BlackBerry Bold 9650 Solid but Uninspired

by Andrew Garcia

RIM’s BlackBerry Bold 9650 for Sprint is designed for CDMA/EVDO REV A. for domestic use, with support for GSM/GPRS/EDGE and UMTS (2,100MHz band) internationally.

The backplate has the leatherette texture common to the Bold family of smartphones. The camera is for video and still pictures (3.2 MP), with an LED flash.

Beneath the backplate, the Bold 9650 looks a lot like the Tour. There is a SIM slot, prepopulated with a Sprint SIM for international usage, and a MicroSDHC slot with a 2GB card installed. The battery is 1,400 mAhr, rated for 5 hours of EVDO talk time.

The right side houses the 3.5mm headset jack, volume controls, the MicroUSB port, plus a convenience key set to trigger the still camera.

The left edge has one convenience key, preprogrammed from voice dialing. The speaker is also located here.

The top edge has buttons for mute and standby controls. The standby button both locks and puts the device in standby mode, a change RIM implemented within the last few months.

The Bold 9650 comes with the standard Zen theme common for BlackBerry smartphones released in the last couple years.

Most of the non-core software is not preintalled. Everything shown here needs to be downloaded and installed before use, save for BlackBerry Messenger.

Within days of product release, Sprint offered an OS update for the Bold 9650. I performed the over-the-air update, and was able to remain activated to our BES server.

I added the Bold 9650 to our BES infrastructure so the device conformed to our security and network. Shown here, the BAS interface shows device statistics.