The original BlackBerry Bold did quite a lot of good for RIM in terms of carrying it away from its purely business-user focus and towards a wider audience. The Bold 9700 does yet more, maintaining a lot of the original design features but adding some new elements too.

Not least of the new elements is an optical trackpad which sounds like something of a gimmick but actually works quite well. We do miss the tiny optical trackball of the original Bold but found the new trackpad easy enough to get along with.

The Bold 9700 is considerably smaller than the original model, and sitting the two side by side makes the original look like something of a brick. At 109 x 60 x 14.1mm and 122g, the Bold 9700 fits very nicely in the hand and pocket.

The keyboard is a little squished but thanks to the way RIM shapes the QWERTY keys, giving them very tactile ridges, we had no trouble at all typing at a pretty healthy speed.

The screen measures 2.44 inches across diagonal corners making it quite small by today's standards, but its resolution of 480 x 360 pixels means it displays a lot of detail and it is sharp and bright. It is not the best size for Web browsing, but for reading emails it is fine.

The top edge houses touch-sensitive mute and keyboard lock keys. There is a 3.5mm headset slot here too. RIM has long realised that a 3.5mm socket is the preferred way of attaching headphones, and not only uses one but puts it in the most ergonomic position. Sound output quality is pretty good, though we'd really like to see RIM offer a two-piece headset so that we can ditch the horrid in-ear buds it provides and still retain the hands-free calling section of its headset.

The chassis design includes a faux leather backplate - retained from the original Bold - and a rubberised finish to the edges of the casing. These assist with grip as well as helping to differentiate this Bold from its predecessor. RIM retains its always-popular pair of customisable keys, one on the left and one on the right edge of the chassis.

As with other BlackBerry devices there is support for up to ten POP email addresses. There are Facebook and Twitter apps available for those who just have to keep in touch all the time. These have to be downloaded from the BlackBerry app store.

The camera is a bit disappointing, but then cameras are never RIM's strong point. Its 3.2 megapixels is pretty much entry level these days, and while there is a flash it is not going to produce great shots if you are indoors in gloomy conditions.

The Bold 9700 includes GPS and Wi-Fi and it is an HSDPA device. There is 256MB of built-in memory and our review sample came with a 2GB microSD card. This fits into the most awkward-to-use slot we've ever seen. It sits at an angle under the battery cover and cards were really tricky to get out for some reason. Maybe this was just an issue with our review sample, though.

Verdict
The BlackBerry Bold 9700 updates the original Bold nicely with a sleeker physical design, optical trackpad and boosted camera among its new fixtures and fittings. It isn't the most capable smartphone, but it is potentially a good choice for those who want to mix business and pleasure.

Company: RIM

Contact: 01202 552936

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