BlackBerry 9930 Blackberry Bold Touch 9930 Verizon CDMA GSM Unlocked Phone with Touch Screen Review
Product Description
Create and connect like never before, swiping, pinching and zooming
on the Liquid Graphics touch screen. Together with a 1.2 GHz processor,
and a 24-bit high-res display, Liquid Graphics gives you fluid
animations and instant response times. With an elegantly brushed
stainless steel frame, sculpted surfaces and advanced composite backing,
the BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930 smartphones are as lightweight and
durable as they are feature-packed. Faster loading, faster scrolling,
faster zooming. It's the fastest BlackBerry experience to date. The
premium BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930 smartphones feature the most powerful
engine ever in a BlackBerry smartphone. Move from home to the coffee
shop to the airport and to the office without missing a beat while
connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots wherever they're available. BlackBerry 7 is
the next generation BlackBerry OS, packed with powerful new features
and innovative apps. Augmented reality introduces exciting new ways to
interact with the world around you, and with Near Field Communication1
(NFC) built-in, you can connect with other NFC-enabled devices and smart
tags. Inspiring, special and funny moments happen on the fly. Capture
it all with 720p HD video recording and an impressive 5 MP camera.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1942 in Cell Phone Accessories
- Color: Black
- Brand: BlackBerry
- Model: 9930
- Dimensions: 2.60" h x
.41" w x
4.53" l,
.29 pounds
Features
- Professional mobile messaging with BlackBerry 7 OS, 2.8-inch
touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, 1.2 GHz processor, and Liquid Graphics
technology
- Fast 3G connectivity, international GSM capabilities, Wireless-N Wi-Fi networking, Near Field Communications (NFC) support
- 5-MP camera with HD 720p video capture, Bluetooth stereo music, 4 GB memory, HTML5 web browser
- Up to 6.6 hours of talk time, up to 300 hours (12.8 days) of standby time, released in August, 2011
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
48 of 49 people found the following review helpful.
Defining the word "Quality"
By E. Byer
I've been through hell and back with phones, so forgive me for being
pessimistic when I'm standing in the Verizon store wondering what's
wrong with each phone they had. I was ADAMANT that my next phone was
going to be the iPhone5 because everyone has jump ship to buy one of
these, and quite frankly I love how smooth and responsive my iPod Touch
4g is. Well to backtrack, I have suffered through the BB 8320, BB 8330,
BB Tour....got fed up with how underpowered and outdated they were with
TONS of lockups and LONG resets, went to G1, DroidX, Fascinate....got
fed up with just soooo many glitches in Android phones I can't believe
anybody actually believes they like them...and believe me....as hesitant
as I was...I purchased the Blackberry Bold 9930. Why? Why not the
iPhone5? For the following reasons:
1. IT HAS AN INDICATOR
LIGHT! This technology is so dated that it's CRIMINAL not to include
one on every phone manufactured. If you are like me who is always in
quiet environments and can't have ringtones or chimes going off all the
time, then this is extremely valuable to you. With the samsung
fascinate I felt I had ADHD constantly checking the damn thing and
actually used more battery turning the phone screen on and off. Also BB
has the best notification lights on their products hands down! DroidX
had one but it wasn't very visible. Love BB for this!
2. The
BEST...and I mean this....THE BEST BB Keyboard I have every used! It's
soft to the touch, easy to press, extremely responsive, keeps up with
you, and is wide enough for my big fat fingers. BB...if you ever touch
this keyboard and change it I will personally come to your headquarters
and slap the CEO. This is the best one ever! I am so SICK and TIRED of
these virtual keyboards I can spit. I have more errors than I or the
device can count, and I spend MORE time correcting one word than typing a
new word.
3. The screen. This is where I think people need to
wake up and truly assess the screen size. It's absolutely stunning. It
looks better than a retina display imho, it's 2.8" but not just
that...it's touchscreen....something that I begged and pleaded from BB
for as long as I can remember (I think the G1). Now I can just tap on
the icons and simply tap on whatever I choose without a mouse cursor.
Also I thank you BB from the bottom of my heart for keeping the touchpad
because you are the ONLY company that I can actually scroll into the
middle of a word and delete and replace letters. I can't stand those
stupid touchscreen-only devices when you are typing a text message or
web address and you miss a letter and you keep pushing with your index
finger trying to get the cursor wedged between two small letters on a
small screen. NEVER AGAIN. Also people argue "well you can blow up
pictures bigger and view web pages longer." Very true. But in portrait
view, the BB now offers the SAME width as all the other phones...go
ahead and compare. Sure you get some more real estate in
Landscape...but to me it's still a 3.5 - 4" screen and I wouldn't trade a
BB keyboard for anything in the world!
4. FAST. I MEAN...FAST. This thing keeps up with every button I press and every icon I tap.
5.
Battery life is good. Honestly I'm not jumping out of my seat saying
"I can't believe how long this lasts." It does last a long time (I'd
say about 6-10 hrs depending on real usage) but no better nor worse than
the competitors. Gotta power that gorgeous display somehow right ;).
6.
5mp Camera is nice. The flash is great to have, but the pictures
aren't as natural as a real camera flash. I'm being picky, but I tell
it like it is. I really don't know what the iPhone camera flash is
like, but I do know the pictures are crisp and clear on that phone.
These pics seem great to me as well, but I have yet to send one to
someone to see how it looks on their phone.
7. Design: Quite
frankly I don't know what everyone is bickering about on the blogs, but
apparently this Bold "look" has been replayed for a couple of years now.
What I say to that is: If it ain't broke don't fix it. It's the most
popular selling BB phone RIM sells next to the AT&T Torch, it looks
gorgeous to me (I love the metal all around the sides and the carbon
fiber look to the back cover), so they could sell me the same looking
phone in 6 yrs and I'd still buy it. How many times do you watch your
favorite movie over and over again knowing it won't change when you
watch it? What about the iPhone? Black front, shiny back every
time...still looks gorgeous (can't fault them for that).
8.
Speaker, speaker, mic, and vibration: You have to hear it to believe it.
The speaker on this phone is very loud and clear up to 85% volume (I
notice more distortion past that). I dare you right now to go find a
speaker that beats this...go ahead...I will wait. I have had one too
many phones in my day and this one is the loudest and "clearest"
relatively speaking of the bunch. The way I test a speaker volume is to
try it out in the store in a noisy environment. If I can still hear
the music AND it sounds good, then that is a good speaker. All the
devices out there can't match it. Sorry but it's true. The next
speaker is the earset. Sounds crisp and clear. Something my Samsung
Fascinate apparently knew nothing about (muffled, crappy, distorted).
The mic picks up my voice very well and people have commented ever since
I got the phone that I sound clearer. The vibrator on this phone is
adequate and noticeable on a desk, but I still have trouble with it in
my pocket (like every other phone on the market....they were meant to be
worn on belts).
9. Comes with a leather case...and a high
quality one. I always loved buying a BB for one of these. It has the
swivel clip so you can orient it on your belt as you please.
I
could go on and on about this but I'll stop here. I RARELY write
reviews unless I am in love with a product and THIS is a product I love.
I highly recommend it and if you have any questions my name is Ed at
optomechesst@aim.com.
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
Step in the right direction for RIM....
By Quentin Gerlach
I feel for you Verizon customers who have been waiting to upgrade
your Blackberries - especially if you wanted a touchscreen BB. Since
RIM never released the Torch 9800 for CDMA users, you guys never got to
experience that goodness. Surprising since the Torch is (was now, with
the release of the Torch 2 and the new 9850 for Verizon) one of the few
decent releases from RIM in the past couple of years. Anywho - with the
9930 Bold, those who were left out finally have a reason to upgrade
their phones.
For those of you who are wondering - this is NOT
the Monaco phone that RIM plans on releasing soon. That phone is fully
touchscreen - designed to replace the much hated Storm and not too much
better Storm 2.
Ok, so some list of changes that RIM brought about:
-
With the release of this Bold, RIM decided to nicely go back to the old
style Bold 9000 keyboard. The keys are a bit bigger, so for those of
you whose fingers might have been too big for the Bold 2 that was
released for Verizon, I urge you to give this phone's keyboard a try -
you'll be pleased. Some of you may notice the dimensions of the 9930
and the 9700 are very close, so you might wonder how they got the
keyboard bigger. Well, they did it by getting rid of the plastic lining
around the sides of the phone. Yes - both the keyboard and screen are
now flush with the edge of the phone. I'm not sure I'm a fan of this,
as it makes it a whole lot easier to crack/break something important,
but it seems to be a direction most phone manufacturers are moving in,
so we'll see....
- This phone is the first to have the new 7 OS -
which is nice, but I think I'd rather have the QNX OS, thank you very
much... Haha - but it is a good OS - for those who are interested, it
takes up less space than 6. If my calculations are correct - about 15%
less. This OS also supports NFC (near-field communication), so it'll be
interesting to see what kind of apps developers create to take
advantage of it. (For those who remember it - NFC is how Google Wallet
works) Voice search also works particularly well with this OS, and two
new business apps are included, called BlackBerry Protect and Balance.
Protect allows your business to remotely monitor, configure and wipe, if
necessary, a remote smartphone so when the phone disappears, your whole
business life doesn't disappear along with it. And Balance separates
business tasks from personal stuff on a BlackBerry, which helps avoid
the possibility of confidential data accidentally being sent to all
those shady contacts.....
- Yes, the screen is touch capable.
It's actually pretty slick - especially considering how small the screen
is, comparatively speaking, so it is usable in day to day operations.
It especially works well with the browser - for all those times you need
to move the page around, or zoom in on something, or zoom out to get a
better view of the entire page. Are you going to play games with it??
Most likely not. But it is a start.
- "Liquid Graphics
Technology": there's been alot of talk about this, and what exactly does
RIM mean by it. Here's what I can tell you, from my research and usage
of the phone: RIM basically put a separate graphics processor into the
phone, which means that any of the graphics stuff should be a whole lot
smoother and cleaner, since there's a distinct chip handling all of it.
From what I've seen, it is pretty fluid, but it still does get hung up
at times - especially when it comes to certain web pages. But overall,
definitely an improvement. I heard it's also designed to support 3D
animations and games...
Alright - enough of that. Time for the good stuff - is it worth it??
Short answer - absolutely.
Pros:
1)
Battery life rocks. I feel for all of you iPhone and Android users
whose phones die in like a day. This phone still keeps kicking after 2
days - without plugging it in once. Add to that the ability to actually
change your battery, and that I tend to carry a spare just in case, and
I can go practically a week without having to charge my phone.
Incredible....
2) Faster processor. Thank you RIM, for finally
adopting a processor that breaks the 1 GHz marker in a phone! Actually
RIM upgraded a bunch of hardware - like the memory, along with the
ability to do NFC communications. Thank you for reaching the 21st
century RIM - we're happy to have you!
3) Global phone - this
phone supports both the GSM and CDMA networks, so it can be used
internationally - a big plus for our corporate employees. If you happen
to travel internationally alot - don't worry, this phone's got you
covered.
4) Hotspot capable - this phone I believe is the first
BB to natively support hotspots. Yes, there are apps you can download
for the other phones, but you usually have to pay a decent amount (the
cheapest I can remember is around 35 - 40 bucks) This supports personal
hotspot right out the box, and it does support N-type speeds.
Cons:
1)
Apps. Actually - it's not what you think. It's not about the amount
of apps - it's that quite a few don't work with OS 7 right now. Though
this will be corrected as the OS matures and becomes more available.
2)
Screen resolution - which still comes in at 640x480 pixels and 287 dpi.
It's not bad - but I was hoping to get a qHD screen on a BB soon....
3)
No 4G - this does annoy me greatly. 4G, especially on Verizon, is
starting to get decent, and to not have that ability on this phone?? I
get the fact that it's a battery hog, but with BB battery life's so good
as it is, I can't imagine it detracting from it that much.
Honestly
- what's been holding RIM back is their lack of upgrading the hardware.
They always seem to be a year behind the phones of the present. They
finally do some catching up with the 9930.
I'll update this review as I use the phone more - feel free to ask questions or correct me, since I'm sure I forgot something!!
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Great features but beware serious quality control issue
By Stephen M. Charme
I purchased a Bold 9930 from the Verizon store near my office about
ten days ago. During the following week all my phone calls were only a
couple of minutes. Then a week after I had purchased the phone I tried
to make a longer phone call in an area with five bars (i.e. full signal
strength). Not only did the call drop after about three minutes, but the
radio was shut off, so that in order to call again I had to turn the
mobile network back on, and again the call was dropped and the radio was
turned off. To make a long story short, that morning I made dozens of
test calls to family members, all with the same results. Doing *228 send
and battery pulls had no effect.
I then went that same day to a
Verizon store near my home, and upon hearing what happened they gave me a
replacement phone. Guess what--exact same problem. I then had multiple
phone conversations with Verizon Tech Support Level 2 (the highest
level) to check various settings on the phone, and to rule out any local
network issues. The conclusion was that there was a software glitch in
the new OS 7 system, especially since I had the exact same problem on
two separate phones from two separate stores (i.e. the phones were not
from the same batch).
Much as I love the features on the phone, I
had to return it because I simply could not make phone calls longer
than a few minutes on it. Based on the other positive reviews, it
appears that this is a quality control issue (not surprising because
Verizon said this phone has only been out about a month on the Verizon
network). Just make sure that you buy this phone from a seller who will
take it back. Verizon has a no questions asked 14 day return policy, and
because of the software glitch, waived the thirty-five dollar
restocking fee for me.
Update February 23, 2012: After returning
the BB Bold, I went back to using my BB Tour--until about 6 weeks ago
when I and several other family members (who were also using the BB
Tour) bought the iPhone 4S. We couldn't be happier. Although I was a
hardcore BB user for years, I doubt that I will be one again.
Too see the price...
3G HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100; 2G GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900.QWERTY
keypad, Trackball navigation, BlackBerry maps, Document editor (Word,
Excel, PowerPoint, PDF), Media player
(MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV/MP3/WAV/eAAC+/WMA), Organizer. Camera: 3.15 MP,
2048x1536 pixels, autofocus, LED flash. Video. Internal Memory: 256 MB.
MicroSD expandable (8 GB max). Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, EDGE, GPS
capable. Stand-by: Up to 336 hours, Talk time: Up to 5 hours.
World Wide Distributors customer service is horrible!!!
