RIM BlackBerry Bold 9930 Review

Introduction:

When you hear the word bold attached to a smartphone, one would easily surmise something that’s daring, adventurous, and openly intrepid. Looking back at the original BlackBerry Bold 9000 from a few years back, there’s no kidding that RIM wanted to bring something remarkably tantalizing to the table – and since then, we’ve seen the Bold family expanding with many elegant devices under its belt. Still, one has to ask how RIM is going to get back into relevancy when the original Torch fizzled to accomplish that perennial feat last year.

This time around, rather than concocting a totally new smartphone from the ground up, RIM is summoning up some inspiration from past memorable devices. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, they bring to us the iconic looking BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930 – the next evolutionary BlackBerry that actually intends on showcasing RIM’s strengths. Indeed, this is going to be their primary workhorse in the foreseeable future seeing that it packs some impressive specs for a BlackBerry device, while retaining that acclaimed design that we all know and love. Not surprisingly, it should spark the interest of loyal BlackBerry users, but will it also entrance new users?

The package contains:

• RIM BlackBerry Bold 9930
• microUSB cable
• Wall Charger
• Polishing Cloth
• Swivel Holster
• Quick Reference Guide
• Safe & Product Information Kit

Design:

Gorgeous! That’s basically what best sums up the design of the BlackBerry Bold 9930. On the surface, it does bear a lot of resemblance to previous Bold handsets, but RIM is able to improve it just enough to warrant a resounding amount of adulation. Premium is yet another thing that it embodies seeing that they didn’t skimp out on high quality materials. Combining its plastic casing, it’s supplemented handsomely with its stainless steel band, soft touch accents in the rear, and solid glass like back cover. Not surprisingly, RIM delivers a handset that is solidly built to grab the attention of bystanders from afar. Moreover, we’re mesmerized by its wickedly streamlined appearance (0.41” thick) and light weight (4.59 oz) feel in the hand. Some might lament over the classic looks, but in all honesty, this is exactly the direction that RIM needs to embark on more.



You can compare the with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Considering that we’re now presented with a touchscreen, we find the move to a larger 2.8” VGA (640 x 480) display to be fitting in allowing better ease with navigation – and it shows profoundly in its execution. Crunching down the numbers, it offers an impressive pixel density of 287 ppi, which is able to produce some stunning looking details and clarity that exceed our expectations. At the same time, colors are vivid and robust looking at almost every angle to ensure that nothing goes unnoticed. Initially, our natural inclination is to navigate with its optical trackpad, but it’s not that long afterwards that we find ourselves relying on the touchscreen more for the sake of convenience. Without question, there’s no arguing that the touchscreen is undoubtedly the piece de resistance that solidifies the handset’s evolution.



Naturally, the handset employs all of the characteristics found with the Bold family, but there are distinctive changes that make it a refreshing device – such as the chrome trimmed buttons clinging to its stainless steel bezel. Besides that change, we see all the usual ports and buttons with the handset – like its optical trackpad, microUSB port, and 3.5 mm headset jack.


Hands down, the BlackBerry Bold 9930 has the best keyboard ever to grace any of RIM’s products! Since the handset is longer and wider than other recent Bold smartphones, the keyboard is naturally expanded to offer plenty of room to comfortably type. In addition to the spacious layout, buttons have increased in size as well to offer better distinguishability. Actually, it didn’t take us very long to adapt seeing that we were thrilled by the awesome clicky response that’s accompanied with each button press.  Not only are we able to accurately press the correct letters, but our rate is impressively consistent while typing out long passages of text. If we had to enter a texting contest of some sort, we’d totally prefer to use the Bold 9930 for it.


As much as we adore the larger 5-megapixel camera with LED flash in the rear, we’re saddened to know that it’s simply a fixed focused one – as opposed to the auto-focus found with the Bold 9650. Could it have been too much to ask for? Or maybe it could’ve conflicted in keeping it razor thin? Obviously, the glass-like back cover exudes yet another premium finish to the handset, but its bigger function is that it holds the handset’s NFC chip. Considering that mobile payment is expected to explode in the coming year, it’s nice to see the Bold 9930 offering it from the onset – despite not having much function in the near term. Removing the rear cover provides access to its 1,230 mAh battery, SIM card slot, and unoccupied microSD card slot.

Interface:

Unbelievably, the BlackBerry Bold 9930 blazes at a ridiculous pace with just about every function thanks to the speedy 1.2GHz processor it’s packing, which is complemented by its 768 MB of RAM. This handset literally puts every BlackBerry before it to shame with its fluidity and responsiveness when navigating around the platform. In fact, RIM’s proprietary Liquid Graphics technology is part of the reason we experience such a high-level rate of performance with the handset. This isn’t your dad’s BlackBerry, but rather, it’s something that we can safely say exudes the speed we’d expect with most high-end smartphones nowadays.

To match its refreshed appearance, BlackBerry OS 7 aims to complement the handset’s allure, but sadly, it fails to impress us mainly because there are very limited improvements seen with it. Not looking at the obvious fact that things are indeed speedier with the platform experience, it still looks and feels rather dated and clunky as a whole – and it doesn’t quite feel as invigorating as other mobile platforms. Specifically, we’re still finding ourselves trudging through its menu driven system, which is something that harkens to the platforms of yesterday.


Regardless of that, long time BlackBerry users will find it to be satisfactory since it caters to their needs the most with its fundamental characteristics. However, that’s exactly the one quality that ends up keeping new and potential users from gravitating towards the BlackBerry ecosystem. Of course, touch input aids in making things a bit more intuitive, but it’s still that cutthroat BlackBerry experience at its core. Eventually, we’d like to see RIM be a bit more daring, or possibly becoming bolder when it comes to reinventing the BlackBerry platform experience. Cue the music for QNX please?

Functionality:

Don’t think for a moment that because it offers a touchscreen, it’s going to have an on-screen keyboard of some sort. Well, you’re going to rely on using the physical keyboard for all your inputting needs with this one. But of course, that shouldn’t be a downer since it’s the best experience we’ve seen on a BlackBerry smartphone to date.

What can we say about email on the Bold 9930? For starters, it’s what you’d expect out of any BlackBerry, which is a fantastic experience that caters to the needs to power users with push email support. As much as we adore its intuitive and straightforward nature, we’d still like to see some features like threaded conversations to organize things just a bit more.


Launching any of the Bold 9930 organizer apps, there are no major changes with any of them. With the Calendar app, we’re able to synchronize things from our Gmail and Facebook accounts, which are actually color-coded to better distinguish appointments. Besides being able to set alarms from within the Clock app, we’re also given access to other secondary apps like the stopwatch and timer. Additionally, there is an option to enable bedside mode, which allows the clock to be displayed while preventing incoming calls or messages from popping up. Some of the other organizer apps on board with the handset include the Calculator, MemoPad, Tasks, and Voice Notes Recorder.

Camera:

Well what do you know? There’s nothing different with the camera interface of the Bold 9930! Naturally, most of the layout is reserved for the viewfinder – with some finger-friendly sized buttons lining the bottom edge. Aside from the healthy amount of scene modes available, there is nothing else that’ll entice photo buffs.


When everything appears to be in top-notch form with the handset, we’re disappointed to see its picture taking quality to be sub-par. First and foremost, it’s a fixed focused 5-megapixel shooter with this one, which means it’s not going to handle close ups or macro shots well. Outdoors, it captures faint details that tend to make it look soft as a whole. And to make matters worse, the over-exposed production appears to make colors look inaccurate and washed out. With low lighting shots, it doesn’t get any better due to the amount of graininess and digital noise muddying it up. The LED flash casts that annoying over-exposed look once again – ultimately masking any fine details in the process.


Despite seeing the same issues plaguing its video capture, its results are more passable than its still image capture performance. We do like that it captures video at the smooth rate of 30 frames per second, and that audio recording is on  the crystal clear side. Unfortunately, we’re dismayed by its low lighting video capture mainly due to the abundance of noise prevalent throughout the shot.

RIM BlackBerry Bold 9930 Sample Video:



RIM BlackBerry Bold 9930 Indoor Sample Video:



Multimedia:

At this point in the review, we’re getting a feel that very little has been done visually to OS 7 because the music player is unchanged as well. We do like its smooth looking coverflow-esque presentation, however, it would’ve been intricately useful to find some sort of mini-player, so we do not have to run the music player to execute any functions. With its speaker, it produces some loud and powerful tones, but it emits a hint of crackle that’s most evident at the loudest volume setting.


Call it a long time coming, but it’s astoundingly refreshing to find the BlackBerry Bold 9930 capable of playing 720p videos. Using the same movie trailer in encoded in MPEG-4, DivX, and Xvid 1280 x 720 resolution, the handset is able to swimmingly manhandle all of them with very little effort. Screen size isn't huge, but visually seeing the luscious details on-screen, we’re able to overlook this.



However, here’s one of the gripes we have with this “modernized” BlackBerry – it still lacks in the multimedia sharing front! Meaning, it doesn’t offer any sort of DLNA functionality out of the box, but at the same time, it misses out on having any physical connection in the form of a microHDMI port. Sadly, these are some common items that are increasingly becoming typical amongst its rivals – so it’s rather depressing to see the BlackBerry Bold 9930 still missing out on all the fun.

Packing 8GB of internal storage, it seems particularly measly in terms of capacity – especially when 16GB is the standard that we commonly expect. Nevertheless, you can supplement its size with microSD cards up to 32GB in capacity.

Internet and Connectivity:

There’s something about the BlackBerry Bold 9930 that literally fills us up with that warm fuzzy feeling inside, and rightfully so, it’s profoundly evident with its web browsing experience. The WebKit based web browser is overhauled to offer 40 percent faster browsing thanks to its combinational 1.2GHz processor and RIM’s proprietary Liquid Graphics technology. From the moment it loads the first image and text, we’re able to navigate the page instantaneously without a mere flinch of slowdown evident. Furthermore, every action has that responsive feel to give us the confidence that it’ll provide one engaging experience – despite the fact that it still lacks Flash support. All in all, we’re happy to finally experience something useful on a BlackBerry device.


Rather than being a strictly CDMA-only device, the Bold 9930 comes galloping out of the gates with global support in tow. Meaning, global travelers will be able to use it domestically with Verizon’s network, and when they’re abroad, they can connect to just about any GSM network – albeit, its 3G UMTS frequencies are not usable in the States. Nevertheless, you can seemingly connect to something faster with its 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi. Additionally, it packs other connectivity features like Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR and aGPS.

Software:

Without a doubt, business and enterprise users will be entertained by the notable features on the Bold 9930, but we find the availability of Documents To Go to be especially useful seeing that it offers the ability to create and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. On the other end of the spectrum, other users will adore its continued open embracement of social networking with apps like Facebook and Twitter available – plus, the Social Feeds app adds support to other things like RSS feeds. Moreover, being the Verizon branded device it is, we find the carrier’s presence with apps like VZ Navigator and Backup Assistant, V CAST Music, V CAST Videos, V CAST Song ID, and VZWTones. Lastly, it crams quite a few different third party apps that are preloaded as well – such as Slacker Radio, Amazon MP3 Store, Bing, Bing Maps, YouTube, and Wikitude.

Performance:

Placing voice phone calls isn’t a problem with the handset since it produces natural, distinctive, and clear voices on both ends of the line – plus, there is no evidence of any static or background noise through the earpiece. Using the speakerphone, we like that its output is very robust and prominent, but it has a tendency to muffle at the loudest volume setting. Regardless, we’re still able to comprehend our conversations using it.

Trying extremely hard to place the dreaded death grip on the handset, its signal strength remains consistent and strong in the high coverage areas within the greater Philadelphia region.

Even though it’s sporting a lower capacity 1,230 mAh battery, which is less than the 1,400 mAh one used by the Bold 9650, we’re surprised to actually find it to be more than plentiful. In fact, we’re able to place a continuous phone call for a little bit over 7 hours before completely tapping out, which is better than the 6.6 hours rated by the manufacturer. Moreover, we’re able to use the smartphone excessively over the course of a single day – with a good amount of charge still left over before bed.

Conclusion:

Without a doubt, if there’s one upcoming BlackBerry smartphone that’s worth picking up, it has to be none other than the BlackBerry Bold 9930. Sporting that iconic design that exhibits some noteworthy iterative improvements, it’s absolutely the thing that RIM needs to focus on in order to remain relevant in this competitive space. Not because it’s something totally new, but it goes to show that RIM’s success can be found by having them focus on legacy devices – while keenly placing attention on the required marked improvements we’d come to expect with most successive devices.
Granted that we’re not digging the minor changes found with OS 7, we’re more impressed with the overall speed and execution of the platform, which is attributed to the beefier hardware specs in tow. However, its anticipated $250 on-contract price is indeed steep for a handset that doesn’t quite employ today’s high-end specs sheet, but nevertheless, that’s the price that early adopters are going to pay to experience the very best from RIM’s lineup. Obviously, we can’t get them all with this beauty, like a dual-core CPU or 4G LTE connectivity, but we do like the fact that it’s packing an NFC chip and global support. Still, $250 for a good looking smartphone is rather tough to swallow in a world filled with dual-core processors, 4G speeds, high-end screens, cameras or mobile platforms that are exceptionally more refined.

Software version of the reviewed unit:
BlackBerry OS version:  v7.0.0.254

RIM BlackBerry Bold 9930 Review: