BlackBerry Bold 9780: Not So Bold
by Mithun Chandrasekhar on March 25, 2011 2:20 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- Smartphones
- 9780
- BlackBerry
- Bold
- Mobile
Battery Life and Call Quality
The Bold 9780 comes with RIM’s workhorse 5.4Whr M-S1 battery and the overall battery life is very good, in typical BlackBerry fashion. Although you can find specific numbers from our battery life suites listed below, in actual day-to-day use, the phone easily lasted 3 days with normal use that included some calls, texting, emails (push enabled), surfing over WiFi/3G, etc. It felt great to break the habit I had developed of plugging a phone into its charger every night before hitting bed.
Also, aside from Apple whose rated battery life is pretty accurate, there are very few other device vendors who provide even semi-reasonable battery life ratings. RIM on the other hand has gone the other way around and been curiously conservative with its estimates. The 9780 beat RIM's estimated 3G talk time of "up to 6 hours" by posting a time well over that mark of 7 hours and 22 minutes though this was with UMA turned off (as WiFi was turned off).
I also tried running the test with UMA (more on that below), but I realized that the phone arbitarily switches to 3G-only even when its location has not changed. In view of presenting consistent, repeatable results here, I decided to not go ahead with the UMA test. Understandably, the battery life will take a hit using UMA as the 802.11 b/g radio is running in addition to the cellular baseband radio.
Call quality was also pretty good with nothing in particular to report. The speakerphone volume is plenty loud and audible even in moderately noisy environments. If I really wanted to find a fault with the audio quality, it would be that the voice over the speakerphone sounded more ‘tinny’ than it usually does on most mobile phones, but really, that’s just me being picky.
The Bold 9780 switches to UMA mode when it detects a known WiFi network (left)
It is also interesting to note that the Bold 9780 review sample we had, being on the T-Mobile network, supports the UMA standard. Unlicensed Mobile Access is a name given to a technology known as Generic Access Network that allows seamless handoff of GSM/UMTS protocol-traffic between cellular networks and unlicensed spectrum such as 802.11. In other words, UMA can potentially use WiFi networks you have logged into to route phone traffic, thereby improving your network "coverage" and reducing the congestion on the carrier network. Both the device and the network need to support this feature in order for it to work.
Moving on, the Bold 9780 seems to hold onto the signal very well. The antenna is located in the lower middle section of the device, not directly accessible without opening the phone up. Because of this, I had to go through an extraordinary amount of effort to "cup tightly" and register the 19 dBm drop in signal. Likewise, even when held naturally the signal drops by about 11 dBm only in certain cases at locations where I don't get very good coverage. The majority of the time, the Bold showed almost no signal attenuation under normal usage when the cellular coverage is good. This is why I have marked the cupping tightly number for the 9780 with an asterix as it was definitely not normal, even for the tough cupping test.
Update: As pointed out by one of our readers in the comments, I have updated the signal attenuation numbers based on the readout from the hidden Engineering Menu. Thanks for pointing that out Faruk88!
| Signal Attenuation Comparison in dB—Lower is Better | |||||||
| Cupping Tightly | Holding Naturally | On an Open Palm | |||||
| BlackBerry Bold 9780 | 17.0 | 7.2 | 4.0 | ||||
| Nexus S | 13.3 | 6.1 | 4.3 | ||||
| Samsung Fascinate | 10.0 | 5.0 | 0.0 | ||||
| Droid 2 | 11.5 | 5.1 | 4.5 | ||||
| BlackBerry Torch 9800 | 15.9 | 7.1 | 3.7 | ||||
| Dell Streak | 14.0 | 8.7 | 4.0 | ||||
| Droid X | 15.0 | 5.1 | 4.5 | ||||
| iPhone 4 | 24.6 | 19.8 | 9.2 | ||||
| iPhone 3GS | 14.3 | 1.9 | 0.2 | ||||
| Nexus One | 17.7 | 10.7 | 6.7 | ||||
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SonicIce - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
just kidding lolradium69 - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
Too bad the market for blackberries is getting saturated in europe.All of the teens have either a blackberry or an iphone.
The image of a blackberry is getting seriously raped over here. Carriers are promoting the blackberries like mad, with a text bundle etc.
Allthough it's a nippy little device, I will not buy it.
Allthough the battery life is as always, good.
IntelUser2000 - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
"the javascript performance as reported by the SunSpider benchmark has improved by a staggering 54% compared to the numbers before the update (which in itself was a decent 13% better than those posted by the Torch, which basically has the exact same hardware specs as this Bold)."Lesson in simple arithmetic. When comparing performance numbers that result in better score as "lower", the gain in performance is found by dividing the higher number by the lower number.
For example:
10612ms vs 22752ms
22752/10612 = 2.14x or 114% faster
mythun.chandra - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
Agreed. What I meant to say in the review was it executed the SunSpider benchmark in 54% less time.klatscho - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
i have been using the 9700 for 18 months now; the previous OS was terrible, but with the current os 6 it really works fine; i especially enjoy the search functions and the long battery life; the device is quite small and robust; also the keyboard augments my productivity.i would really like to see more hardware like this (small form factor, keyboard, long battery life) instead of all the supersized phones that are currently hyped. larger devices are fine for private used, but in a typical business environment, the just not cut the cheese.
Kosh401 - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
I've been on the Bold 9700 for quite a while now and love the thing. It's functionality with my job is a huge time saver and being able to use BBM with coworkers and all my friends who have berries has been a nice touch. For entertainment I have a couple games on it but I don't really use it much for games. Play poker the most with some friends, otherwise just good old fashion solitaire. I probably watch more Youtube and check the news more than I play games on it I'd guess. So for me that's all the entertainment I require out of my phone :)tipoo - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
Do we know yet if the Torch is getting that update that improved the Bold's Javascript performance so much? With the same processor it would make sense that it would.Vinny N - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
There's an error in the article...the display resolution is stated as 320x480. It is actually 480x360. Someone must have been thinking of the 480x320 resolution of the original bold 9000...mythun.chandra - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
Fixed!tech6 - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
I can only partially agree with this review as it seems to approach the 9780 as a home user device. For the average home user this phone will not be very interesting so if you want apps to show off to your friends and family then get an Android or iPhone. The Blackberry is a corporate communicator and it servers that purpose very well delivering security, the policy based management functionality of BES and the focus of the UI. For business these are indispensable qualities that the competition doesn't yet offer. That is not to say that Android or iOS are inferior but their focus is more on turning phones into media consumption devices than serving business and your review needs to reflect that.I also don't agree with the assessment of build quality. I changed my 9700 for a 9780 a couple of weeks ago and it is every bit as sturdy as the Torch or the 9000 and 9700.