Onyx Review

Have you read my personal review on Blackberry 9700 “Onyx”? You have? Ok then This time I just got a Blackberry 9700 Onyx review made by our friends at the Boy Genius Report. The difference between my 9700 Onyx review with their review is that I didn’t got the chance to try the device; but they do. Therefore, this review can complete my9700 review since they can tell the performance of the 9700 directly…

Anyway, please remember that the 9700 Onyx unit reviewed here is not the production unit. It is a pre-release unit. Therefore prepare for updates In this review I will shortened the BGR review and point some important parts, and if you would like to, you can pay them a visit at the link provided at end of this review

Ok so lets just start the 9700 Onyx Review, shall we?

BB Bold 9700 Onyx Hardware, Design, Screen:

Yap. They have confirmed that this one is a the most beautiful Blackberry to date. At the back of the phone, there’s a faked leather textured battery cover; which has some fans (and haters). It is smaller than the tour, it has rounded corners, and has powder-coated keyboard… In addition, the Blackberry Bold 9700 Onyx has titanium chrome finish on the bezel and the high gloss black finish on the front of the device. To make it short, it is the sexiest Blackberry design to date.

As I said earlier, the default trackball was replaced with the optical one. While many recently Tour users complaint about the new optical trackball; but the performance of this new breed of optical trackball is definitely above the predecessor. The vibration of the phone is also amazingly loud and satisfactory.

About the screen, our folks at BGR found out that the Blackberry Bold 9700 Onyx has the best screen compared to other Blackberry phone to date. With resolution of 480×36; the screen is really awesome. It offers vibrant colors and appears as if they’re floating on top of the display.

BB Bold 9700 Onyx OS and Keyboard:

the pre-release Blackberry Bold 9700 Onyx came with OS 5.0.0.169… A bit different with the rumored OS 5.0 features. The one leaking over at the internet have a slight UI refresh with more blues, more gradients, updated icons and buttons and kinetic scrolling on some devices.After BGR updated the OS of the pre-release BB9700 Onyx; they finally got the updated features and sexified UI elements. We don’t know which OS will be used by the official BB 9700 Onyx yet…

The Blackberry Bold 9700 Onyx’s keyboard is a blend of the Bold and the Tour keyboards. Tour-shaped (little better) with the bounce and feel of the Bold keyboard. It’s really fantastic. Definitely not as large as the original Bold’s mammoth boat-sized chiclet pad, but it’s great. Once again, the BB Bold9700 Onyx has the best keyboard to date.

BB Bold 9700 Onyx Phone utilities

The actual ear speaker seems less recessed than previous BlackBerrys and we could hear callers loud and clear using the ear speaker. Speakerphone also worked well (as it should) with minimal distortion at maximum volume. Quite refreshingly, the device didn’t get too hot during long voice sessions and we really had no problems using the phone as a phone.

BB Bold 9700 Onyx Browser:

The BBBold 9700 Onyx’s browser has been improved with Javascript support; but still it is not as good as other mobile browser. I recommend you to try using third apps browser like Opera Mini etc. The optical trackpad makes the surfing the web experience a smooth ride…

BB Bold 9700 Onyx Battery:

Quite simply the 9700 Onyx has the longest and best battery life. It might be even better than the 8900 battery. WOW. For some rough statistics, the BlackBerry Bold with normal usage patterns lasted me around 7 hours of usage until the battery was dead. How long do you think the 9700 lasts using the exact same BlackBerry Bold battery? Try around 15 hours. We’re talking more than double with a faster CPU and using the same battery. Really remarkable and will help those on-the-go warriors.

Note: Battery life was based on OS 5.0.0.169. It’s dramatically worse in OS 5.0.0.215 which the unit is now running.

Review Conclusion:

The BlackBerry 9700 combines the most-loved features that have been sprinkled about on BlackBerry phones over the last year (3G, 3.2 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, trackpad, QWERTY keyboard, smaller size, faster CPU) and combines them into a single sexy and compact package. It is simply the best Blackberry available to date.

Every single thing about the BlackBerry 9700 screams high-end to us, and for a device that’s a part of the Bold-series (the Bold won’t go anywhere, we’ve been told), it should. It’s the best of the best to come out of Research In Motion to date and we can’t wait until everyone’s able to use one.

bestblackberry.com