BlackBerry 9720 review

Budget BlackBerry 9720 winds clock back to BB 7, but who's biting?

BlackBerry 9720 review
A BlackBerry from days gone by

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Battery life

BlackBerry is claiming that you should get up to seven hours of talk time from a fully charged battery and up to 18 days of standby. We found that it still had some juice left, even after a busy day of testing, so BlackBerry's claims seem reasonable.

The screen is quite small and there's no 4G, so that's two big potential battery drains that you don't have to worry about.

The video camera seems to be the biggest drain on the battery - extensive use put a small dent in the meter - but the video is such poor quality that you're really not likely to use it much.

The phone has a 1450mAh battery and it is removable, so if you are a heavy user you could always carry a spare, but we don't think you'll need to. The BlackBerry 9720 compares very favourably with its competitors in the battery life department, mainly because it doesn't have a big touchscreen.

Connectivity

The BlackBerry 9720 is a 3G phone. It supports Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, and GPS. You can also use it as a mobile hotspot. All of your connectivity is easily accessed by tapping the status bar at the top of the home screen.

You can tick the relevant box to turn your mobile network, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or mobile hotspot on or off. There's also an 'All Off' option at the bottom to quickly turn off the lot. Everything is straightforward and easy to use.

BlackBerry 9720

The All Off button is a nice idea

As mentioned earlier, you can use the BlackBerry Desktop Software to sync your BlackBerry 9720. It takes a little while to install and find your device when you hook it up using the micro-USB to USB cable supplied, but it's very easy to use.

You can schedule regular backups, and you can just drag and drop files in either direction to copy them either to your BlackBerry 9720 from your computer, or vice versa.

BlackBerry 9720

Backups are handled well