Blackberry Bold 9790

Blackberry Bold 9790

Overview:
The Blackberry Bold 9790 had its launch event in Indonesia and won’t be available anywhere else until early 2012 except for the launch location. This basically shows Blackberry’s globalization initiative. The Blackberry Bold 9790 pretty much looked like the Blackberry Curve 9360 with a touch of the Bold 9900.

The angle of the keypad or “fret style” angled keys as Blackberry would call it is there along with the touchscreen which is a personal favourite. The screen is smaller but there is however a decrease in the processor and the resolution.

Blackberry seems to love the optical trackpad and the truth is so do we. It’s the first mouse like controller on a phone and is certainly present in the Bold 9790.

Features:
The new Bold 9790 has a slightly slower processor that only goes as much as 1GHz and a resolution that’s 360×480. The body also has a good finish and the best part is that the Bold 9790 doesn’t seem to have any empty spaces in it. It looks as if there is no wasted space on the Bold 9790 but this brings a new problem as to where I can slip in a $20 bill as backup money.

The Bold 9790 has a QWERTY “fret style” keypad that has slightly elevated parts on the keys. Although the keypad may be a bit small it’s not hard to get used to. The design of the keys makes it easier to know where your fingers are going.

The Bold 9790 of course has the signature optical trackpad right where it should be. There is a loud speaker and a standard 3.5mm jack. The bold has 8GB of built-in storage, microSD slot and 768 MB of RAM.

All the standard network connections are there such as WiFi and Bluetooth but no infrared. Who actually uses infrared anyway?

There is also a 5MP camera with auto-focus and a LED flash. However, the video is only VGA. The Bold 9790 also runs on Blackberry OS 7.0.

Performance:
Even if there is a decrease in the processing power this doesn’t mean that the sexy Blackberry Bold 9790 is any less capable. There are no lags in the loading of the applications and there doesn’t seem to be any problems with how the processor handles everything. The processor may be weaker but it doesn’t matter because that’s all the Bold 9790 needs.

The touchscreen is a bit small but that’s a normal thing for Blackberry veterans. Getting used to it is nothing challenging. The optical trackpad also does what it should do without any problems. As a bonus the trackpad is one of the best toys for those boring moments of waiting for something.

The sound from the loudspeaker is crisp and wonderful and the camera takes above average photos; the drawback though is that the videos are not as good as one would expect.

The battery can last for more than a whole office day and the ride home without having to plug in to anything and on normal usage; normal in terms of using the Bold 9790 for texting, calling and some web browsing and not anything extreme like dipping it into a pit of molten lava.

Verdict:
The Bold 9790 is the new phone of Blackberry and it doesn’t seem to have surpassed any previous Blackberry phones by any degree. It seems to be a typical Blackberry phone that has all the default features along with the low number of available applications; which should definitely change soon.

All in all the Blackberry Bold 9790 would rate a 3.5 with 5 as the perfect score. The deductions came from the decreased processor power, decreased resolution and the VGA video camera. The upside would be that the functions of the Bold 9790 doesn’t show any signs of lagging and everything that makes a phone a Blackberry is definitely there.

The greatest bonus would be the affordable price that comes along with it. The Blackberry Bold 9790 is said to be around $500 which is definitely a great price for a phone with these kinds of features. If you’re looking for a phone that can do them all then look somewhere else, but if you’re looking for a phone that can do what you want it to do then the Bold 9790 may be what you are looking for.