Long awaited, the RIM BlackBerry Tour 9630 has at long last arrived in town, and it’s putting on fairly a performance. As the replacement to the RIM BlackBerry 8830 World Edition, the Tour offers 3G world roaming capabilities and brings a number of improvements in all three departments of design, features, and functioning. While we’re frustrated by the need of Wi-Fi and other lesser annoyances, the pros much prevail over the cons. It’s one of the strongest smartphone contributions from Verizon, and its commercial clientele will be well-served by this device. The RIM BlackBerry Tour 9630 will be presented from the carrier starting October 23, for $199.99 with a two-year agreement and following a $70 mail-in rebate.
Design
The RIM Blackberry 9630 looks like the lovechild of the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 and the RIM BlackBerry Bold, inheriting various of the best traits of the two smartphones. In terms of dimension, the Tour is more related to the Curve 8900, nonetheless slightly bigger and heavier at 4.4 inches tall by 2.4 inches wide by 0.6 inch thick and 4.5 ounces. (The Curve comes in at 4.2 inches tall by 2.3 inches wide by 0.5 inch thick and weighs 3.8 ounces.) Still, the piece of equipment is to a great extent more pocketable than the Bold in addition to the BlackBerry 8830. Plus, the extra weight gives the cellular phone a satisfyingly rock-solid feel, and the backside of the cell phone also features a inequitable soft-touch rub for extra durability.
The BlackBerry Tour’s design is a fine mixture of the BlackBerry Curve 8900 (pictured here) and the BlackBerry Bold.
The Tour features the identical display as the Curve 8900. It measures 2.4-inches diagonally and shows 65,536 colors at a 480×360-pixel resolution. Imagery and wording seem crisp and lively, and and colors pop off the screen.
Reminiscent of the Curve and Bold, the Tour features an updated client interface that’s somewhat uncomplicated and easy to steer. More than a few of the menu icons seem to be similar, so they can be hard to distinguish at a quick look, but overall the client interface is extremely simple and easy to navigate. You can reorganize the icons and categorize them in folders, and as always, you can modify the home screen with backdrop images and themes.
Underneath the display, you’ll find the Talk and End keys, a menu shortcut, a back button, and a trackball navigator. Pressing the Alt and menu key will bring up an application switcher where you can toggle between tasks, but we found it more handy to designate the switcher to one of the convenience keys located on the left and right sides of the phone. To program these buttons, simply go to Options > Screen/Keyboard and scroll down to the left and right convenience fields to appoint an app or task to the controls.
The BlackBerry Tour’s QWERTY keyboard is somewhat easy to use.
For text entry, the Tour offers a 35-key QWERTY keyboard that is reminiscent of the one found on the Bold, which is a nice thing. Evidently with the Tour’s more compress frame, the keyboard isn’t fully as sizeable as the Bold’s but still features good-size buttons. To stop them from feeling too level, the rectangular keys have a slight ridge and a white backlight makes the lettering and numbers (highlighted in red) easy to understand in darker environments. We were quite happy using the Tour’s keyboard. Plus, the keyboard just had a more high-quality feel compared with the Curve’s where the buttons felt a little plasticky. Our only slight complaint is that the outside keys are a little difficult to press, because the downward incline of the buttons make them a tad flat against the edge of the telephone.
Other features of the BlackBerry Tour’s design consist of lock and mute buttons on top of the piece of equipment. In addition to the aforesaid convenience key, there’s a volume rocker, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a Micro-USB port on the right. Ultimately, the camera and flash are located on back, while behind the battery cover, you’ll discover the SIM card and microSD expansion slots.
Verizon packages the RIM Blackberry 9630 with a load of accessories, including a travel charger, three international adapters, a USB cable, a stereo earpiece, a 2GB microSD card, a SIM card, a swivel holster, a Worldwide Support Kit, a software Compact disk, and reference information. For additional add-ons, please check our cell phone accessories, ringtones, and help page.
Features
As the replacement to the RIM BlackBerry 8830 World Edition, the RIM BlackBerry Tour offers dual-mode functionality (supporting dual-band CDMA and quad-band GSM networks) meant for world roaming capabilities and ships with a SIM card. With this capability, the phone switches automatically between CDMA and GSM networks to offer seamless international roaming–all while keeping the same cellular phone number. In addition to voice coverage, the BlackBerry Tour supports the 2100MHz UMTS/HSDPA band, so you can get 3G support overseas, while working on Verizon’s EV-DO Rev. A network nationally. In all, you’ll obtain voice coverage in 220 countries and data coverage (e-mail and Internet) in 175 countries. Be certain to check the international roaming rates for voice calls and text messages before you head off on your excursion: Verizon’s rates can get pretty costly in some areas, ranging from 69 cents up to $4.99 per minute. You can locate the carrier’s international plans here.
The RIM BlackBerry Tour offers world roaming capabilities and ships with a SIM card.
Other cellular phone features include a speakerphone, voice-activated dialing, smart dialing, conference calling, speed dial, and text and multimedia messaging. The Tour also supports Visual Voice Mail, but be informed that this service costs an additional $2.99 per month. The cellular phone book is only limited by the available memory with space in each entry for multiple numbers, e-mail addresses, work and home address, job title, and more. For caller ID purposes, you can attach a contact photo, group ID, or a custom ringtone.
While offering 3G support, the BlackBerry Tour does not have integrated Wi-Fi, but this isn’t a case of Verizon crippling the feature; Sprint’s version of the Tour also lacks Wi-Fi. You do get Bluetooth 2.0 with support for wireless headsets, stereo Bluetooth (A2DP/AVCRP), hands-free kits, phone book access, serial port, and dial-up networking. The latter allows you to use the Tour as a wireless modem for your laptop, but to use the feature, you will require to sign up for Verizon’s Mobile Broadband Connect plan, which ranges from $39.99 per month for 250MB of data up to $59.99 for 5GB of data.
GPS is also onboard. The smartphone uses both satellites and cellular triangulation to locate your position and can offer navigation via numerous methods. The smartphone ships with BlackBerry Maps, where you can get maps, text-based turn-by-turn instructions, and search for local businesses. Then again, for real-time voice-guided directions, you will want to subscribe to a location-based service, which Verizon provides through VZ Navigator. The service costs $9.99 a month; sadly, our review unit was not set up with the service to test it out.
Of course, what would a BlackBerry be not including e-mail? The BlackBerry Tour can sync with your company’s BlackBerry Enterprise server, with support for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell GroupWise, to transfer corporate e-mail in real time. With BlackBerry Internet Service, you can also access up to 10 personal/business POP3 or IMAP4 e-mail accounts. There’s also an attachment viewer for opening Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Corel WordPerfect, PDF, JPEG, GIF, and more. Thankfully, there’s more instant messaging support as well, so in addition to BlackBerry Messenger, there are also preloaded clients IM for Windows Live, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, and AIM.
To supplement the attachment viewer, the smartphone ships with DataViz Documents To Go Standard Edition, so you can now edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files as well. If you want the capacity to make new documents, you will have to upgrade to the Premium Edition, however. Staple personal information management tools, like a Calendar, a task list, a memo pad, a voice recorder, a calculator, will also help keep you on track. Recognizing the growing popularity of social networking sites, Verizon and RIM has also included Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr on the BlackBerry Tour for straightforward access.
In addition to the preloaded apps, the BlackBerry Tour supports the just launched BlackBerry App World. The catalog has a basic, but easy-to-use, interface and features a fairly comprehensive database of applications, which you can view by category, top downloads, or featured items. You can also explore by title. We downloaded a number of programs over Verizon’s 3G network, including Slacker Radio, the Weather Channel, and AP News, and had no problems. The dreadful news, however, is that like the T-Mobile G1, you can’t save apps to the microSD card, so you’ll have to download them to the phone’s main memory, which isn’t that much at 256MB.
Despite the fact that the app store has plenty of entertainment apps, there are some onboard options as well. The BlackBerry Tour features a built-in media player that can play assorted music and video formats, including MP3, WMA, WMA ProPlus Bluetooth, AAC, AAC+, and eAAC+ files, and MPEG4, WMV, and H.264 video clips. There’s a search function, playlist creation, shuffle and repeat, and you get a full-display mode for video playback. You can pay for and download songs over the air through V Cast Music or stream music from a number of sites. The included software CD also contains a copy of Roxio Easy Media Creator, so you can create MP3s from CDs and add audio tags. Make good use of that 2GB microSD card and save every one of your multimedia files on there. If you need extra, the expansion slot can accept up to 16GB cards. Video and TV buffs might be disappointed to learn that the Verizon BlackBerry Tour will not support V Cast Mobile TV, whereas Sprint’s version of the Tour will support the carrier’s mobile TV service.
Picture quality was mediocre, and there’s a bit of shutter lag.
The BlackBerry Tour comes with a 3.2-megapixel camera with 2x zoom, auto focus, flash, and image stabilization. It can also record video and geotag photos using the phone’s GPS. Despite the image stabilization, we found picture quality to be a little unclear. There’s a bit of shutter lag so it may be that we pulled the camera away too soon, but that in and of itself is irritating. Video quality was in reality more impressive. The picture had some expected pixelation but was generally clear and it did well even in darker environments. For enterprise customers whose place of work bans camera phones, Verizon will also offer a version without a camera.
Performance
We tested the dual-mode (CDMA 800/1900; GSM 850/900/1800/1900; UMTS/HSDPA 2100) RIM BlackBerry Tour 9630 in San Francisco with Verizon Wireless service and call quality was excellent. We heard our callers loud and clear; in fact, it was very nearly too loud so we had to take the volume down a couple of notches. There are also settings to boost the audio by boosting the treble or bass, but we didn’t feel the need to so. Our callers also had positive comments and said calls sounded quite clear. However, they could tell when we switched to the speakerphone without warning. While the audio was not quite as pristine, we were still able to carry on with the conversation. On our side, the calls had enough volume but sounded just a bit hollow.
We paired the smartphone with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset and the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active headset.
Armed with a 528MHz Qualcomm processor, the BlackBerry Tour was able to keep up with our day-to-day demands and was quite a fast modest device. We encountered minimal delays, and we were able to switch between tasks with no troubles. Verizon’s EV-DO Rev. A network also provided quick as well as reliable coverage here in San Francisco. App and music downloads were pretty swift. It took 52 seconds to download the Slacker app, while a 1.94MB song took 1 minute and 27 seconds from V Cast Music. Thanks to the inclusion of a 3.5mm headphone jack, we were able to plug in our Bose On-Ear headphones and enjoy rich-sounding tracks. Video playback was also smooth with synchronized picture and audio.
Using the Tour’s full HTML browser, AwsWireless.com full site downloaded in 38 seconds–quite impressive considering other 3G smartphones have taken up to a minute–while CNN’s and ESPN’s mobile sites came up in 7 seconds and 15 seconds. We’ve said it before, but we’ll say it again. BlackBerry’s Web browser isn’t the best. It’s come a long way and it’s much less maddening to navigate with the onscreen cursor and different page views, but still there’s a lot to be desired.
Since our review unit didn’t include VZ Navigator, we couldn’t really try out the voice-guided navigation. Yet, we used BlackBerry Maps, which was able to present accurate directions to our destinations. The GPS signal was pretty good; from a cold start, the cellular phone was able to discover our location within two minutes and subsequent starts were a little faster at about a minute or less.
The RIM BlackBerry Tour comes with a 1400mAh lithium ion battery with a rated talk time of 5 hours and up to 14 days of standby time. In our battery drain tests, the BlackBerry Tour beat the rated talk time by 1.5 hours.
RSS FEED
