RIM’s BlackBerry 9900 is the device that the BlackBerry diehards has been hoping, wishing, and expecting because the original Bold launched long ago in 2008 . However, this time round the company has added in a capacitive touchscreen, swapped the trackball of yesteryear for an optical trackpad, and slimmed the whole lot down right into a 10.5mm thick package. We were lucky enough to get a prototype device from our friends over at Negri Electronics , and feature manhandled the item till we were blue within the face. Head on past the break for an exclusive preview of the device RIM is praying will stalwart its competitors until the 1st round of QNX-equipped devices lands in 2012.
The Bold 9900 bears a striking resemblance to the unique “big Bold” 9000, and fans of that device’s large but sturdy form factor will absolutely love the 9900. Gone is the faux-leather back cover, which have been replaced with a slick carbon fiber-esque flat battery door. Interestingly, whereas the whole back of the device may be removed and swapped at the 9000, only the element of the housing that covers the battery itself comes off at the 9900. The carbon fiber midsection is surrounded by soft touch black rubber finishes that taper the periphery of the device slightly, leading to an exceptionally nice overall form factor.
This Berry’s front face is divided between a 640 x 480-pixel capacitive touchscreen up top and an entire-sized QWERTY keyboard down below. The screen size was bumped to two.8-inches from the two.6-incher at the 9000. The display is bright and colourful, and boasts superb viewing angles and clarity. As with the Torch 2, touch sensitivity also appears to be quite good, with the screen registering even slight touches on its nearly edge-to-edge surface. Overally, we’re quite impressed with the screen at the 9900, as we were with the Torch 2′s.
As far as we will tell, the keyboard is identical size as that of the OG Bold, though the buttons look a section more ‘clicky.’ It’s a bit difficult to elucidate, however the keyboard feels more firm than mushy — but that is not necessarily a nasty thing. We also noticed that the four main navigation buttons for the BB OS (send, menu, back, end / power) are all flush with the device and backlit, instead of having splits between then. There’s also the now ubiquitous trackpad located front and center, and it has a pleasant white backlighting that helps make it stand out in contrast BlackBerry’s murdered-out facade. When the screen shuts off for standby mode, the trackpad glow rem for an additional few seconds before fading back into darkness.
At the inside, the 9900 boasts a 1.2GHz processor, that’s bumped from the 624MHz of the 9780. In reality, we’re pretty sure that the center of the 9900 are similar to those of the Torch 2 — just crammed right into a thinner, non-sliding enclosure. We’ve known the specs in this bad boy for ages now, but after fiddling with one for day or so, we’re impressed with the important world translation into performance. It’s noticeably more snappy than current BlackBerry devices available on the market, and the fading transitions of BlackBerry 6.1 0 OS 7 0 didn’t appear to stutter in regular use. Needless to say, this is often still BETA software — and from what we’ve heard, our build is incredibly somewhat older than what’s currently on demo devices — so performance is subject to modify.
A five megapixel shooter is found at the backside of the device, but it has been relocated to the higher left corner in place of the centered position at the 9000. Again we’re convinced that this camera is the same to the only within the Torch 2, which suggests it’s in a position to capturing 720p HD video. With a view to see some performance of this shooter, head back to our 1 Torch 2 preview 1 — what you get at the 9900 isn’t vastly different.
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4 The 9900 will ship with BlackBerry 7 OS, and we can’t bore you with the small print of this marginal upgrade to the OS. (We went over lots of them after we showed you the Torch 2). We are able to say that the performance improvements we noted on that device appear to have made their technique to the 9900, and that among the mundane tasks that used to increase the scary hourglass of doom now not achieve this.
5 Overall, the 9900 is certainly a horny slab of circuitry, but we still can’t skirt across the incontrovertible fact that RIM was making an analogous device for years now. We’re glad to work out the enhanced specs and solid hardware, but it surely doesn’t detract from the truth that the OS is virtually unchanged aside from some visual flare and 8 new APIs 8 . We’re hopeful that despite 9 rumors on the contrary 9 , RIM would be ready to get this device out the door during its promised “summer” time period, and we all know it won’t be good if it misses that self-imposed deadline. Still, the reality of the problem is that RIM desperately should get something radically new out the door once humanly possible, in any other case users will 0 continue flocking 0 to other platforms. It hopes it has a winner on its hands with the 9900, and while we’ll reserve judgment until the article finally ships to finish users, we do think it’s yet one more step inside the right direction.
[Thanks, 1 Ryan 1 ]
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