RIM BlackBerry Bold 9900 review

BlackBerry’s App World keeps growing and although it doesn’t have the breadth of choice you get with Apple’s App Store or Android’s market, it’s full of useful apps rather than the games and screensavers that fill other less established app stores. There’s already a good selection of apps installed on the 9900, with an office file editor and PDF viewer, a robust selection of social networking and IM apps, and multimedia tools including Amazon’s Music Store.

BlackBerry OS 7 is slick, and addresses many of the problems for which we hated RIM’s previous operating systems. Gone are the text-only menus with long lists of arcane settings: options are now logically grouped, with the less-used options kept out of the way. Settings used on a daily basis, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and alarms are accessible via the drop-down status bar at the top of the home screen. We particularly liked the universal search: you simply start typing from the home screen to search anything from contacts to apps.

RIM may be struggling to keep up with more consumer-friendly Android and Apple smartphones, but its secure email system and the popularity of BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) still make a BlackBerry an attractive option. However, despite the 9900’s fast processor, great screen and useful apps, it’s incredibly expensive, limiting its market to corporate users and those with plenty of spare cash. Unless you absolutely need secure email, Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro has a great QWERTY keyboard and gives you access to the brimming Android Market, so it’s much better value.