BlackBerry Bold 9790 Specs

• Talk Time: Up to 5 h 10 min (2G) , Up to 5 h 20 min (3G)
• Standby: Up to 432 h (2G) , Up to 408 h (3G)
• Size: 110 x 60 x 11mm
• Weight: 107g
• Display: 2.45 inch capacitive touch screen
• Resolution: 480 x 360 pixels
• Processor: 1 Ghz single core processor
• OS: BlackBerry
• Frequency: Quad-Band
• Messaging: SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
• Camera: 5 MP, 2592x1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
• Music: MP3, WMA, WAV, eAAC+, FLAC player
• Memory: 8 GB storage, 768 MB RAM
• Data Speed: GPRS, EDGE, 3G
• Browser: HTML
• Connectivity: USB, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth

BlackBerry fans will feel at home with the 9790 and its familiar keyboard. Above it, the display is a capacitive touchscreen, so you can control the phone by tapping on icons or scrolling with a fingertip. What you see on the screen will also be familiar to existing BlackBerry owners, and it's simple and intuitive for new users too. The menus are clear and simple, with important options like your email account settings, call settings, and security settings all within easy reach. Your latest emails, texts and messages or updates from apps appear with a tap of the notifications bar. Handy shortcuts include a menu that lets you turn your Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or other connections on or off, which can be found by tapping the top of the screen where battery level, signal strength and the time are displayed. Wi-Fi sucks up power like it's going out of style so the ability to turn it off easily is really useful when you're not in a hotspot.

A rare shortcut that's surplus to requirements is the NFC toggle. Near-field communication is the technology that lets you pay for things by waving a credit card over a till, and one day we'll probably be paying for things with a wave of our phone too. For now, it can only be used for transferring files to the handful of other phones with NFC. Access to a feature that actually gets used would have been more useful in that shortcut spot, like GPS, which is another battery vampire. There are more shortcuts at the bottom of the screen, this time to your favourite apps. Many apps come with the phone, like email, calendar and the camera app. The Documents To Go app is a useful office app that lets you view and edit Word documents, Excel spread sheets, PDFs and even PowerPoint presentations.

One of the most popular built-in apps, especially amongst younger users, is BlackBerry Messenger. This sends messages to other BlackBerry users, for free, saving you money on text messages. Meanwhile the Social Feed pulls together your friends' updates from all their social networks, so you don't have to look at Twitter or Facebook separately. You can download more apps from the BlackBerry World app store to personalise your phone further. But while there are plenty of apps to choose from in the BlackBerry World catalogue, it's nowhere near the choice offered by Apple's App Store for the iPhone and iPad, or Google's Android Market for Android phones. A number of big names are missing, too, such as Skype, though this would probably conflict with BBM.

The problem with the keyboard is that it limits the size of the touchscreen. The screen is sharp and colourful but at 2.45in it's simply too cramped for reading text or watching videos. And it's the wrong shape for most videos; when was the last time you saw a square television? Many videos are off limits anyway as the Blackberry Bold 9790 can't play Flash, the type of online video used by sites such as the BBC or 4OD. You can still watch YouTube videos, but it means opening a separate app. The touchscreen also struggles with your finger. It's fine when you tap on an icon or a link, but not so great when you swipes or move your finger. For example, setting time for an appointment in the calendar involves turning a dial with your fingertip, which sends it spinning off way too fast or hardly moves at all. You feel this problem most when browsing the Web. Websites load quickly but moving around a webpage is clunky because the screen isn't responsive enough to your movements.

The size of the screen may be a compromise when surfing the Web, watching a video or reading lots of text, but it does have one very big benefit for the Bold 9790: excellent battery life. Keeping a big screen lit up is a real drain on the battery, and this smart phone outlasts many others by actually lasting longer than a day, even when making plenty of calls. Everyday use -- looking a few things up on the Web, checking email, the odd call or text -- often sees the phone last two days before it needs charging. Very handy for busy users who are always on the go. The Blackberry Bold 9790 stores a respectable 8GB of photos, movies, and music, and you can add more by sticking in a microSD memory card.

To fire up the camera app and capture a snap, simply press the dedicated camera button on the right side of the phone. The volume controls double up as zoom controls, but you should give them a miss: it's a digital zoom, which just blows up the picture rather than actually zooming in and actually leaves you with less detail. Assorted shooting modes let you quickly adjust the camera to the right settings for the situation, such as when you're taking someone's portrait, snapping at a party, or capturing a landscape. It's worth trying different modes as you shoot, however, as the one that says it's designed for wherever you are isn't necessarily the one that will give the best results in your specific situation. The mode for shooting in snowy weather, for example, turned out better pictures of sunny outdoor scenes than the standard landscape mode. As with most camera phones and compact cameras, limited by their size, the camera's Achilles heel is low-light situations, which is a problem, because cosy but ill-lit situations like the pub, a party or just hanging out of an evening with friends are exactly the times that many people want to whip out a camera phone to capture the moment. There is a LED flash on board that helps alleviate these problems, but only at the expense of making your images a little to white and harsh.

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