January
21
BlackBerry Tour 9630
It’s no secret that I’ve been an avid user of BlackBerry devices for a long while now, since my original Black 8100 to Curve 8900’s, and Bold 9000’s and 9700’s, I’ve used almost every device RIM offers in their product lineup.
All are interesting, and have their unique strengths and weaknesses, from no WiFi, to somewhat shotty camera quality, to puzzling placement of things like the MicroUSB port, While the Tour is certainly not exempt to some of the strange quantities, it does stand out from other devices in some pretty interesting ways.
For one, The Tour is a dual-radio world device, for the Britons reading this post, it means nothing to you, except for the fact it has a standard SIM slot in the back, but for those in North America, it’s interesting because it means you can use it on any network in the world, CDMA, WCDMA or GSM. Whilst you may not get blazing fast data transmissions, it does mean you will at least be able to send and receive SMS messages, and place a phone call.
The overall design of the Tour is much like that of the Curve 8900 or the Storm 9550 series, Black and Silver, featuring a full QWERTY keyboard, a programmable soft key on the left, a volume rocker on the right, as well as another dual-stage user programmable soft key, which is defaulted to the camera functions, it also features a MicroUSB port, which is somewhat puzzingly placed lower down on the right, which makes typing while connected to the charger, somewhat difficult.
The Tour features a 480×360 display, the same size as that of the Bold 9700 and Curve 8900, the display is very crisp and has amazing colour reproduction, in videos and photos, blacks are sharp and whites are bright and colours are vibrant.
The actual review bit.
So, enough with a description of the thing you’ve seen a few million times, now for an actual review of the device in use.
Coming from a Bold 9000, RIM’s flagship device, second only to the 9700, the Tour actually feels like an upgrade in a way, it’s smaller, lighter, and is sometimes a bit snappier, EDGE data speeds leave something to be desired, sometimes managing to be slower than EDGE on devices like the 9000 and older 83xx series, I’ve yet to determine if this is because of radio configuration, or simply because this is primarily a CDMA based device.
The Tour unlike Curve 8500 series devices and the Bold 9700 features a trackball, identical to the one used in the Curve 8900, the only difference between them are the texture they have, the “Atomic” trackball as it’s known, which features a slightly “rougher” texture to it, as opposed to the smooth slickness of the 8100/8200/8300 and 8800 series devices.
The Tour does get slammed quite often for not featuring WiFi, but instead featuring GPS and the dual-GSM/CDMA radios, if your not a large user of WiFi then the lack of the WiFi radio won’t be an issue, but if your a massive UMA or WiFi connectivity fan, the Tour is a simple “no go” for you, your better off with an 8320, 8900 or 9000/9700.
As for camera quality, It seems to be quite good, the Tour does feature a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera, which while not a mass megapixel murder found in some Nokia handsets, manages to snap a good quality photo, You have a choice of focus modes, your options, while limited, are useful, Macro and Standard are your choices, and they’re both quite self-explanatory. I’ve yet to have time to play with video quality, but I expect to do so by the time I get around to writing a full, in-depth review.
Aesthetic-wise, the Tour is really no different from any other BlackBerry, as I mentioned earlier, Black and Silver Chrome, the only difference being between the 9630 and 9630FTS being that the normal 9630 has a darker colour of chrome when compared to the 9630FTS. (The 9630FTS is for US CDMA provider, Sprint-Nextel, and no one is quite sure why the 9630FTS was created, as no hardware differences seem to exist)
Luckily though, like most BlackBerry devices, your able to customise and modify fairly easily, provided your okay with voiding your manufacture warranty, there is an abundance of Chinese and American suppliers which allow you to order parts in various colours to really customise your device to your liking. Most of these modifications can be done for less than £25 ($40US).
Quick Summary
The Tour, is really a great device overall, It has a very usable keyboard, in a very “pocket friendly” form-factor, I’ve yet to use it long enough to write a full review on it, but my view of it is already very positive, I personally view it as a sort of smaller Bold 9000 or 3G-less Bold 9700, or even as a more feature packed version of the Curve 8900.
Some may be let down by the lack of WiFi radio, or lack of 3G radio for GSM networks, but both of those things simply take up battery power, and as someone who is always messaging focused, I don’t really care about connecting to my mates WiFi or getting data downloads at 1mbps+ over 3G. I care about sending a message, and doing it quickly, and the Tour, like almost every BlackBerry that preceded it, manages to do both those things better than any other device on the market.
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