eWeek - June 7, 2010

for coverage in North America. For international coverage, the 9650 offers quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support in the 850/900/1,800/1,900MHz bands and 3G UMTS support in the 2,100MHz band.

The Bold 9650 comes with the same optical trackpad that first appeared on the Bold 9700. While I never used a trackball-enabled BlackBerry long enough for the pointer to start to falter, I understand the trackpad holds up better under extended use. Out of the box, the trackpad is accurate and easy to use, although I still find myself longing for inertial scrolling capabilities that would alleviate the need to push and push and push to navigate a long document or Web page.

RIM did not publish the specifications for the processor used for the Bold 9650, but the unit comes with 512MB of flash for device memory and application storage, compared with the 256MB delivered with the Bold 9700. Users can add additional storage via the MicroSDHC slot, which supports cards up to 32GB. The device comes with a 2GB card already installed.

The Bold 9650 ships with the same 1,400 mAh (milliampere hour) battery (the D-X1) used in the Storm, Storm2 and Tour, while the Bold 9700 and Bold 9000 shipped with the longer-but-thin-ner 1,500 mAh M-S1 battery. The Bold 9630 is rated for 5 hours of EVDO talk time, or 13 days standby time.

I found the battery quite difficult to remove from the Bold 9650, as the top part of the back frame kept me from getting a good grip on it. Thankfully, I found it easy to swap the MicroSD card without removing the battery (I could also remove the SIM with a little more effort), so the snug fit shouldn’t hinder users on a day-to-day basis.

The Bold 9650 has a high-resolution 480-by-360 backlit, light-sensing, transmissive TFT LCD screen that’s similar to the one on the Tour and the Bold 9700. In a side-by-side comparison, I

found the physical screen on the Bold 9700 slightly larger (by no more than 1/16 of an inch) than that of the Bold 9650, but the actual image is exactly the same size and equally sharp on both.

Software is a step up

The Bold 9650 ships with BlackBerry OS 5.0 software ( 5.0.0.621 to be exact)—a step up from the 4. 7 iteration that shipped with the Tour—but it delivers an outmoded Web browsing experience that’s similar to that of other BlackBerrys. I was able to easily activate the Bold 9650 to our BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) 5.0 SR1 infrastructure, and the device automatically conformed to our security and wireless network policies.

Sprint already made available an upgrade to 5.0.0.699, which purports to address a radio management problem with the phone in Global mode, as well as some dialing issues. It can be installed over the air, through the BlackBerry desktop or via BES.

With its additional flash memory on board, there is a decent chance the Bold 9650 will be upgradable to the recently announced BlackBerry OS 6.0 (expected to land in the third quarter), although RIM has yet to firmly announce whether current devices will be supported. Even if RIM gives the thumbs up for the upgrade, there is no guarantee that Sprint will. Customers who want to ensure their BlackBerry will support OS 6 should await future news before making a purchase.

The Bold 9650 ships with the now-
familiar Zen theme, which has become
the norm for other recent BlackBerry
models. Across the board, there is not
much to differentiate the 9650 from
its forebears on the software side, as
the device doesn’t come with a whole
lot of software preinstalled.

DataViz Documents To Go (Word, Sheet and Slideshow) is there to view and edit documents. BlackBerry Messenger is the only preinstalled instant messaging application, but download links for AIM, Google Talk, Yahoo, Windows Live Messenger and ICQ can be found in the Instant Messaging folder.

Likewise, download links can be found in the Social Networking folder for the lackluster BlackBerry Facebook application, MySpace and Flickr, but there isn’t a link for the still-in-beta BlackBerry Twitter application. The latter can be installed via App World, which is preinstalled. ;