BlackBerry Bold 9780 - An Incremental Update

The Bold Family

Amidst the two important milestones known as the and for Research in Motion (RIM), it's easy to forget the device that gave the company the breakthrough into the mainstream market – the . Back in 2008, we had nothing but praises for the first Bold. For RIM, it was the definitive device that won the hearts of consumers, making it one of the few and well-chosen devices for the year. In 2009, its successor, the , enjoyed a much more compact design, removed the trackball in lieu of an optical trackpad, and a slightly updated BlackBerry 5 OS.

And thus, in 2010, we kept our eyes peeled for the third iteration of the Bold series. Near the end of the year, we kept our fingers crossed in the hopes of spotting the BlackBerry Bold 9780 in our labs. Fortunately, the unit came into retail availability within December 2010, barely making the mark for its scheduled appearance.

When we place the Bold 9780 side-by-side with its Bold 9700 predecessor, there's seemingly no differences to spot in its exterior. As such, you'll have a similar handling experience between these two BlackBerry devices. The optical trackpad is still present, and like what we've said previously, take due care with how sensitive the trackpad can be. With almost the same dimensions as its predecessor, we were thankful that its physical QWERTY keyboard is still easy to utilize even for its compact nature.

So what are the distinct improvements to this BlackBerry Bold update? It's all internal, from its hardware specifications, to the new as seen on the earlier BlackBerry Torch 9800. In essence, the Bold 9780's interface shares the same basic premise as what we saw on the Torch 9800. Focusing on populating the home screen with various pull-up and drop-down menus, the experience is slightly different from the touch screen interface. Instead, you'll depend solely on the optical trackpad to scroll through the various menus, followed by clicking on the trackpad to select the highlighted menu.

With its small screen size, it can get frustrating to navigate through the interface with just the trackpad. Our earlier mentioning of the sensitive trackpad made it even harder to have a good control of the interface.

In fact, even for its hardware, the changes are minimal, with a boost to its onboard memory from 256MB to 512MB, and a new 5-megapixel camera. This is good news for the mobile shutterbug, since the camera comes with a significant imaging improvement. The question is - will you see a significant performance improvement? We'll answer that in the following Performance page.

The Bold Front

The overall experience is remarkably smooth, but we aren't exactly crediting it to the 624MHz processor within. Incidentally, this is the same processor powering its predecessor. Considering that, we think the renewed BlackBerry 6 OS has a hand in the Bold 9780's smooth performance. Other than what we've mentioned about some difficulty with its user interface due to its trackpad, we found the experience to be pleasantly fluid.

Given its modest screen size, watching videos on the Bold 9780 could be straining on your eyes. We do have to agree on its smooth rendering of our test videos, and audio quality wasn't too shabby either. Its final multimedia feature, the 5-megapixel camera, is one of the highlights of the Bold 9780. We'll let its images speak for itself.

As you can see, color reproduction on the 5-megapixel camera was decent, with a good balance across the various hues. Its details and sharpness levels were average as seen on the resolution chart. This was also apparent with our standard test image, though the tighter edges could turn up slightly muffled in details.

Moving on with one of our core evaluation of a mobile device, we subjected the Bold 9780 to a battery test. As usual, our test parameters include the following conditions:

1. Screen brightness at 100%

2. Audio volume at 100%

3. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth active. Data is being constantly pulled via Twitter and BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server).

4. Running a video encoded at 240 x 320 pixels resolution on an endless loop.

With these conditions set in place, we now examine the Bold 9780's battery performance against devices with similar features. As such, we're looking at display sizes and resolution, its accompanying processor. We've also included comparisons between the weight and dimensions to calculate the portability index of the device.

The Bold 9780's results show a slight drop in its stamina, as compared to the earlier Bold 9700. With the same display size, resolution and processor, this leads us to believe that the updated BlackBerry 6 OS comes with a slight dip in power management.

Since its dimensions and weight is retained at the same levels as its predecessor, the only condition that affects its portability index comes from its battery life. As such, you'll find a lower portability index from the Bold 9780. Looking across the comparisons, you'll find the Bold 9780 to be the lesser of the four, though it does come with an above average battery life span at 5 hours 24 minutes and a reasonable portability index.

Theoretical benchmarking aside, we conducted our usual routine by using the phone as our main mobile device to see how does it fare in more practical usage. We did get a better mileage out of it, with nearly two days of constant emails streaming in. Incoming calls were minimal during this period, but we compensated for that with heavier internet activity by using its web browser and social networking.

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.

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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