We take a look at BlackBerry's upcoming Bold 9900: the classic look may be retro, but the tech inside this Berry ain't.
If the new BlackBerry Bold 9900 had four wheels, it would be a retro car, like a Chrysler PT Cruiser or a new Volkswagen Beetle -- a way for RIM to sneak modern technologies into a body shell that looks nostalgically like the much-loved Bold 9000 from 2008.
While RIM has more contemporary-styled touchscreen devices, such as the Storm and the Torch, with the 9900 it’s looking after the traditionalists, those who still use a BlackBerry primarily to get their secure email and who need to work with Office documents.
So RIM has improved the QWERTY keyboard, touch-enabled the screen and improved its resolution, made the processor more powerful, added a new sexier interface with new iconography, introduced a new faster OS (BlackBerry OS 7), upped the video recording resolution to 720p HD and made the Bold 9900 the slimmest Berry yet at 10.5mm.
In other words, the Bold 9900 might look superficially like the old 9000, but every part is improved. Most of all, I liked the 9900’s keyboard. It’s quite simply the best and most spacious Berry keyboard yet. I found myself having to adjust to the more spacious keypad -- a nice problem to have. The Bold 9900’s 2.8in screen is now fully touch-enabled, making the navigation experience feel much more contemporary and easy to use. The resolution of 640 x 480 at 287dpi makes for a crisp display on which to view your Office documents.
By the way, the Premium version of the mobile office suite, Documents to Go, now comes in two models, the 9900 and 9930 -- they are same phone, only difference being that the 9900 supports Tri-band HSPA+ while the 9300 does CDMA/EV-DO.
Available soon from RIM, price TBA. 