RIM Blackberry Bold 9790 review

Fitting a keyboard means that there’s less room for a screen than on a traditional smartphone. However, with a resolution of 480×360 the pixel density is pretty high, and text and images look sharp and clear. There’s no getting round the fact that web browsing demands a lot of scrolling around, so this is a handset that’s better suited to text-based applications.

That’s where this phone really starts to shine. Thanks to the famous BlackBerry keyboard it’s incredibly easy and fast to type long messages. The keyboard’s moulded keys are small but shaped in such a way that you rarely manage to miss-hit or press two keys at once.

BlackBerry OS has improved drastically over the last couple of years, and now includes more social aggregation as standard. You can now add Facebook and Twitter feeds to your inbox, along with text messages and emails, and in addition to BBM you get Google Talk and Windows Messenger clients built-in.

Of course, email is the thing that you’re most likely to want to use this handset for. It arguably works best in corporate environments where the RIM server is installed, but the phone will connect to an Exchange account with Outlook Web Access enabled, as well as standard email accounts, such as Gmail. However, it’s a little fiddly to setup and BlackBerry OS lacks the simple menus of Android and iOS.

Hardware wise, the Bold 9790 is bang up-to-date, with NFC and 5GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi built in. There’s little support for NFC at the moment, but 5GHz wireless may be useful if you’ve got a posh router and want the best wireless speeds.

Where the Bold 9790 falls down, though, is with App support. BlackBerry App World has got better, but it lacks official apps from a lot of big companies, there are fewer apps than available for Android and iPhone and less quality control.

Given the small screen and lack of apps, the Bold 9790 is only of interest for corporate environments or if you want its excellent email handling and keyboard. We’d rather spend the money on a phone with a larger touchscreen, such as the excellent Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S.