BlackBerry Bold Touch 9930

“The problem with the $249 BlackBerry Bold 9930 is that it's ultimate messaging phone that's priced like a high-end superphone. We love the sturdy and slim design, fantastically comfortable keyboard, solid voice reception, and long battery life. The touschreen is plenty responsive, too, but the BlackBerry 7 OS UI isn't truly optimized for touch input. At this price, we'd also prefer a larger display, 4G data, and a better selection of apps. RIM's phone lineup won't truly compete with Android and the iPhone until the company rolls out handsets with its QNX operating system.”

“Without a doubt, if there’s one upcoming BlackBerry smartphone that’s worth picking up, it has to be none other than the BlackBerry Bold 9930. Sporting that iconic design that exhibits some noteworthy iterative improvements, it’s absolutely the thing that RIM needs to focus on in order to remain relevant in this competitive space. Not because it’s something totally new, but it goes to show that RIM’s success can be found by having them focus on legacy devices – while keenly placing attention on the required marked improvements we’d come to expect with most successive devices.”

“The BlackBerry Bold 9930 feels like the beginning of a transition -- the last hurrah for an OS that isn't much longer for this world. Or maybe that's just us being optimistic. We'd love to have been able to use this phone with a more modern, more refined feeling OS, but as it is we have some great hardware running software that just won't appeal to anyone who has already left the BBM fold.”

“Beloved features like BBM and BlackBerry's e-mail client, along with an upgraded UI and incredible QWERTY keyboard, make the Bold 9930 a worthy successor in the series. The new touchscreen produces sharp visuals and faster performance benchmarks, which is mainly attributed to its speedy 1.2GHz Qualcomm processor. Yet even with all of the Bold's modern enhancements, it still lacks the flashy specs found on Android and iOS devices like dual-core processing, mobile hotspot capability, and a larger App store. And seeing how the T-Mobile version is 4G-enabled, it's disappointing to see Sprint's model not supporting WiMAX speeds. But the fact that the carrier is offering its version with unlimited data plans and bundles it with cool extras make it a perfect fit for messaging and business types.”