Affordable Mobiles

Description

The BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900 is a quantum leap for the BlackBerry. Not only is it the slimmest BlackBerry ever, it boasts a shiny new touch-screen atop the signature keyboard. It may look a lot like its forerunners, the Bold 9780 and 9700, but could it be the first modern BlackBerry?


The 9900 trims the famously business-minded phones down to just 10.5mm. The leatherette back of previous models has been replaced by a shiny plastic cover, and it feels solid yet comfortable as it lounges in your hand, ready to take a letter.

It's not as thin as smart phone rivals like the iPhone or Galaxy S II, but for a BlackBerry the 9900 borders on suave. It sports the familiar qwerty keyboard, topped by a 2.8-inch screen - and it's a capacitive touch-screen, so BlackBerry fans can tap and swipe just like those fancy Dan iPhone owners.

Inside, the 9900 is powered by a 1.2GHz processor with 768MB of RAM. It boasts a five-megapixel camera which shoots 720p high definition video.

One feature that may be of more some time in the future is an NFC chip. NFC is the technology behind contactless payments, allowing you to pay for things with an airy wave of your credit card. Phones aren't ready to pay for things yet but the technology is on its way. In the meantime some NFC-equipped phones can transfer files, photos or contact details by simply tapping them together.


The 9900 is powered by an updated version of the BlackBerry software, BlackBerry 7 OS. It's the first version to incorporate touch-screen control, with icons that you tap to open. But it still looks reassuringly familiar to existing BlackBerry users, with panels organising apps into lists of your favourite apps, apps that you have added yourself, the apps you use the most, and all the apps on the phone.

The increased size and finger-friendly responsiveness of the screen put everything you need right at your fingertips. You can move icons around too, if you want to personalise your phone, but the newfound simplicity breaks down here as you have to go through the fiddly process of selecting the icon then moving it using the trackpad instead of on the touch-screen.

For an even more personal touch, you can download apps. Unfortunately, BlackBerry App World is way behind the rival Android Market and Apple App Store in terms of both numbers and quality of apps.

As well as the expected business apps and basic apps such as email, calendar and address book, there's an excellent Facebook app. This grabs your friends' profile pictures into your contacts book so you can easily spot them when you want to get in touch. All the major Facebook features, like friend requests, messages and notifications appear alongside your news feed. Press the Menu button on a photo, link or status update and you're offered various options to like, comment or contact the person who posted it. The only feature we missed is that you can't send a picture straight to Facebook when you've snapped it on your phone.

Facebook events are also pulled into your calendar automatically, and new Facebook messages pop up alongside your new email and texts in a spiffy universal inbox.

The new browser performs impressively, loading web pages a third faster than HTC Evo 3D in our tests. Webpages look better on the improved screen. It's much easier to move around a page by tapping on the bit you're interested in to zoom in and the screen is pretty good at recognising where you're trying to tap even when its a small fiddly link. You can also copy and paste text and web addresses.

Like the iPhone, the 9900 doesn't play Flash videos or animations. This isn't the problem it once was as many Websites offer alternative types of video. You won't miss out on YouTube, for example, which has its own app.


BlackBerrys aren't noted for the quality of their cameras, and the 9900 is no exception. The five-megapixel snapper produces unremarkable pictures, full of lifeless colours and speckly image noise. The harsh flash makes a night out look like you hang out with startled ghosts, and there's a moment's wait between pressing the button and the picture being taken.

Still, if you do capture a decent shot you can tag it with your location and stick it on a map afterwards.

There's 8GB of storage for your pictures, movies and music, and you could add a microSD memory card if you need any extra legroom. The 9900 happily works with both iTunes and Windows Media Player to easily keep your MP3 collection in sync