Engadget

VR throwback ‘Duck Season’ arrives September 14th

Latest in 1.2ghz

HTC One VX for AT&T hands-on: mid-range style on a budget (movie)

LG Optimus 3D Max is a slimmer sequel, world’s very first phone with 3D movie editing

Gallery: BlackBerry Bold nine thousand nine hundred thirty | twenty four Photos

• Petite displayBlackBerry seven already feels datedNo LTE

The best embodiment of what BlackBerry is today, but it’s just not up to snuff with the rivals of today.

While the old Bolds lived up to their name by being a little rounded, kind of chubby, a bit bulbous, the fresh model is rather more svelte and sophisticated. Looking purely at its face it’s hard to detect that anything has switched. You still have the same portrait QWERTY layout with the same basic button scheme, but where once lived a trackball now an optical trackpad sits. That’s flanked by a solid bar of backlit capacitive touch buttons, freshly monochrome and flush with the display. A curving bit of chrome separates those buttons from the keyboard, as before.

Around the back you’ll find another big switch: an slab of composite weave has substituted the Leatherette on the old Bold, ditching tactility in favor of an extra bit of class. But, the soft-touch plastic that provides the tapered edge, covering the gap inbetween woven panel and stainless rim, does feel a little bit cheap by comparison — as a Mercedes CLS might look a bit low-rent next to a Bentley Continental. Overall, however, it’s a solid, stately feeling phone that offers little visual presence but slew of good feel. And, at Ten.5mm (.41-inches) thick, it’s rather svelte, too.

Tucked underneath that is a microSD slot, where you can add up to 32GB of storage to boost the 8GB that’s built-in, and a SIM slot. You’ll be needing that to keep every one of this phone’s radios singing, and there are many in this chorus line. In addition to dual-band CDMA / EVDO (800/1,900MHz) you’re looking at dual-band UTMS / HSPA (900/Two,100MHz) and quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE (850/900/1,800/1,900MHz), plus 802/11a/b/g/n WiFi at Two.Four and Five.0GHz. If you’ve got a frequency calling, chances are this thing can response — unless it’s 4G, of course.

Gallery: BlackBerry Bold nine thousand nine hundred thirty vs. Torch nine thousand eight hundred fifty vs. PlayBook | seventeen Photos

Ultimately, when it comes to call quality, the spectacle here is top-notch. While we find our handset to have average abilities when it came to seeking out and stringing up on to the signal Verizon is putting out, calls always went through noisy and clear. The speakerphone likewise will do fairly well for your next impromptu concall — even in the big conference room. You know, the one with the tired, faux-leather chairs and the automatic projector screen that most likely knocked the socks off of potential clients back in the early ’90s.

Display

The fresh Bold offers a Two.8-inch LCD that may not be much thicker than that found in previous Bold models but is at least higher resolution: six hundred forty x 480. It’s hard to get too excited about stepping up to VGA in 2011, so forgive us if we’re a little underwhelmed by the pixel count here, but resolution is more than adequate. In fact, its 287dpi rating is mighty close to the vaunted 300dpi supposedly needed to get us close to Retina territory. Coming from a big-screened slate of a phone you’ll feel underwhelmed by the size here, but most BlackBerry users will appreciate the extra pixels.

Camera

Where before the camera was situated smack in the middle, the nine thousand nine hundred series splits camera from flash, embedding the five megapixel sensor on the upper-right (when facing away from you) and the LED flash on the upper-left. When using the flash we found this created something of an unfortunate shadow on the right-edge of whatever we were imaging at close-range, but given this is an EDoF sensor you won’t want to be that close anyway. In theory the camera has clear concentrate out to infinity, but the reality is EDoF makes macro shots unlikely. In our sample gallery you’ll see up-close shots of the flowers are blurred, and while your average executive won’t be pulling this phone out of his trouser pocket to catch a passing daffodil in bloom, he very likely will want to take close-up snaps of the business cards transferred to him at last week’s sales mixer. The 9900’s camera isn’t particularly well suited for the job.

Gallery: BlackBerry Bold nine thousand nine hundred thirty Bold sample pics | seventeen Photos

BlackBerry 7

Do you hate switch? You are going to indeed love BlackBerry 7. The latest flavor of the OS got bumped from a minor to a major update for reasons that likely have more to do with marketing than hardware, but regardless of how you spin it this Bold is running what is, ultimately, a tweak to the BB6 that many of you know and have grown tired of. After playing with and (mostly) loving the gesture-heavy interface spanked over QNX to power the PlayBook we’re naturally fairly antsy to see what’s next for that little OS. Sadly, we’re hearing we won’t see anything like that on a phone until next year sometime.

The OS’s integrated search function lets you quickly hunt through contacts, favorites, e-mails, you name it. Now you can also search by voice, a feature that we found to be exceptionally accurate at identifying whatever we mumbled into the microphone. The only haul here is that we had to accept not one, but two exceptionally long license agreements before enabling that feature. In fact you’ll be scrolling through pages and pages of legalese just about every time you attempt doing something fresh on your handset. That results in, unnecessary to say, a somewhat unpleasant user practice.

Software

If you’re not sold on BB7, the application selection isn’t liable to help matters. App World does suggest a healthy choice, but the most entries are lil’ little utilities with niche functionality that will leave you asking questions like "Do we truly need an app dedicated to scanning Air Traffic Control at Ottawa International Airport?" In this case the response is yes, someone does, but we can securely say that we could do without 3D Rollercoaster Rush Jurassic Two. This app is supposed to be the premiere title to display off the phones’ fresh Open GL ES Two.0 support, and it sure does have polygons. It is also slightly less joy (and only slightly more interactive) than watching a movie of someone else railing a rollercoaster.

BlackBerry Bold nine thousand nine hundred thirty review

Engadget

VR throwback ‘Duck Season’ arrives September 14th

Latest in 1.2ghz

HTC One VX for AT&T hands-on: mid-range style on a budget (movie)

LG Optimus 3D Max is a slimmer sequel, world’s very first phone with 3D movie editing

Gallery: BlackBerry Bold nine thousand nine hundred thirty | twenty four Photos

• Puny displayBlackBerry seven already feels datedNo LTE

The best embodiment of what BlackBerry is today, but it’s just not up to snuff with the rivals of today.

While the old Bolds lived up to their name by being a little rounded, kind of chubby, a bit bulbous, the fresh model is rather more svelte and sophisticated. Looking purely at its face it’s hard to detect that anything has switched. You still have the same portrait QWERTY layout with the same basic button scheme, but where once lived a trackball now an optical trackpad sits. That’s flanked by a solid bar of backlit capacitive touch buttons, freshly monochrome and flush with the display. A curving bit of chrome separates those buttons from the keyboard, as before.

Around the back you’ll find another big switch: an slab of composite weave has substituted the Leatherette on the old Bold, ditching tactility in favor of an extra bit of class. But, the soft-touch plastic that provides the tapered edge, covering the gap inbetween woven panel and stainless rim, does feel a little bit cheap by comparison — as a Mercedes CLS might look a bit low-rent next to a Bentley Continental. Overall, however, it’s a solid, stately feeling phone that offers little visual presence but slew of good feel. And, at Ten.5mm (.41-inches) thick, it’s rather svelte, too.

Tucked underneath that is a microSD slot, where you can add up to 32GB of storage to boost the 8GB that’s built-in, and a SIM slot. You’ll be needing that to keep every one of this phone’s radios singing, and there are many in this chorus line. In addition to dual-band CDMA / EVDO (800/1,900MHz) you’re looking at dual-band UTMS / HSPA (900/Two,100MHz) and quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE (850/900/1,800/1,900MHz), plus 802/11a/b/g/n WiFi at Two.Four and Five.0GHz. If you’ve got a frequency calling, chances are this thing can reaction — unless it’s 4G, of course.

Gallery: BlackBerry Bold nine thousand nine hundred thirty vs. Torch nine thousand eight hundred fifty vs. PlayBook | seventeen Photos

Eventually, when it comes to call quality, the spectacle here is top-notch. While we find our handset to have average abilities when it came to seeking out and stringing up on to the signal Verizon is putting out, calls always went through noisy and clear. The speakerphone likewise will do fairly well for your next impromptu concall — even in the big conference room. You know, the one with the tired, faux-leather chairs and the automatic projector screen that very likely knocked the socks off of potential clients back in the early ’90s.

Display

The fresh Bold offers a Two.8-inch LCD that may not be much fatter than that found in previous Bold models but is at least higher resolution: six hundred forty x 480. It’s hard to get too excited about stepping up to VGA in 2011, so forgive us if we’re a little underwhelmed by the pixel count here, but resolution is more than adequate. In fact, its 287dpi rating is mighty close to the vaunted 300dpi supposedly needed to get us close to Retina territory. Coming from a big-screened slate of a phone you’ll feel underwhelmed by the size here, but most BlackBerry users will appreciate the extra pixels.

Camera

Where before the camera was situated smack in the middle, the nine thousand nine hundred series splits camera from flash, embedding the five megapixel sensor on the upper-right (when facing away from you) and the LED flash on the upper-left. When using the flash we found this created something of an unfortunate shadow on the right-edge of whatever we were imaging at close-range, but given this is an EDoF sensor you won’t want to be that close anyway. In theory the camera has clear concentrate out to infinity, but the reality is EDoF makes macro shots unlikely. In our sample gallery you’ll see up-close shots of the flowers are blurred, and while your average executive won’t be pulling this phone out of his trouser pocket to catch a passing daffodil in bloom, he most likely will want to take close-up snaps of the business cards passed to him at last week’s sales mixer. The 9900’s camera isn’t particularly well suited for the job.

Gallery: BlackBerry Bold nine thousand nine hundred thirty Bold sample pictures | seventeen Photos

BlackBerry 7

Do you hate switch? You are going to indeed love BlackBerry 7. The latest flavor of the OS got bumped from a minor to a major update for reasons that likely have more to do with marketing than hardware, but regardless of how you spin it this Bold is running what is, ultimately, a tweak to the BB6 that many of you know and have grown tired of. After playing with and (mostly) loving the gesture-heavy interface spanked over QNX to power the PlayBook we’re naturally fairly antsy to see what’s next for that little OS. Sadly, we’re hearing we won’t see anything like that on a phone until next year sometime.

The OS’s integrated search function lets you quickly hunt through contacts, favorites, e-mails, you name it. Now you can also search by voice, a feature that we found to be amazingly accurate at identifying whatever we mumbled into the microphone. The only haul here is that we had to accept not one, but two amazingly long license agreements before enabling that feature. In fact you’ll be scrolling through pages and pages of legalese just about every time you attempt doing something fresh on your handset. That results in, unnecessary to say, a somewhat unpleasant user practice.

Software

If you’re not sold on BB7, the application selection isn’t liable to help matters. App World does suggest a healthy choice, but the most entries are little little utilities with niche functionality that will leave you asking questions like "Do we indeed need an app dedicated to scanning Air Traffic Control at Ottawa International Airport?" In this case the response is yes, someone does, but we can securely say that we could do without 3D Rollercoaster Rush Jurassic Two. This app is supposed to be the premiere title to display off the phones’ fresh Open GL ES Two.0 support, and it sure does have polygons. It is also slightly less joy (and only slightly more interactive) than watching a movie of someone else railing a rollercoaster.

BlackBerry Bold nine thousand nine hundred thirty review

Engadget

VR throwback ‘Duck Season’ arrives September 14th

Latest in 1.2ghz

HTC One VX for AT&T hands-on: mid-range style on a budget (movie)

LG Optimus 3D Max is a slimmer sequel, world’s very first phone with 3D movie editing

Gallery: BlackBerry Bold nine thousand nine hundred thirty | twenty four Photos

• Petite displayBlackBerry seven already feels datedNo LTE

The best embodiment of what BlackBerry is today, but it’s just not up to snuff with the rivals of today.

While the old Bolds lived up to their name by being a little rounded, kind of chubby, a bit bulbous, the fresh model is rather more svelte and sophisticated. Looking purely at its face it’s hard to detect that anything has switched. You still have the same portrait QWERTY layout with the same basic button scheme, but where once lived a trackball now an optical trackpad sits. That’s flanked by a solid bar of backlit capacitive touch buttons, freshly monochrome and flush with the display. A curving bit of chrome separates those buttons from the keyboard, as before.

Around the back you’ll find another big switch: an slab of composite weave has substituted the Leatherette on the old Bold, ditching tactility in favor of an extra bit of class. But, the soft-touch plastic that provides the tapered edge, covering the gap inbetween woven panel and stainless rim, does feel a little bit cheap by comparison — as a Mercedes CLS might look a bit low-rent next to a Bentley Continental. Overall, tho’, it’s a solid, stately feeling phone that offers little visual presence but slew of good feel. And, at Ten.5mm (.41-inches) thick, it’s rather svelte, too.

Tucked underneath that is a microSD slot, where you can add up to 32GB of storage to boost the 8GB that’s built-in, and a SIM slot. You’ll be needing that to keep every one of this phone’s radios singing, and there are many in this chorus line. In addition to dual-band CDMA / EVDO (800/1,900MHz) you’re looking at dual-band UTMS / HSPA (900/Two,100MHz) and quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE (850/900/1,800/1,900MHz), plus 802/11a/b/g/n WiFi at Two.Four and Five.0GHz. If you’ve got a frequency calling, chances are this thing can response — unless it’s 4G, of course.

Gallery: BlackBerry Bold nine thousand nine hundred thirty vs. Torch nine thousand eight hundred fifty vs. PlayBook | seventeen Photos

Ultimately, when it comes to call quality, the spectacle here is top-notch. While we find our handset to have average abilities when it came to seeking out and stringing up on to the signal Verizon is putting out, calls always went through noisy and clear. The speakerphone likewise will do fairly well for your next impromptu concall — even in the big conference room. You know, the one with the tired, faux-leather chairs and the automatic projector screen that very likely knocked the socks off of potential clients back in the early ’90s.

Display

The fresh Bold offers a Two.8-inch LCD that may not be much thicker than that found in previous Bold models but is at least higher resolution: six hundred forty x 480. It’s hard to get too excited about stepping up to VGA in 2011, so forgive us if we’re a little underwhelmed by the pixel count here, but resolution is more than adequate. In fact, its 287dpi rating is mighty close to the vaunted 300dpi supposedly needed to get us close to Retina territory. Coming from a big-screened slate of a phone you’ll feel underwhelmed by the size here, but most BlackBerry users will appreciate the extra pixels.

Camera

Where before the camera was situated smack in the middle, the nine thousand nine hundred series splits camera from flash, embedding the five megapixel sensor on the upper-right (when facing away from you) and the LED flash on the upper-left. When using the flash we found this created something of an unfortunate shadow on the right-edge of whatever we were imaging at close-range, but given this is an EDoF sensor you won’t want to be that close anyway. In theory the camera has clear concentrate out to infinity, but the reality is EDoF makes macro shots unlikely. In our sample gallery you’ll see up-close shots of the flowers are blurred, and while your average executive won’t be pulling this phone out of his trouser pocket to catch a passing daffodil in bloom, he very likely will want to take close-up snaps of the business cards transferred to him at last week’s sales mixer. The 9900’s camera isn’t particularly well suited for the job.

Gallery: BlackBerry Bold nine thousand nine hundred thirty Bold sample photos | seventeen Photos

BlackBerry 7

Do you hate switch? You are going to truly love BlackBerry 7. The latest flavor of the OS got bumped from a minor to a major update for reasons that likely have more to do with marketing than hardware, but regardless of how you spin it this Bold is running what is, ultimately, a tweak to the BB6 that many of you know and have grown tired of. After playing with and (mostly) loving the gesture-heavy interface spanked over QNX to power the PlayBook we’re naturally fairly antsy to see what’s next for that little OS. Sadly, we’re hearing we won’t see anything like that on a phone until next year sometime.

The OS’s integrated search function lets you quickly hunt through contacts, favorites, e-mails, you name it. Now you can also search by voice, a feature that we found to be exceptionally accurate at identifying whatever we mumbled into the microphone. The only haul here is that we had to accept not one, but two amazingly long license agreements before enabling that feature. In fact you’ll be scrolling through pages and pages of legalese just about every time you attempt doing something fresh on your handset. That results in, unnecessary to say, a somewhat unpleasant user practice.

Software

If you’re not sold on BB7, the application selection isn’t liable to help matters. App World does suggest a healthy choice, but the most entries are lil’ little utilities with niche functionality that will leave you asking questions like "Do we indeed need an app dedicated to scanning Air Traffic Control at Ottawa International Airport?" In this case the response is yes, someone does, but we can securely say that we could do without 3D Rollercoaster Rush Jurassic Two. This app is supposed to be the premiere title to display off the phones’ fresh Open GL ES Two.0 support, and it sure does have polygons. It is also slightly less joy (and only slightly more interactive) than watching a movie of someone else railing a rollercoaster.

BlackBerry Bold nine thousand nine hundred thirty review

Engadget

VR throwback ‘Duck Season’ arrives September 14th

Latest in 1.2ghz

HTC One VX for AT&T hands-on: mid-range style on a budget (movie)

LG Optimus 3D Max is a slimmer sequel, world’s very first phone with 3D movie editing

Gallery: BlackBerry Bold nine thousand nine hundred thirty | twenty four Photos

• Puny displayBlackBerry seven already feels datedNo LTE

The best embodiment of what BlackBerry is today, but it’s just not up to snuff with the rivals of today.

While the old Bolds lived up to their name by being a little rounded, kind of chubby, a bit bulbous, the fresh model is rather more svelte and sophisticated. Looking purely at its face it’s hard to detect that anything has switched. You still have the same portrait QWERTY layout with the same basic button scheme, but where once lived a trackball now an optical trackpad sits. That’s flanked by a solid bar of backlit capacitive touch buttons, freshly monochrome and flush with the display. A curving bit of chrome separates those buttons from the keyboard, as before.

Around the back you’ll find another big switch: an slab of composite weave has substituted the Leatherette on the old Bold, ditching tactility in favor of an extra bit of class. But, the soft-touch plastic that provides the tapered edge, covering the gap inbetween woven panel and stainless rim, does feel a little bit cheap by comparison — as a Mercedes CLS might look a bit low-rent next to a Bentley Continental. Overall, tho’, it’s a solid, stately feeling phone that offers little visual presence but slew of good feel. And, at Ten.5mm (.41-inches) thick, it’s rather svelte, too.

Tucked underneath that is a microSD slot, where you can add up to 32GB of storage to boost the 8GB that’s built-in, and a SIM slot. You’ll be needing that to keep every one of this phone’s radios singing, and there are many in this chorus line. In addition to dual-band CDMA / EVDO (800/1,900MHz) you’re looking at dual-band UTMS / HSPA (900/Two,100MHz) and quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE (850/900/1,800/1,900MHz), plus 802/11a/b/g/n WiFi at Two.Four and Five.0GHz. If you’ve got a frequency calling, chances are this thing can reaction — unless it’s 4G, of course.

Gallery: BlackBerry Bold nine thousand nine hundred thirty vs. Torch nine thousand eight hundred fifty vs. PlayBook | seventeen Photos

Eventually, when it comes to call quality, the spectacle here is top-notch. While we find our handset to have average abilities when it came to seeking out and stringing up on to the signal Verizon is putting out, calls always went through noisy and clear. The speakerphone likewise will do fairly well for your next impromptu concall — even in the big conference room. You know, the one with the tired, faux-leather chairs and the automatic projector screen that very likely knocked the socks off of potential clients back in the early ’90s.

Display

The fresh Bold offers a Two.8-inch LCD that may not be much fatter than that found in previous Bold models but is at least higher resolution: six hundred forty x 480. It’s hard to get too excited about stepping up to VGA in 2011, so forgive us if we’re a little underwhelmed by the pixel count here, but resolution is more than adequate. In fact, its 287dpi rating is mighty close to the vaunted 300dpi supposedly needed to get us close to Retina territory. Coming from a big-screened slate of a phone you’ll feel underwhelmed by the size here, but most BlackBerry users will appreciate the extra pixels.

Camera

Where before the camera was situated smack in the middle, the nine thousand nine hundred series splits camera from flash, embedding the five megapixel sensor on the upper-right (when facing away from you) and the LED flash on the upper-left. When using the flash we found this created something of an unfortunate shadow on the right-edge of whatever we were imaging at close-range, but given this is an EDoF sensor you won’t want to be that close anyway. In theory the camera has clear concentrate out to infinity, but the reality is EDoF makes macro shots unlikely. In our sample gallery you’ll see up-close shots of the flowers are blurred, and while your average executive won’t be pulling this phone out of his trouser pocket to catch a passing daffodil in bloom, he very likely will want to take close-up snaps of the business cards transferred to him at last week’s sales mixer. The 9900’s camera isn’t particularly well suited for the job.

Gallery: BlackBerry Bold nine thousand nine hundred thirty Bold sample pictures | seventeen Photos

BlackBerry 7

Do you hate switch? You are going to indeed love BlackBerry 7. The latest flavor of the OS got bumped from a minor to a major update for reasons that likely have more to do with marketing than hardware, but regardless of how you spin it this Bold is running what is, ultimately, a tweak to the BB6 that many of you know and have grown tired of. After playing with and (mostly) loving the gesture-heavy interface spanked over QNX to power the PlayBook we’re naturally fairly antsy to see what’s next for that little OS. Sadly, we’re hearing we won’t see anything like that on a phone until next year sometime.

The OS’s integrated search function lets you quickly hunt through contacts, favorites, e-mails, you name it. Now you can also search by voice, a feature that we found to be amazingly accurate at identifying whatever we mumbled into the microphone. The only haul here is that we had to accept not one, but two exceptionally long license agreements before enabling that feature. In fact you’ll be scrolling through pages and pages of legalese just about every time you attempt doing something fresh on your handset. That results in, unnecessary to say, a somewhat unpleasant user practice.

Software

If you’re not sold on BB7, the application selection isn’t liable to help matters. App World does suggest a healthy choice, but the most entries are lil’ little utilities with niche functionality that will leave you asking questions like "Do we indeed need an app dedicated to scanning Air Traffic Control at Ottawa International Airport?" In this case the reaction is yes, someone does, but we can securely say that we could do without 3D Rollercoaster Rush Jurassic Two. This app is supposed to be the premiere title to demonstrate off the phones’ fresh Open GL ES Two.0 support, and it sure does have polygons. It is also slightly less joy (and only slightly more interactive) than watching a movie of someone else railing a rollercoaster.

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