In the test 15 years ago: The BlackBerry Bold 9700 was a potential smartphone 65 comments
With the BlackBerry Bold 9700 (test), the Canadian manufacturer presented a little brother of the Bold 9000 in December 2009. The Bold 9700 was primarily aimed at business customers, but was essentially designed as a smartphone. In the test, the future compact smartphone only convinced to a limited extent.
Small ingot smartphone
The BlackBerry Bold 9700 was very compact with dimensions of 109 × 60 × 14 (L × W × H in mm) and a weight of just under 125 grams including battery. Since a large part of the front was taken up by the 35-key, backlit QWERTY keyboard, there was not much space left for the display. The manufacturer therefore used a very small 2.44-inch display with a resolution of 480 × 360 pixels. The internal memory was also compact, with only 256 MB. Most users are advised to install a memory card. Bold 9700 Specifications Component Equipment type Bar Processor 624 MHz RAM RAM: 256 MB Operating system BlackBerry OS 5.0 Battery Lithium, 1,500 mAh Storage space 256 MB internal (expandable via memory card, max. 32 GB) Size 109 × 60 × 14 (L × W × H in mm) Weight 125 grams (including battery) Display 2.44 inches (diagonal) (Resolution: 480 × 360 pixels) Operation Trackpad, full Qwerty keyboard (35 keys and backlight) Communication Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, UMTS (HSPA), WLAN (IEEE 802.11 b/g), Bluetooth 2.0 EDR and A2DP, GPS 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus and flash Audio support .3gp, MP3, WMA9 (.wma/.asf), WMA9 Pro/WMA 10, MIDI,
AMR-NB, professional video support AAC/AAC+/eAAC+ XviD partially supported, H.263, H.264, WMV3, MPEG4,
Sorenson Spark & On2 VP6 (Flash support)
There was nothing to worry about in terms of looks and feel with the Bold 9700. The manufacturer installed a high-quality faux leather cover on the back and a glass panel on the LC display at the front. The overall construction seemed solid and sturdy. Writing comfort was not optimal due to the size. The small 5 × 5 mm keys made it difficult to write quickly and without errors. On the other hand, the keyboard was convincing with a good pressure point and a sensible layout as usual with BlackBerry – special characters were inserted using the combination with Alt. There was also a cursor between the screen and keyboard that could be used to navigate. The Bold 9700 – unlike almost every other smartphone – did not offer a touchscreen. The operating system was equally unusual: with BlackBerry OS 5.0, the manufacturer relied on its own development, which celebrated its debut on the BlackBerry Storm and presented a neat and well-structured interface.
Limited multimedia capabilities
The Bold 9700’s built-in web browser allowed users to use the Internet. The browser offered two zoom levels through which content could be enlarged. Surfing longer was still tedious due to the small screen. Additionally, the smartphone could not handle multiple websites at the same time. Video playback in the browser was often limited to YouTube, while problems could occur on other websites.
Huh or ugh? Faux leather on the back Bold 9700
Huh or ugh? Faux leather on the back Bold 9700 image 1 of 4
Conclusion
The BlackBerry Bold 9700 was aimed at a very limited target group. However, the term smartphone was a bit of an exaggeration, as it was more reminiscent of a classic mobile phone than modern smartphones from the competition. Despite mediocre multimedia capabilities, the Bold 9700 still impressed in office use. Due to its small dimensions, users also had to accept some compromises compared to the Bold 9000; for example, typing on the small keyboard was laborious. For the approximately 430 euros that the Bold 9700 costs, most users have found a better smartphone elsewhere.
In the category “In the test 15 years ago”, the editorial staff consults the test archives every Saturday since July 2017. We list the last 20 articles published in this series below:
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Even more content like this and many other reports and anecdotes can be found in the retro corner of the Techoutil forum.
Sarah tracks innovations in smartphones, evaluating their performance, design, and key features.
