Verizon BlackBerry Bold 9650 Review

Coming off my 8330 I was more than excited to pick up a Tour 9630 the day it was released. I was one of a dozen or so people in line at my local Verizon store, and was in and out in a few minutes. I rushed home to get up and running on my new device. I fell in love with the higher resoution screen, keyboard and all around design. Thankfully I didn't have the trackball issues like some, but my battery door did come loose at times. I was happy to finally have the latest device on Verion's network (not such a big fan of AT&T or T-Mobile here in New Jersey).

Enter the Bold 9700. The feel of the device combined with the trackpad and overall "smoothness" just left me thinking "where is my CDMA version"? Rumors started flying, and sure enough talk of the Tour 2 popped up. Wifi and a trackpad on my Tour? Yes please. As with everyone else I was asking why Verizon didn't do it right the first time with the release of the 9630, but hindsight is 20/20. Months down the road, doubled memory, a trackpad, Wifi and a bit of rebranding leaves us with the newly released Bold 9650. Read on for my review.

Straight up out of the box you just think "Tour". The trackpad is the obvious difference, and aside from the Bold branding on the back it's the same device ... on the outside. On the inside we have juiced up memory to 512MB (in preparations for BlackBerry 6) and the addition of Wifi. The Bold 9650 feels great all around. Its a bit bigger than the Bold 9700 I've been using for the past few months, but nothing I won't be able to get used to. Holding the device is a bit different as it takes up more "hand space", but again I'll get over it. I love the 9650 keyboard (as I did the Tour) and mostly that I can get back on Verizon since the service is sooooo much better than that of T-Mobile where I live. Having the Wifi on a CDMA device is kind of a first for me since I never used a Storm2 and only rocked out the 8530 for a week or so. I was never a big believer in it in the past, but after having the Bold 9700 I really can't see myself without it. The back of the device has the large battery door, and thanfully it isn't loose and wobbly like my old Tour 9630. The site buttons and convenience keys are in the same place, with the exception of the micro USB port having dropped down a bit for some unknown reason. The placement of the port still is a mystery to me since it gets in the way if you try to type with the device plugged in.



Features
Optical trackpad for easy and fluid navigation
Built-in Wi-Fi® (802.11 b/g)
Push to Talk feature
VZ Navigator® version 6
VZ Navigator Global capabilities
Mobile e-mail and messaging capabilities
Large (2.45") high-resolution display (480 x 360 resolution at 245 ppi)
3.2 megapixel camera with flash, variable zoom, image stabilization, autofocus and video recording
Advanced media player for videos, pictures and music; a 3.5 mm stereo headset jack; and support for the Bluetooth® Stereo Audio Profile (A2DP/AVCRP)
BlackBerry® Media Sync to easily sync music as well as photos
Easy mobile access to Facebook®, MySpace and Flickr® as well as popular instant messaging services, including BlackBerry® Messenger
Support for BlackBerry App World(TM), featuring a broad and growing catalog of third-party mobile applications developed specifically for lackBerry smartphones
512 MB Flash memory and an expandable memory card slot that supports up to 16 GB microSD(TM) HC cards (a 2 GB card is pre-installed)
Full HTML Web browser, streaming audio and video via RTSP
Built-in GPS with support for location-based applications and services as well as geotagging
Premium phone features, including voice-activated dialing, speakerphone, and Bluetooth (2.1)
Support for high-speed EV-DO Rev. A networks in North America as well as single band UMTS/HSPA (2100 MHz) and quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM networks abroad
Removable and rechargeable 1400 mAhr battery for up to 5 hours of CDMA
talk time