Product Listing

BlackBerry Bold 9780 - An Incremental Update

By Seow Tein Hee - 12 Jan 2011
Launch SRP: S$790

Conclusion

More than a Six

An acceptable successor, by implication, is meant to do what its predecessor managed to do, and in the process, improve upon it. From the exterior, it would seem as though you are looking at another Bold 9700 instead of the newer Bold 9780. Handling this new entry in the Bold series doesn't throw us any surprises, except for one - its new BlackBerry 6 OS user interface.

The overall experience with the BlackBerry 6 OS is positive. Smooth and intuitive, the learning curve for this new user interface is just as manageable from our earlier run on the Torch 9800. Using the optical trackpad instead of a touch screen panel, the experience is almost similar. If you've been a Bold 9700 user, it shouldn't take too long to get used to it.

Till now, the Bold 9780 is seemingly great, but there's always a deal breaker. For this new BlackBerry phone, it's the same 2.44-inch display, which is a tad too small for our liking. This was most notably felt when we tried to view videos on it. On the bright side, you get smooth video performance, and above average audio quality from the Bold 9780. The same can be said for its imaging capabilities, with the upgraded 5-megapixel camera that returned sharp pictures with generally well-balanced colors.

The silver lining for it is a significantly strong battery mileage, clocking in at more than two days in our practical use scenario with constant data usage. On its own, it has some good battery up-time and power consumption numbers, but when compared with its predecessor and current competitors, the Bold 9780 might not have the most to offer.

To upgrade, or not to upgrade? The hardware improvements are minute, but the BlackBeryr Bold 9780 does come with a much more usable BlackBerry 6 OS.

If you're holding onto the very first BlackBerry Bold 9000, we'd say it's high time to upgrade. For the Bold 9700 users, the improvements aren't astounding, but if you do have the spare cash of S$790, it might be a decent upgrade - depending on your expectations.

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8.0
  • Design 8
  • Features 8.5
  • User-Friendliness 8
  • Performance 7.5
  • Value 8
The Good
Preloaded with intuitive BlackBerry 6 OS
New 5-megapixel camera
The Bad
Processor speed remains at 624MHz
Sensitive optical trackpad
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