Will the Bold 9900 help rescue BlackBerry?

We have a soft spot for BlackBerry phones. Many of us remember the glory days, when they were leading the way, offering email support that other companies could only dream about supporting.

Lately, it seems all doom and gloom for Research In Motion who are struggling to get a foothold in the new market dominated by iOS and Android devices.

The Bold 9900 has been heralded as a potential saving grace for the company however and if the early reviews are anything to go by, RIM might be onto a winner.

Steve Tilley for the Toronto Sun paper has spent some time with both the Bold 9900 and the Torch 9810 and he hasn't sat on the fence, claiming that the Bold 9900 is their best phone yet.

“The Bold 9900 is a sturdy, surprisingly slim device, with the widebody form of the original BlackBerry Bold, rather than the narrower but thicker design of the Bold 9700. Going back to a wider ‘berry took some getting used to, but the upside is the Bold 9900 has the best keyboard you will find on any smartphone, full stop.

Like the new Torch, the Bold 9900 boasts a speedier processor (running at 1.2 GHz, compared to the 624 MHz brains found in the previous generation of BlackBerrys), more memory, enhanced graphics and the new BlackBerry OS 7 software. Together, these make everything faster, slicker and simply better. Web browsing is suddenly enjoyable on a BlackBerry. Pinching and zooming is fast and fluid. Apps open more quickly. It's the BlackBerry experience fans love, made measurably more rewarding.”

He adds that there are a few niggles, the camera for instance has lost the autofocus camera function and the battery isn't quite as good either.

He does conclude with a “The slick touchscreen, faster processor, revamped software and solid construction make this by far the best BlackBerry yet.”

The phone has just been released in the UK and publication PC Advisor are discussing the pricing, which seems to be fairly good in the United Kingdom. Yes, that doesn't happen very often.

“Here's the lowdown on how much a BlackBerry Bold 9900 will cost you here in the UK. Pricing is from the Vodafone UK site, since that's where all three handsets are available.

An 8GB BlackBerry Bold 9900 handset on a £36-a-month Vodafone contract for 24 months gives you 500MB of mobile data, 900 minutes of calls and unlimited text messaging. The handset is then free, making for a total cost of £864.

A slightly cheaper option is to choose the £26-a-month contract over £24 months and stump up £199 up front. This deal costs £823 and gets you 500 minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB of data. The £31-a-month deal boosts your minutes to 600, includes the same data and text deals as above and costs £99 upfront and totals £843 over two years.”

Kitguru says: Are you interested in the new Blackberry Bold 9900? If not, why not?

Become a Patron!