BlackBerry Bold Full Review

The discovery of the Blackberry Bold 9700 was eagerly awaited. The Bold 9700 is a beautiful smartphone looking very classy, especially through its hull painted black on the front. The grip is good.

The front includes the headset, an LED light, a large screen, an alphanumeric keyboard, a sensitive pad, a menu button and two buttons disconnect / hang up ". The right edge includes a key shortcuts to the camera, and two buttons to adjust the sound. The left edge features a button shortcuts to voice dialing, and the microphone port and a USD 3.5 mm jack ..

The lower integrating the microphone. The upper features two buttons "virtual": one to lock the Bold 9700, the other allowing the activation of standby mode. The rear panel includes a cover to access the battery, SIM and memory card, and a diode and a DSLR. Powering shows the beautiful screen of Blackberry Bold 9700.

The touch sensitive is very pleasant to use, and can point to very specific information desired (I find it more convenient than the ball that fitted the Bold 9000). Navigating the menus is fairly fluid and response times are almost instantaneous.

Navigating through menus and submenus is not very intuitive at first for someone not used to the Blackberry, but with a little practice, you end up quickly by finding its feet.

The BlackBerry Bold review covered the following functions:

The Internet and EMail Management
Playback audio and video
Taking photos and video
The GPS function,
File management office,
Java applications
Contact management and scheduling,
Other communication features


1 - Internet and E Mail Management

The Blackberry Bold 9700 makes written communication by various means, and surfing the Web.

Internet:

What progress since 8320 Curve Blackberry ... the last I tested, which left me a very bad memory, so its browser was anecdotal! The Blackberry Bold 9700 features a real web browser capable of displaying all types of websites, whatever their size.

When it launches the web browser, a window appears with the top down:

- A text box to inform the URL of a site
- A Google search box,
- A list of bookmarks saved in memory,
- History of past websites consulted

The research and consultation sites is fairly easy and quite pleasant. A shortcut available from the main menu Bold 9700 allows direct access to the platform Orange World. The Blackberry seems to be compatible with the entire Orange World services, including TV.

All sites visited can be saved as favorites, and the contents of a web page can be saved. For cons, the 'copy / paste does not seem available in the web browser.

Mail and written communication:

Like all Blackerry, the Bold 9700 excels in managing Email. The user can create multiple mail accounts. Each mail account created is accessible from the main menu as an icon. All Email approved on all mail accounts are available en masse from one single screen via the menu, which is handy.

Managing Email in plain text or html is pretty well supported, although some images in HTML mail can not always be repatriated. The management of attachments is very well designed. For mails that contain multiple files, each file can be downloaded accessed independently. Bien vu!

To enter an accented character or special, must maintain the letter key down and dragging his finger to the left or right on the touchpad, which is really not practical at all. The Blackberry Bold 9700 can also communicate via SMS and MMS.

SMS side, the rub is that messages can be seized only displayed on one line, and that any pressure from the button for changing the line will routinely send the message. Incomprehensible and surprising given the screen size of the Bold 9700. In addition to exit the replay messages of a certain size.

MMS later, the screen is available in its entirety. When selecting an image, the user can browse the various directories, view the different pictures and choose the resolution of the photo to send via MMS. Video and audio files can also be sent by MMS. The Blackberry Bold can also chat via instant messaging applications.

2 - The reading of audio and video

The Blackberry Bold 9700 includes applications like file player audio and video, allowing it to be a true multimedia smartphone.

Music

The music player of the Bold 9700 is far from a simple music player. Indeed, the Music application includes many options like the ability to classify music titles by title, artist, album, genre, ..., to create reading lists, reading the titles of random and / or repetitive.

The ergonomics of the music player is simple and well designed: the left one displays the cover of the track, right track name, name of artist, album name and genre, and bottom Screen time and under the control icons.

The speaker sound is good, although it saturates very slightly when the sound is set up. By listening with the headset, the sound is very good, although the minimum possible listening a little too loud in my opinion.

By default, a playlist is made up by default for each album. The transfer of songs performed from the application via a Bluetooth connection works perfectly.

Video:

The videos stored on the Blackberry Bold 9700 in MPEG4 are perfectly played. The quality and size of the magnificent display of this smartphone allows for comfortable video playback. The sound is also very good. The presence of a MicroSD card reader (reads cards up to 16 GB) can store many files.


3 - Taking pictures and video

The Blackberry Bold 9700 is equipped with a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, flash and 2x digital zoom.

Photos:

The user has the ability to make many adjustments (size images captured-480 x 360 to 2048 x 1536 - the quality of white, adding color effects for the geocoding of photos, ...) . The grip of the Bold 9700 when taking pictures is quite good, the hover pad beneath the screen used to trigger (the key on the right edge also allows a catch). The photos captured are fairly average quality overall.

Videos:

The quality of video captured by the Blackberry Bold 9700 seems quite successful if they are visualized on the mobile screen, but on a PC, the image is noisy or pixelated.


4 - The GPS function

With a GPS chip and access to mapping Orange Maps, Blackberry Bold 9700 (Orange in pack) acts as a navigation assistant.

A link to the mapping Orange Maps to download the application Orange Maps (about 2 MB), use free trial for 15 days. After using Nokia Maps, Garmin Mobile, CoPilot Live, TomTom and Garmin on various smartphones, the first time I discovered mapping proposed by an operator.

Orange forces, Orange Maps application is fully connected, the mapping is loaded on the Bold 9700 via a data connection. Ergonomics Orange Maps is relatively simple, which does not mean that the application is simple to use, as all navigation applications, it takes a little practice to understand how it works.

At the launch of a browser, the user can view the route in advance to the screen on a map, or start the car navigation or pedestrian modes. While browsing, the screen black and white of the application is relatively bare with only the names are viewable from the road where it circulates, the mileage remaining until the next change of direction, the total distance of the route, and time remaining.

The first attempt of car navigation over a distance of about 20 km was unsuccessful, the position could not be done. Surprising, because this was not the first attempt positioning made with Orange Maps. On the way back, navigation was finally able to start after a few minutes. The information provided by Orange Maps, though brief, proved fairly accurate.

The recalculation of a route is relatively fast, which is quite surprising for mapping accessible only via a data connection. The traffic alerts are identified only by his voice. No visual indication on screen. The data traffic are taken into account when calculating a route.

Options are available to enable the display of POIs (points of interest), but also to avoid tolls, motorways, obtain traffic alerts and .... A route can be launched from an address stored in a contact sheet.

Orange Maps can also search a place or a landmark near where it is located, or an address in advance. The user can then move around the map using the navigation pad and pointer anywhere on the map to display the screen addresses and GPS coordinates, this place can be added to favorites, and / or sent by SMS.

After 15 days of testing, the user can either buy a pass on time 24 hours for 2 euros, a 30 days pass for 7 euros. Google Maps can also be downloaded from the Bold 9700.


5 - File management office

The Blackberry Bold 9700 makes reading office files "Word, Excel, PowerPoint, text. An edit mode lets you modify and save a file. Surprising item on the model tested: the files in Acrobat (. Pdf ") does not play standard when selected from the File Explorer. By cons, Acrobat files received as attachments to Email are perfectly played. Files can be exchanged with other devices or by E. Mail, or via a Bluetooth connection.

6 - Java Applications

The application "Blackberry App World" provides access to an online store that allows you to download many applications and games free or paid. Blackberry App World is very well designed and pleasant to use. The number of applications available is quite impressive; classics such as Facebook, Shazam, Messenger, ... are also available.


7 - The management of contacts and calendar

The Blackberry Bold 9700 comes with a CD which includes a program called "Blackberry Desktop Manager, which synchronizes contacts, calendar, notes and tasks with MS Outlook.

During the first synchronization, the user has the possibility to learn various synchronization options, such as the direction in which the data will be synchronized.

The first sync was very fast. The contact sheets were recovered in their entirety, without alteration of their contents. Groups can be created to classify contacts.

Ditto for the calendar, this application works perfectly, just as synchronization with a PC. The Bold 9700 is a smartphone designed for both professionals and the general public, we expected no less from him.


8 - Other communications functions

The Blackberry Bold 9700 is also a telephone. The sound is good communication, either using the receiver located above the screen, or speaker.

The network sensitivity is very correct. A number can be made either by selecting from the contacts list, or via voice dialing, including the activation key is located on the left edge of the mobile. Speech recognition is not the point names or numbers Searched never been composed in this way.

Like all Blackberry autonomy Bold 9700 is tailored for users of mobile nomads. The Bold 9700 is at least three days on a single charge and therefore use (taking care to turn it off at night).

Tweet