BlackBerry Bold 9780 review: Business as usual

It’s no surprise that the BlackBerry Bold 9780 is the next logical evolutionary step, rather than a complete makeover that will propel it into the same league as the iPhone and Android. RIM has a loyal core of customers whose bond with the brand goes beyond the obvious business benefits. And devices like the Bold 9780 are certainly part of that bond.

From a geek’s perspective, a new generation of gadgets should emerge to a new generation of users. Radical, rebellious, with no sense of history and no respect for authorities. In the world of business, every new generation of gadgets has to make generations of users feel at home.

There’s no moral dilemma for BlackBerry in this. They know trying to introduce new features and UI tweaks with each new generation involves substantial risk for some of the changes to backfire. But they haven’t given up on the Torch and the Storm, have they? Though it’s obviously much easier to stick to a tested recipe and only add stuff that’s been proved to work.

Key features:

• Enhanced email and data security via BlackBerry services
• 2.44" 65K-color TFT landscape display with a resolution of 480 x 360 pixels
• Hardware four-row full QWERTY keyboard
• Quad-band GSM support and tri-band 3G with HSDPA
• Wi-Fi connectivity
• GPS receiver and BlackBerry maps preloaded
• 5 megapixel autofocus camera, LED flash
• 624 MHz CPU, 512 MB RAM
• BlackBerry OS v6
• Touch-sensitive trackpad navigation
• Hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 16GB)
• DivX and XviD video support
• Decent web browser
• Office document editor
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• Smart dialing
• Compact body and solid build quality

Main disadvantages:

• BlackBerry Internet Service account is a must to enjoy all phone features
• Outdated and unintuitive camera interface
• No FM radio
• No video-call camera
• No built-in accelerometer

The BlackBerry Bold 9780 upgrades the Bold 9700 by a 5 megapixel shooter and the new 6th version of the BlackBerry OS. It doesn’t sound much and when you consider that the 9700 was already updated to BlackBerrry OS 6 there is even less to choose between the two phones.

So, will the new Bold 9780 reveal some nice surprises that are invisible to a casual scan of the spec sheet or will it be a mere footnote to the original Bold 9700? We hope to find out when we are done with the review. We start with the unboxing right after the break.