Review: BlackBerry Bold 9700 (AT&T & T-Mobile) Review of Reviews

BlackBerry Bold 9700 Rated 4 out of 5 by Wireless and Mobile News' Review of Reviews

If you are looking for a good, nice stylish BlackBerry with a comfy keyboard and excellent messaging features the BlackBerry Bold 9700 may be the right smartphone for you. Both T-Mobile and AT&T are selling the the BlackBerrry Bold 9700. The major difference between them is that the T-Mobile BlackBerry Bold 9700 allows you make Wi-Fi calls through the T-Mobile @ home service.

This well-reviewed BlackBerry Bold 9700 received a rating of 4 out 5 by all the reviewers we surveyed.  Reviewers thought that the addition of the trackpad was a great improvement.  They liked the brilliant display, 3.5 mm headphone jack and fabulous messaging capabilities.  The call quality, media playing, photo quality and video capture were rated well. BlackBerry knows how to make a very usable and comfortable keyboard.

The reviewers didn't like the browser and less flashy operating system.  If do buy a BlackBerry Bold 9700 and don't like its native browser, you can download a faster browser such as the BOLT or Opera browsers.

The AT&T veriosn of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 came out on November 22 (before Black Friday and Cyber Monday) and we will update this article when more reviews come out.  In general, BlackBerry models across carriers receive identical reviews for the hardware and vary only slightly for software and features.  

The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is priced at $199 at both T-Mobile and AT&T after rebates.  On Black Friday Weekend T-Mobile is offering $50 off the BlackBerry Bold 9700. The latest  AT&T's Holiday Weekend Offers/Cyber Monday deals have many free phones but no major discount on this BlackBerry.  If you are a new AT&T customer, you may want to use the Wireless and Mobile News' $50 off online only coupon-link if you decide to buy the BlackBerry Bold 9700 directly from AT&T.

The best cheapest deal as of today for this BlackBerry Bold 9700  is through Wirefly.

More Cyber Monday Deals.

Sascha Segan at PCMag rated the BlackBerry Bold 9700 for T-Mobile 4 out of 5. He calls it a fast clean great messaging phone that lacks a great browser and consumer Microsoft Exchange support. It's more compact to than the original BlackBerry Bold and is smaller with a compressed QWERTY keyboard. You have to remove the battery to get to the microSD card.  Navigation is done via a new trackpad. The T-Mobile version allows for T-Mobile @ home Wi-Fi calling. Voice quality was good-to-great. Web browsing is slow but faster than previous versions. The Bold is an excellent media phone. The 3.2 megapixel camera is the best of its kind.

Bonnie Cha at CNET rated the BlackBerry Bold 9700 (T-Mobile) 4 out 5, for its 3.5 mm headset jack, brilliant display, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and BlackBerry OS 5.  She didn't like the browser,  smaller keyboard and compact display. The trackpad felt smooth. The keyboard is comfortable. It's a quad-band world roaming phone. It has great messaging capabilities. Photo quality was impressive. Overall performance was snappy.

Tood Hasselton at LaptopMag rated the BlackBerry Bold 9700 4 out of 5.  He liked the design, Wi-Fi, keyboard(which is larger than the BlackBerry Curve) and camera.  He didn't like the outdated BlackBerry OS and mediocre browser. The trackpad is a major improvement. It excells at messaging and setting up email accounts was a breeze. Video viewing was a pleasure. Photo quality was very good and video was smooth. Call quality was very good. It is compatible with many Microsoft documents.