Blackberry Tour 9630 specs called as Blackberry BOLD for the CDMA network is a perfectly blended with style and features. Though it almost shares its looks with the Blackberry curve, tour has better QWERTY keyboard and design. We’ll talk about the design later on in this review.
Tour leaves us with a charming first impression. Though, slightly higher in weight compared to other Blackberry devices it didn’t take me much of a time to get used to it. Its wider dimensions has made it possible for RIM to have a well placed QWERTY keyboard.
The rubber finish on the backside of the device made me hold the device even when I went to sleep, it’s really really smooth and satisfying to hold. My only concern is the silver lining on the device might wear out just like other devices.
Talking about the keys, I felt that the slightly tiled moulds on the keys surprisingly makes it easier to type. RIM has hit a bulls-eye with this keyboard design. Typing long emails was never so easier. The only grudge I would hold is the noise the keys made- but that maybe the problem only with my review unit.
The tour sports a decent 3.2 Mega Pixel camera along with flash for clicking photos and shooting video. Of course, this is just an add-on to click funny pictures of your colleagues in office.Photos are decent but not spectacular.
Though surprisingly, at night the flash did wonders:
When I initially received the device, I first Wiped the phone to restore it to factory settings. The major problem that I experienced was the trackball on default settings. The trackball wasn’t responsive enough to scroll horizontally. I had to change the sensitivity of the trackball to 90 for smooth scrolling.The screen resolution of 480 x 360 with 65536 colors gives an amazing viewing experience.
The best part about tour is that though a CDMA device, it sports a SIM card slot, allowing you to double it as a GSM device when roaming. So you need not buy/rent other phone when you are on international tour. I tried inserting SIM card in that slot and boy, it takes quite a bit of effort to remove the SIM card from the slot. I had to use the stencil from my 5800 to push it out risking the stencil to break, but it worked.
I have no idea why RIM did not pack WiFi with this device. Kind of puts the device to shame.There was no problem in transferring data over Bluetooth both ways- BB to other device and other device to BB. RIM has packed the same set of software with the tour. The device I received already has Blackberry app world installed- but if you buy a new piece, you will have to download it. What shocked me was that you cannot install applications on your memory card. You will have to fit everything within your phone’s 256MB storage capacity, which is a poor decision by RIM.
The browser on tour just like other Blackberry phones is not a great piece of software that they would be proud of. But of course, you have an option of installing Opera for blackberry, which does a good job.
Messaging / Emailing
SMS/Email works wonders. Being an ardent Nokia user, the threaded Conversation in SMS and Email was a welcome change. Setting up email account on the device didn’t take me more than 5 minutes.
RIM has now bundled the device with almost all IM clients- yahoo, Gtalk, AIM. Though, for some reason Gtalk didn’t seem to work on the device. So, I had to rely on Nimbuzz which I downloaded from Blackberry app world for free. For my social networking needs I used the Facebook app and Ubertwitter to access Twitter.
With extensive email, twittering, facebooking, browsing and calling the battery lasted for almost half a day. Quite impressive as I really abused the battery. If you are a normal user than you can expect the phone to last a day or day and a half.The only thing that concerns me is, the device refuses to receive network when the last 4% of battery life is still remaining.
Conclusion:
Blackberry Tour does a splendid job in all aspects from style to features to performance- if you are ready to let go that it does not support WiFi.