BlackBerry Bold 9700 review

Can the new Bold better the excellent original?

The definitive BlackBerry Bold 2 9700 review
The definitive BlackBerry Bold 2 9700 review

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Connectivity is dealt with in the usual ways, with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G all present and correct, with the former working particularly well as per usual on BlackBerry handsets.

We very much like the fast switching between Wi-Fi and 3G – if you've got the battery life available (and you should have) then you can leave Wi-Fi on and let it connect to your trusted networks whenever you get in range of them.

BlackBerry bold 2 9700

Bluetooth is similarly easy to set up, with both having their own little set up widget in the menu screen to help explain what's going on when you try to connect to a nearby device.

We especially liked the option to 'listen' for a device trying to find our device, like the two objects were silently shouting commands to each other, just out of range of the human ear.

And we just dealt with GPS – it works well enough on the inbuilt mapping software, but we suggest you check out Google Maps for the BlackBerry range, as you always know where you are with that program (arf).

BlackBerry bold 2 9700

PC software is dealt with in two ways: Desktop manager and media sync. BlackBerry Desktop manager basically allows you to back up all your files to your computer to make sure they're safe if you lose the phone (which we all will do at some point, let's be honest).

Media Sync is one step beyond that in terms of entertainment, whereby it reads your iTunes and Windows Media Player playlists and sends them spiralling to your Bold 2 9700 directly to the new device without the hassle of having to put it into mass storage mode every five seconds.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief


Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.