Sample Shots
Camera viewfinder
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COMMENTS
It's the back end what matters
Am sure this is a neat device. But BB messaging only comes alive with a BES sitting in the background. What's the point in having all this fancy hardware if you have to USB to a PC to sync your sent items, contacts and calendar?
For "work phones", OTA sync can usually be assumed, but for Joe Public it means Hosted BES at about £20 per month, plus a real chance of being further screwed by the carriers for BES provisioning (UK Voda want another £25 pm).
Compare and contrast the slew of devices with ActiveSync support, where this highly desirable functionality is already built into every Exchange server, and costs about a fiver a month from most email hosting providers.
Meh
And this minor upgrade has taken them... what, 18 months? That's hardly a blistering pace of innovation.
Consider too the Storm2.. basically a bugfix of the original Storm that took them a year to come up with.
I wouldn't keep hold of those RIMM shares much longer if I were you.
@David Love
I don't know what you're talking about - T-mobile charges me a fiver a month for a "BlackBerry booster" and messaging works just fine.
Another brilliant positioning of the headphone jack...
... I loved my original Bold. Right up until I realised that the positioning of the headphone jack on the side of the device was putting huge amounts of strain on the headphones when I tried to fit the device in my pocket or bag, and eventually breaking the connections in the jack.
Two pairs of not exactly cheap headphones later I put the Bold back in the box in the cupboard and went back to my old phone. As much as I like the look of the 9700 I'm afraid I'll be steering clear of RIM devices until they actually spend some money redesigning the chassis' for how people WANT to use their phones, and not rehashing a ludite layout from the last geological time period.
Not for us
The value of the Bold 9700 is that it does 3G at US frequencies. Otherwise the 3.2Mp camera (when there are plent of 5, 8 and 12Mp on the market) is pathetic. The screen a tiny imporovement and all the other things insignificant. The browser is rubbish.
