Click to Enlarge
Today Sprint released the Blackberry Bold 9650. For the past few months, it was assumed the 9650 would be the “Tour 2″. I hate to be such a cynic but it is hard to get excited about the phone because it is basically the Tour 9630 with defects cured.
The Tour 9630 launched with two major problems back in July of 2009. First, the trackball was defective. Eventually RIM thought they had it right. Tours with better trackballs were identified with a green dot on the packaging. Not surprisingly, many of those failed too. It was not uncommon to read about people making warranty exchanges multiple times. I had to swap out my own Tour 9630 twice. Second, the Tour 9630 launched with OS 4.7 which was really buggy, though not quite as notorious as the Storm’s initial OS. Bricking the Tour upon installing an app was quite common.
Good news! The Bold 9650 doesn’t have a trackball and it is being launched with OS 5.0. The trackball has been replaced with an optical trackpad which is also found on the new Blackberry Curves and it is reportedly reliable. OS 5.0 is much more stable than 4.7, though it could masquerade as 4.8 and nobody would notice — very few noticeable feature improvements. It is worth noting that RIM claims to have OS 6.0 right around the corner. OS 6.0 has a respectable native browser. It would be nice to get official word from RIM that this device will receive an OS 6.0 upgrade.
Other improvements include Wifi b/g which is a welcome improvement and 512 megs of RAM. The phone retails for $199 with a new 2 year agreement. The Bold 9650 is what the Tour 9630 should have been.
No related posts.
Jon Mallin
Founder of Tech Bottle Blog. Attorney & Amateur Blogger. B.A. University of Michigan 1997 and J.D. NYU School of Law 2000.
Jon Mallin on Google+ (Preferred) --
@JonMallin on Twitter --
LinkedIN C.V. -- Email Jon@TBOTTLE.COM
