UK mobile phone reviews - BlackBerry Bold 9700 Review

Your BlackBerry Bold 9700 Reviews

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Reviewer: Craig - Brentwood, UK
Date: 6th Aug 2010

I absolutely love this phone! It's got so many great features, but is still so easy to use! I would recommend it to anyone, BBM is fantastic. The only letdown is the camera, would have expected at least 5 megapixels in this day & age, but 3.2 isn't too bad & takes a decent shot.

Get this phone. NOW!

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Reviewer: Steff - UK
Date: 29th Jul 2010

Fantastic BlackBerry! As always they make outstanding mobiles! I am using the white version of the 9700 & looks are amazing true professional phone for business & pleasure! This handset wipes the floor with the apple iPhone 4 hands down! At least I am not told how to hold it & don't need a case to get a signal! I can hold this phone how I want & still get full signal, as I am typing this review from my blackberry now :) words can't describe the features it has got, email is amazing & mail box features are brilliant! BBM is the most wanted feature is very fast when sharing data with my friends paired with the high resolution display that give bright crisp clear images & web browsing.

I could go on & on about it, but to understand how remarkable this handset really is you must buy it!

The only thing I could fault is the app for Facebook but that's nothing to do with the phone & RIM are working on a new app so when that's out I will not have a fault to moan about :).

DON'T BE FOOLED BY the iPhone, DON'T GET SUCKED INTO THERE TRAP BECAUSE THEY TELL YOU HOW TO HOLD YOUR PHONE & FOB YOU OFF WITH A FLIMSY BUMPER CASE & the YELLOW SPOTS ON YHE SCREEN. WELL 'THEY WILL GO IN TIME' SAYS APPLE!
Fantastic customer service aye?

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Reviewer: Mia - Birmingham, UK
Date: 9th Jul 2010

It's the first ever BlackBerry I have had.

It was hard to get my head round how to use it properly during the first few weeks. I had a pink Samsung Tocco previously. My BlackBerry makes my old phone look rubbish. I couldn't be without my BlackBerry it's amazing.

I also love that you won't get bored of the appearance of the phone as there are a massive range of cases that you can buy.

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Reviewer: Simon - UK
Date: 20th May 2010

Pro's.

- Great size.
- Good battery life.
- Great screen.
- Good navigation.
- Simple.

Cons.

- Screen too small.
- Keyboard to small.
- Without BES seriously limited.
- No proper IMAP client or support.
- Unchangeable email size limit.

The 9700 is a pleasant device. It looks good, comes with a nice case & is a pleasure to use. With extensive use the battery still lasts nearly 2 days which is a better than iPhone's 8 hours!

The reason I have rated the phone so poorly is its functionality. POP email works great, but if you use multiple devices for accessing your email you will most likely be using IMAP. There is no IMAP folders support & older messages do not even appear. This is a disaster. It means that you need to have your desktop handy as you cannot find the email you need on the device.

As I use a Mac, there is also serious limitation here. Synchronisation invariably leads to duplicate entries, which becomes frustrating over time.

Another problem is that emails over 3MB will be truncated & cannot be downloaded. There is no option to alter this. I find it surprising that such limitations have been imposed by Blackberry. Should someone send you a document you need for a meeting & it is over this size you will not be able to download it.

I should mention that if you have a company that uses exchange server & you can get Blackberry Exchange Server, these limitations disappear. But for anyone else these become serious problems.

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Reviewer: Stephen - Telford, UK
Date: 18th May 2010

Nice looking phone with plenty of apps available for download (most at a cost).

Battery life isn't great when using Wi-Fi, many emails & calls. Usually get about 12 hours of heavy use, so often need to plug in to charge in the car & when at a PC.

So far I am on my 3rd BB Bold 9700 in 5 months. First one crashed & when it eventually rebooted, it wouldn't do anything but sit there looking pretty.

Second one stopped recognising the installed media card & this one, so far seems fine.

Keys are a little fiddly as they're angled in a peculiar manner & I've learnt to keep the sides of my thumb nails longer than usual so to catch the correct keys.

Not a bad phone, but far from great.

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Reviewer: W Grant - Edinburgh, UK
Date: 23rd Apr 2010

This is my third Blackberry. I purchased it from the Carphone Warehouse & after 6 weeks the delete key fell out without it having any bumps or bruises! Dealing with the retailer has been a nightmare. NEVER had a mobile that has failed on me in 18 years, regret buying this & above all else regret having done this through the Carphone W.

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Reviewer: FM - Birmingham, UK
Date: 30th Mar 2010

This is my first Blackberry, I have tried friends & researched it prior to getting it so I knew pretty much what I was getting.

Overall I would rate this phone as superb 9.9 out of 10. I have read other reviews & all the moans seem to be because they are unaware of how to do things. The design is excellent, size fits excellent in the hand, the classy silver & black case looks good, the leather back it good for stopping the phone move.

The keys took me a couple of days to get used to & I now text or mail faster than my old phones. Especially touch screen. The screen is clear with no problems, it is a little hard to see in direct sunlight but that's a minor thing.

Connectivity is a dream. So simple to set up mails on any account. These arrive within a minute or so of real time. Reading them is simple & attachments are clear & easy. I have recently been abroad & wanted to turn the emails feature off,. Simple, in set up options turn off 'data whilst roaming', then when you go into a WiFi hot spot reconnect & they all pop up free of charge. I have an 8 gig micro SD in mine, this has connected to iPlayer & downloaded my music. All easy to listen to.

The camera is much better than I thought, pictures come out clear on my laptop, sure it's not a Sony 12mega pixel, but that phone was so useless & slow it got sent back. Connecting to the laptop is simple, all pictures transferred in seconds, music added, ring tones added. Had a bit of trouble syncing calendar, Blackberry need to sort that out, I opened a Google mail account to sync with but it seems to double everything. It must be me doing something wrong there, but still great. The GPRS is fast & accurate, with Google maps it is accurate & sharp.

Battery life, well with plenty of use I charge every three to four days. With long calls etc it comes down to two days, my last Nokia N95 had to be charged every night, Blackberry got this battery right. General usability is excellent, the track pad is so easy to use, the layout of options is easy, plenty of choice to customise, like the bed side mode, alarms, etc. I have to say to finish, I love this phone, it is without a doubt the best phone I have owned.

Hope this review helps.

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Reviewer: Fi - Worcester, UK
Date: 11th Feb 2010

This is my forth Blackberry in 3 years, eventually the roller ball sticks & stops on the others & my last one the 'alt' key also stopped working so I got a free upgrade to the latest Bold 9700. I am very disappointed, yes. The trackpad is better, an improvement, but some of the features such as 'space' bar to get the call log seems to have gone & it is not so easy to make a call anymore. Instead of going back to the main screen menu straight away, when I press the BB key, I am sometimes taken via a pop up style window with a few apps showing on it. The keys are all raised in different directions, which make it really hard to type fast without getting random capitals interspersed in the text & full stops! I type with both hands & usually very quick, but this has slowed me down dramatically - I've tried changing the key sensitivity but this doesn't seem to work. Overall I don't like it. It's slowed my life down. I think it's trying to be an iPhone when it's not!

I would happily go back to my Curve!

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Reviewer: Zii - Liverpool, UK
Date: 8th Feb 2010

This is my first BlackBerry so I was a bit anxious. However, I read all the great reviews & decided it was time.

It's such a great & wonderful phone. The apps are great but kind of a little expensive but they have great free apps that are a real steal.

The keys are a bit smaller than the Bold 9000 which was what my dad had that made me fall in love with the Bold series. I tried an E71 but couldn't stand the small keys that take me forever to send a text. The keypad still needs some getting used to. I love the trackpad, it's so user friendly.

I have two main issues with the phone. I don't know if all blackberries are like this but when I connect the USB to my computer I can't access my pics & stuff so can't send my media files to my system. When I tried to do so by Bluetooth, it took almost an hour to send a single file. If these can be fixed, it would make it such a great phone for me.

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Reviewer: Ten - Leicester, UK
Date: 20th Jan 2010

After having the iPhone I had my doubts if it would be any good well, yes it is but not as user friendly. It's a lot better for things like making a phone call the reception is better, everywhere. Emails are slightly harder to configure but when you get it going it's faster & more professional.

Apps on this are not as good & more expensive.

The battery is excellent I got tired of (with the iPhone ) going to work surfing the net getting there & by the time I got to my destination the battery was almost gone. Not with this, surf the net, ring the wife, go to work surf on the way home & still enough for another day! Ace!

The keypad is small but you get used to it. The typos on the iPhone were getting me down there better on this. There is 1 major floor the music player is a joke it plays music but no way of building a play list on the move. How hard could this be? A software upgrade is essential as this would be a major edition. Anyway I prefer this baby somehow I don't know why it just feels a little more grown up. The world & his brother have iPhones now when you get on a train & you can see everybody has iPhone. I was once told people like white sliced bread so give them that, well I like brown bread & I like my BlackBerry I may be against the trend but believe me when I say it's good.

One thing though download Google app. The maps good & all the other bits & bobs just are worth having for free. A few tweeks this could destroy the iPhone if only they had consulted me about the software!

P.S if your a developer with java skills get on this, not many great apps, this will really get you on the map with a few good ideas.

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Reviewer: Lee - Leicester, UK
Date: 29th Dec 2009

This is my first Blackberry & what a great phone, I tried the other Smartphones HTC hero etc & sent them all back before sticking with this. I have got it on Orange & when it connects to WiFi in your home or anywhere it picks up UMA signal which makes & receives your calls, SMS, MMS over your WiFi Internet so if you have poor reception in your home it doesn't matter on UMA it's always good.

It's a really good looking phone & easy to use the track pad is cool nice to have a physical keypad instead of a touch screen which I couldn't get on with, some people may disagree though, not a heavy phone or too big unlike the iPhone or hero etc so fits nicely in your pocket.

You get your emails sent to it from your provider & you can manage them as if you're looking at them on a computer perhaps not as many apps as android or iPhone but there are still loads to download from Blackberry.

If you want a phone to make & receive calls texts & emails & surf the net without all the fancy touch screen stuff this is the one for you.

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Reviewer: Tom - UK
Date: 9th Dec 2009

After previously having a 9000, I am very pleased with what Blackberry have produced. I completely disagree that it has been lowered to be more like a curve 8900 since its far better looking, & in fact better also than the old 9000. It is light & small in the hand, but not too small & the keyboard is the perfect size even for someone like myself with big fingers. The technology is much better than the old bold & responds much quicker as the old model repeatedly froze on many occasions. Having a trackpad is a much better idea & responds quicker than the old trackball which used to get jammed up. Overall the new model is twice as good along with looking a lot smarter & more elegant.

I think this is BlackBerry's last chance they can get away with the same old stuff on each phone as the only difference between models is the appearance. Seriously need to make some major changes & go forward since all the phones have been the same & they have to get into the 21st century & UPDATE! (that wasn't a criticism, just need a kick up the back side!).

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Reviewer: Matt - UK
Date: 7th Dec 2009

Just got my hands on this beauty two days ago as a free upgrade. I am absolutely loving it so far, this is my first ever BlackBerry & if all their future products are this good I am going to stick with them.

First impressions upon un-boxing it were very good, the device looks very sleek & well designed, the build quality & materials used are second to none. Considering that it has a full QWERTY keypad RIM have managed to make it look smooth & easy to use.

I've read a lot about the new trackpad which replaces the old trackball, I had a quick go on the original Bold 9000 in the phone shop & wasn't blown away by the trackball, I can see how over time it would fail. I also think that the new Bold 9700 looks a lot nicer in comparison, being noticeably smaller & more modern looking. The optical pad is fantastic, sensitive & easy to navigate through menus etc.

The camera really surprised me as well, my last phone had a 5.0MP & took pretty decent snaps, the 3.2MP on this takes pictures of equal quality & in bad light conditions I would say actually better. The video quality is excellent also this probably has a lot to do with the gorgeous crystal clear screen.

The keypad is another feature that I find great, making texting & web browsing so much quicker & easier than on all my previous phones. The keys are quite closely packed together but thanks to the raised shapes are easy to use.

The amount of things you can adjust & tweak in the options are truly mind boggling, it's nice to be able to customise everything to your own preference, even including the trackpad sensitivity!

I can't find anything I dislike about this device as yet, & have just installed blackberry app world which is brilliant as I can now add more applications to an already impressive list.

The battery life seems to be very good for a Smartphone, I had a Nokia N81 which had an appalling battery.

So to conclude if you are after a Smartphone that is stylish & practically perfect, look no further than the Bold 9700! Sure you could get an iPhone, but then EVERYONE else already has! Be different, it's worth it trust me.

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Reviewer: Toby Brooks - London, UK
Date: 27th Nov 2009

I am a big fan of the Bold 9000 & was eagerly awaiting the arrival of the latest addition to the bold series. My initial impression is quite disappointing. There is no denying that it is a very sleek handset, but it simply doesn't feel like a bold, it is more like the latest curve with 3G, it feels like a natural progression from the 8900. The rubber side buttons may prove to be better resisting the outdoor elements, but it looks cheaper than the 9000 housing. The keyboard is neat & you do adjust to it, but it just feels squeezed & compromised with some of the keys seeming a little too small.

Overall though it is nice & light in the hand, & if the 9000 was a bit too chunky or heavy in the pocket for you, or you are an 8900 owner then you will adore this. The trackpad is a dream, no more thumb ache!

But if you are a bold 9000 owner, don't panic it's all good because unless you have the cash to burn, there is no need for too much excitement over this.
PS. I am keeping hold of my 9000 ;).



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