Reach out and touch your smartphone like never before, swiping, pinching and zooming on the Liquid Graphics™ touch screen. Together with a 1.2 GHz processor, and a 24-bit high-res display, Liquid Graphics gives you fluid animations and instant response times. With an elegantly brushed stainless steel frame, sculpted surfaces and advanced composite backing, the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900/9930 smartphones are as lightweight and durable as they are feature-packed. Faster loading, faster scrolling, faster zooming. It's the fastest BlackBerry experience to date. The premium BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930 smartphones feature the most powerful engine ever in a BlackBerry smartphone. BlackBerry® 7 is the next generation BlackBerry OS, packed with powerful new features and innovative apps. Augmented reality introduces exciting new ways to interact with the world around you, and with Near Field Communication1 (NFC) built-in, you can connect with other NFC-enabled devices and smart tags. Contact eAccess Solutions at 847-991-7190 if you need further details on the Blackberry Bold 9900 and 9930 or to get Blackberry Bold 9900 Series accessories. See our detailed BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 Review below.
 

BlackBerry Bold 9900 With

BlackBerry Bold 9930 With

Keyboard
Let’s just get this out of the way… the keyboard on the BlackBerry Bold 9900 is the best physical keyboard on any smartphone, ever. I went there. It’s not just spacious, it’s tactile and it features the perfected RIM layout. It’s clickity, but not mushy, and it’s firm but not too firm. It’s also properly sized without being too big to type quickly — in short, it’s the best physical keyboard I have ever typed on as far as a mobile device goes. From currency symbols to exclamation points, the keyboard and keyboard layout on the BlackBerry 9900 is the best in the business. Even the backlighting on the keyboard is nothing short of glowing. Literally. BlackBerry users will feel right at home, and it’s a refreshing change from the many terrible soft-keyboards out there. With that said, soft keyboards have an advantage in a couple of places, but if you’re a texter, a hardcore emailer or one of those old school individuals who just can’t make the switch to a touch-only smartphone, this is the best you’re going to get; and it’s really not even open to debate.

OS
BlackBerry’s latest operating system, BlackBerry 7, isn’t a drastic change from the previous operating systems out of RIM. In fact, at the very basic level, it’s the same. Sure there are some different APIs and enhancements but at the end of the day this is, at the core, the same BlackBerry that you’ve been used to using. That’s not to say RIM hasn’t made improvements in different areas of the operating system. In fact, sources close to me have touted the fact that RIM has been able to strip bloated code from the OS in various places, undoing years of bandaging and complexity — and it does show. Coupled with a reasonably fast 1.2GHz single-core processor, the software on the BlackBerry runs extremely fast. There aren’t many slow-downs, and the dreaded BlackBerry spinning clock hasn’t made very many appearances on my 9900s. With that said, the app game on BlackBerry devices is nothing short of a joke. App World is a joke. Third-party applications are a joke. User interfaces are a joke. This is a phone still primarily based on what corporate users of the past once wanted: the best email device in the world coupled with pretty solid personal information management like contacts, calendar, tasks and more. Unfortunately, that’s not enough in this day and age to move the needle, and the dated software and operating system show.

While something like web browsing, now based on WebKit, has improved, it’s still a ways off from competitive offerings from Apple and Google. Photo and video manipulation still feels like a struggle on the BlackBerry Bold 9900, even with a 1.2GHz processor. Scrolling is faster than on any other BlackBerry smartphone, though there are still random slow-downs and hiccups, something hopefully fixed when the company finally transitions to its QNX-based OS in upcoming devices next year.

Phone / Speakerphone / Audio
Voice calling on the Bold 9900 was a pretty solid experience. BlackBerry smartphones have been known for their superior RF performance and their ability to serve up solid connections, and the BlackBerry 9900 is no different. The device easily rivaled Apple’s latest smartphone and Google’s latest Nexus device in that department. As far as the ear speaker goes, however, calls sounded a bit shallow and lacked a low-end that is typically found on most top-tier smartphones. The speakerphone on the BlackBerry 9900 is above average, though it also lacked the low-end response users look for in a high-end smartphone. Audio was even a bit choppy at times when using the speakerphone function, which was a pretty big disappointment. The sound just isn’t full, and the distortion compounds matters. Playing back audio through the built-in speaker exhibited the same issues that the speakerphone did — the low-end was lacking, though mid and high-end performance was on point with other competitive devices. Max volume is also a bit lower than I was hoping, though the phone performed reasonably well with all things considered. After all, it’s not like it has Beats audio built in.

Battery
Battery life has been one of RIM’s strengths over the years, and that doesn’t change too much on the BlackBerry Bold 9900. While the battery is noticeably smaller than previous RIM devices (1,200 mAh compared to 1,500 mAh), and even though the processor speed has nearly been doubled, I haven’t noticed that much of a difference as far as battery performance is concerned. That’s pretty impressive considering some phones can’t last an entire day, and the BlackBerry Bold 9900 has been able to power through almost two full days of on and off usage in my testing; again, this is quite impressive when you take the faster processor and smaller build into account. With constant emailing, moderate Facebook and Twitter usage, light web browsing and light voice calling, the BlackBerry 9900 chugged along for nearly three days — a ridiculous feat.

Conclusion
RIM’s BlackBerry Bold 9900 is the company’s best BlackBerry ever. It combines everything a BlackBerry user and fan used to beg for into one incredible package. A touchscreen with amazing full QWERTY keyboard, an incredibly thin and solid hardware shell with high-end finishes like a stainless steel bezel, meshed with a soft touch rubberized finished backside, complete with carbon fiber insert, make for an almost irresistible offering.

With an improved and enhanced operating system that is speedier than any previous version, this could be the total package you’re looking for in a smartphone. Unfortunately, it’s still a BlackBerry, and outside of the core areas where a BlackBerry still offers a competitive advantage like email, for instance, I don’t see a reason to pick this smartphone over an iPhone 4 or one of the latest Android handsets like the Samsung Galaxy S II or Google’s Nexus S. There will always be a market for the current incarnation of BlackBerry smartphones, but that market is shrinking daily and RIM’s QNX-based mobile devices can’t come soon enough. You can pickup tons of great BlackBerry Bold Accessories here at eAccess.  Especially of note is the ever increasing selection of BlackBerry Bold Cases at the eAccess-eStore.com.