Boldly enters the new Bold 9700. Has 3G, has the higher resolution of the 8900. Has WiFi. It also boasts a better battery life than the 8900 on the spec sheet. I ordered it and got it overnight and at two days of usage, I am VERY happy with this model.
Fantastic screen.
Beautiful fonts and rendering(It's night and day compared to 8310)
The touchpad is really nice and I am completely converted away from trackball use.
WiFi is good and connects quickly to my home network.
3G network is fast.
Each of the above connectivity options can be turned off/on individually.
You also have the option to turn off 3G and just use Edge (advantage: longer battery run time?)
The unit came with a 2Gig Micro SD card already installed. (What's the world coming to? Are TV manufacturers going to include free HDMI cables along with the TV now?)
The box came with a wall charger, a micro-USB cable to connect to the PC and a nice holster.
Browser is fantastic. With the touchpad, it is easy to move around the screen. "i" and "o" work as shortcuts to zoom in and out of a web page.
Google Apps work great (you may encounter a "Cross Application Communication" Error) (My workaround/fix at the end of this)
I had some issues with the browser not connecting (Resolved now. Workaround below).
I was stumped when initially configuring WiFi to my home WPA2 network (Workaround below).
Blackberry "Appworld" is great. Download it as soon as you get this device. Does not have millions of apps like the iPhone, but has a decent set - free and paid - that you will find useful.
Lots of nice improvements in the Mail, Clock and Calendar applications.
A few problems I encountered and my workarounds:
I have WPA2 security on my WiFi network at home. In the 9700, when you configure your WiFi connection, you will not see "WPA2" as an option. Just select "Pre Shared Key" option and enter your WPA password; The 9700 will do the rest and will connect. (BB design team, take note. You might as well highlight this in your documentation clearly... or, just add WPA2 and WPA to the options list)
I had intermittent problems with the browser. It would connect to some sites and simply refuse to connect to others. Workaround: Open the browser, go to options (by pressing the key immediately to the left of the touchpad) and in the "Browser Configuration" page, for the default browser, change it to "Internet Browser", from the default "Blackberry browser". Do the same change in the "General Properties" in the browser options. This should fix browser connectivity issues.
When I started Google Maps, I got a "Cross Application Communication" error and it refused to connect. My workaround (and I am not sure why this works): Go to Blackberry settings. Select Applications. And in the "Applications" page, select "Google Maps". Then "Edit permissions". Here, I basically expanded all the configs, and made sure they are set to "Allow". The "Interactions" setting by default will be "Custom". This cannot be changed, but I simply expanded this selection. In this what seemed to be a pointless exercise, I didn't really change any permissions other than what they were defaulted to. But, after this, the "Cross Appl..." error went away. Maybe, if I rebooted the BB after installing Google Maps, I wouldn't have had to resort to this.
That's it. It's working great now. Hope the above workarounds will be helpful to some. Activating my BES account was straightforward. If you don't have a corporate account, the setup should be even more simpler.
I'd give it 5 stars, but if anyone at BB is reading these reviews (and I know they are...), I want them to keep doing the great work and come out with more winners such as this. So, this 4 star rating is to tell you that no one can achieve perfection, but can always choose to strive to become even more perfect than before. Great product folks. Keep it up!
UPDATE (Jan 30, 2010):
After close to two and a half months of use, I'm still very happy with the Bold 9700. The battery life is exceptional and I can go without charging for 3 days if necessary. For a couple weeks, I noticed the battery was losing a couple of bars within 12 hours. I think this was because I had the "Blackberry Messenger" app running in the background. After closing that app, the battery life is back to normal, and I lose a notch in 24hrs. I have the WiFi option always ON and this doesn't seem to affect the battery usage adversely.
Apps that I use most, and these are very easy to use on the Bold (there are plenty others available): WSJ Mobile Reader, Poynt (Business, people, restaurant, movie lookup), Dictionary.Com, Amazon for Blackberry, Google Maps, Gmail and Google News.
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