Ok so I've decided to do a review for this phone so new buyers know what to expect. Overall the phone is built pretty well. The only flaw this phone has is that the gaping between the buttons aren't wide enough and as a result the plastic rubs against each other and you get squeaky keys...

As far as call quality and stuff goes its perfect.

The camera is pretty damn good for a 3.2 MP. I guess the lens is really good since pictures come out looking incredible.

Keyboard is easy to use but it took me a couple days to get used to the slanted keys. However once you get used to it typing without looking is easy.

The only complaint I have is the size of the screen. If there was some kind of blackberry with a big screen AND keyboard I would be sold cause sometimes reading long emails or watching youtube videos isnt practical on this phone because of the small screen...

Oh and the battery needs to be charged every night. Sometimes I dont even make it a full day...

Verizon Wireless: Got this as a result of a free upgrade from the Tour for a long drawn out reason. Overall the usability of the keyboard is very good for a non touch screen phone. Delay is very minimal in typing. The track pad is much better than the trackball, even the upgraded one from the tour. The only downside is if your finger is dry it is a bit of a pain to scroll. The phones process very fast except when running certain programs from BB AppWorld, for me mainly financial ones. New features, like wi-fi seem to be nice but I never use them. The battery life does seem to be a little worse than with the tour if the phone is used to its full capacity on an average day. Processor tends to become slow when having multiple conversations either with BBM's, BBM/SMS or SMS/SMS. Deleting lengthy conversations usually tends to help as well as a more charged battery. No major defaults to speak of after using it for 4 months. Camera and Video are very good though occasionally flash does not work properly in lighting conditions. Web Browser occasionally loads slow even with full bars but that seems to problems from all BB alike.

So I finally got around to buying my first ever smartphone just over a month ago and it was the BlackBerry Bold 9650 from Sprint, and unfortunately it fell so short of my expectations that I ended up sending it back to Sprint within my initial 30-day no risk trial period for a refund.First the good:The phone looks sharp, feels great in the hand, has excellent screen resolution and takes amazing photos and videos. The way that the phone handles emails, messaging and texts is outstanding and makes such interactions with your contacts about as seamless and efficient as possible. BlackBerry's true push-email, unlike most other smartphone's "pull" email software worked flawlessly on my Gmail accounts.Next the so-so:I had read on another website that if you look closely at the Bold's optical track pad from an 'edge-on' perspective, you'll notice that it's not installed flush with the face of the phone and in fact it's sitting at an angle, just as though it wasn't seated properly when it was installed. I did notice this to also be true on my unit. So while the overall build-quality feels great and solid, there is at least one area where it does appear as though some QA work wasn't fully done. The call quality was surprisingly just so-so and have had much better reviews from my friends who have heard me talking to them on my replacement cheap 'dumb' phone, so more expensive doesn't necessarily mean better voice quality at all.Lastly, the bad:I had miserable success in using location-based apps on this phone, everything from Endomondo, Gowalla and Foursquare were all very wonky in how they performed. The unit continually showed me quite far away from where I was actually located and even though I double and then triple checked to ensure my GPS features were fully enabled, that didn't seem to help much. So I was left with a smart phone that wasn't so smart, and this was the deciding factor in my choosing to return it to Sprint. Another negative aspect of this phone is the browser, which I understand is supposed to be improved when Sprint releases BlackBerry OS 6 but during the time I had the phone this hadn't been done yet so the internet browsing experience was among the worst of your smart phone options. One also have to remember that there are not nearly as many apps available for Summary:While the Bold looks good, it is getting quite archaic now in it's tired design and while the folks at RIM do some things very well with their product (eg. email, messaging, etc), they're way behind the curve in how it handles the more emerging technologies (eg. location-based apps in particular). While this definitely isn't a bad phone at all it's just not as cutting edge enough to make it worthwhile to commit to for a new two year agreement with a carrier. 

I own the Bold 9650 And the EVO4G and they are both excellent devices. I use the Bold for business and the ease in retrieving EMails with a Blackberry is still the easiest and most simplified. I have owned 4 Blackberrys prior to the Bold and this one by far is the best. It can't be properly compared to any of the touch screen smartphones. If games and music are what you're looking for go for a touch screen. If you want a business device then the Blackberry Bold should work well

I switch phones a lot to try everything out and the bold is for sure my favorite phone so far. Texting and emailing is way easy on the bold compared to any of the htc touch screens. RIM has the OS down pretty well. The only downfall is the internet browsing is a little slow but thats it. OS6 should be faster. The camera takes awesome pictures for a 3.2 mp. And of course the trackpad is a must compared to the tour. I could have purchased the evo but still am too happy with my bold to reconsider.

I have the same comment about the charger plug as the other reviewer.  It is in a bad place, whether you are right or left handed.  The lower position makes it difficult to use the phone.  The phone gets hot when it is charging, not like my 8330.  I am not crazy about this phone.  There are several issues and I am not sold on this phone.  I felt like throwing it against the wall, I never felt that way about the 8330.  I am not adverse to other phones, I have used many including the IPhone. The book is wrong on several places and even tech support had difficulty finding the right answers.   I have several issues with this phone, I won't go into all of them.  One major issue is the numbers are in red.  I am not colorblind but I have trouble seeing the numbers.  My husband is colorblind and he cannot see the numbers at all.  He couldn't upgrade from the 8330 to this phone at all.  Blackberry needs to address that.  I do like it that the keys have a slant.  The cursor pad instead of the trackball is very fluid and moves a lot.  I liked the way the trackball worked - I did have to get mine replaced because it fell out - but it was predictable and dependable otherwise.Even though I have the font on the phone set to a larger font, the browser is very difficult to read and I won't use that if it can't be changed.  I don't know at this point if I will keep the 9650 or send it back.

I have had this phone for a week now, no problems what so ever. It's an amazing upgrade from the 8330. the picture and video quality is unbelievable. the only thing i don't like is where the plug is for the battery charger. The same issue with the tour, Its such an awkward place that it's hard to type while charging, but that's definitely something that can be overlooked for this phone! Battery life seems a bit short but it may be because I'm constantly playing with it since it's new. Hopefully it will get better. Internet is much faster and actually shows up as real websites now, unlike on the 8330. All in all i would absolutely recommend this phone!

 Did Have 8330 curve. Can not compare these two phones. 9650 is just so much better in every area.  Call quality is better, the picture and video quality is very good also. WIFI is great! Overall RIM did a great job for this phone.  Now just bring on O.S. 6.0 for a little faster internet and I would say this is a perfect phone!