The year 2013 didn’t begin well for BlackBerry with tumbling sales and consumers switching over to iPhone and varieties of Android devices that flooded the market. BlackBerry then announced the BlackBerry OS 10; a jump from the BlackBerry OS 7 found in its Curve, Bold and Torch variants. Along with the OS 10 they announced the Z10 & Q10; later introducing the Q5 in the middle of the 2nd quarter. It was there quite a surprise for us when we heard of the BlackBerry 9720. Dropping the “Curve” or “Bold” tag, the 9720 seems like an attempt to try and see if the old magic of BlackBerry will work in the contemporary technology era. It also seems there will be no more devices under those prefixes, especially with the introduction of OS 10.
Our friends at BlackBerry India were kind enough to provide us with a review unit of the BlackBerry 9720. Testing the 9720, is it really capable of selling itself in the market? Will the consumers – especially the jolly and active youth with little patience ask the retailer for the 9720?
Let us see what it has got in store!
Build and Design:
The BlackBerry 9720 is drawn on the same lines as the Curve 9320. The major add-on being the added touchscreen display and the slightly larger dimensions at 114mm (length) x 66mm (breadth) x 12 mm (thickness).
At the front, there is the standard QWERTY keypad along with the optical trackpad and call function keys found in most of the old BlackBerry devices. The keypad is placed in a linear manner, quite similar to that of the Q5.
There is a notification LED and a sensor resting on top of the display. As you run down the right hand side of the handset, you’ll find the mute key sitting in between the volume keys along with a shortcut key for the camera which can be modified to perform other functions.
The left side of the device houses the micro USB port along with the shortcut key for BBM. Located on the head are the Screen Lock key and a jack for your 3.5mm headset. The rear of the phone holds the 5 megapixel camera and LED flash that are held together unlike the Curve 9320. The rear plastic cover has a rubber layer along with a ribbed texture. It comes embedded with the silver coloured standard BlackBerry logo.
Removing the back panel, you’ll find the battery underneath which a mini SIM card slot is placed and the slot for microSD card right next to the LED flash. A rubber coating runs all around the side and helps offer a decent grip of the device.
Display and Touchscreen
It has a 2.8 inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 480 x 360 pixels with pixel density of 214 ppi. The display comes with capacitive touch; it was quite responsive and smooth while operating.
Performance and Specifications
The BlackBerry 9720 runs on a Tavor MG1 processor that is clocked at 806 MHz. It runs the BlackBerry OS 7.1 which is as old as our grandmother in the technology years. It has 512 MB of RAM and a 512 MB of Internal Memory- quite paltry by todays standards.
It houses a 1450 mAh battery, which runs for quite the entire day on average use. We tested it by using Facebook and Twitter on Wi-Fi, chatting on Whatsapp for an hour or two, dialling/receiving around 10 calls.
We liked the new ‘Multicast’ feature that enabled us to post status updates simultaneously on Twitter and Facebook; preventing the tedious task of copy pasting the text on different social media websites.
Camera
It has a 5 megapixel camera that can click pictures with a maximum resolution of 2592×1944 pixels. It offers screen selection modes like auto, face detection, portrait, sports, landscape, party, close-up, snow, beach, night and text. The photos clicked during the day were pretty decent for uploading quickly on Twitter but not really great. For low light shots, the LED flash does not add a great deal of light on the subject while the photograph remains grainy and lacks detail.
It shoots videos at a resolution of 480p i.e. VGA quality. Do check out the camera sample video below
Overall:
The camera was quite substandard and BlackBerry could’ve done better with it. On close observation, the back panel is not designed to shut properly and was easily removable. There were gaps through which there is a risk of water easily seeping inside (by mistake any liquid comes close). The QWERTY keypad was not sturdy and was a little shaky as you’ll be able to see in our video that would be uploaded soon. We aren’t sure if these problems are limited to just the device at our hands. Meanwhile take a look at some pictures captured using the 9720.
We can’t help but draw parallels with the Curve 9320; the RAM, Memory, Battery, Processor Speed, Build, etc. Priced at just Rs 3,000 less, the 9320 makes a better choice compromising on the touchscreen.
In my opinion, only a hardcore BlackBerry fan who wants the feel of touch and type along with the vintage OS 7 will opt for this. If it had 1 GB of RAM and 1 GB of Internal Storage then may be it could have drawn some eyes towards it. The BlackBerry 9720 costs a Rs. 15,990/-. Considering the price, we clearly expected BlackBerry to build a better device. If this was an attempt at wooing the younger generation with a vintage device; it was clearly a bad one. For every attempt they made to make a step forward with the OS10 devices like Q5, the 9720 was two steps backward.
P.S: Just like their decision to make BBM a cross platform application, BlackBerry should decide on not producing more devices running the OS 7 and concentrate on improving the OS 10.
