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 | ||||
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
36 Comments
View All Comments
bplewis24 - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
Off-topic observation:I read your post and when I read the word "serves", I made sure to go back and re-read it, because I often subconsciously type out "servers" or "server" whenever I plan to type out "serves" or "serve" respectively. Lo and behold, you typed out "servers."
I don't know what it is about that word that forces me to add an "r" to it, but I'm glad to know I'm not the only one :)
Brandon
buhusky - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
10 years from now RIM will be nothing more than an article on WikipediaStuka87 - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
If this is their idea of an update, I am not sure they will even last that long :/mythun.chandra - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
The original signal attenuation numbers in the article were infact based on the "alt nmll" method. But as Faruk88 mentioned above, and based on what I saw myself, those numbers aren't nearly as accurate as the ones shown in the engineering menu which needs to be unlocked. :)vision33r - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
If you look at the recent earning numbers from RIM, the company is raking money on services.Any Android handset maker can only dream of making the dough RIM is taking in. Not even Google makes this much money from their own Android phone division excluding their ads and search revenue.
The only other company that makes this much money off their handset and services is Apple.
bplewis24 - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
But they warn of a rough quarter ahead:"It predicts its smartphone sales to fall at a time when the smartphone market overall is growing. It says to expect fiscal Q1 sales to fall between 13.5 and 14.5 million units. It also warns that its gross margin (a measure of profitability) will drop 41 percent."
Nevertheless, excluding Google's ad/search revenue from the mobile division is being completely blind to their business model. They license open-source and essentially free software so that they can make their money on search/ad revenue. Excluding that when making a profit comparison is like comparing a wage-based employee's income to a commission-based employee's income by only comparing wage-based income.
Brandon
worldbfree4me - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
I have got to give it up to RIM. They sure know how to milk something for all its worth. The Marvel 600 MHz cpu certainly have achieved economies of scale by now and then some. But my problem is this, it's like a V8 5.7 L (350 cu in) of yore vs. V8 6.2 L (376 cu in) of today, it’s a relic, plain and simple! Grand Ma doesn’t mind, but I do, so no sale period!Wurmer - Sunday, March 27, 2011 - link
I agree and it's way pass time RIM equips their flag ship devices with much more powerful processor. Compare to other top of the line smartphone it's rather weak and with the coming of dual core CPU in smartphones they better stepup their game or they will be left in the dust. In these times of rapide changes I think it's not realistic to expect to use the same CPU for more than 6 to 12 months. My wife has both the Torch and the Iphone 4 and the speed doesn't compare, Apple product is a lot more snappier and faster.NCM - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
The Anandtech site takes pains to be precise in its technical data and analyses, so the lack of attention to similar precision in use of language continues to disappoint.Only the latest of many examples:
• The trademarked spelling of the RIM smartphone is "BlackBerry," complete with mid-cap.
• Words in the English language do not form their plurals using a "grocer's apostrophe." The plural of "Blackberry" (even if that singular were correct) would never be the "Blackberry's" seen in your product review. Unlike the fruit, the plural of this trademarked name would normally be "BlackBerrys." RIM, however, says that there is to be no plural form of their trademark, but that "BlackBerry smartphones" should be used instead.
JarredWalton - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
I've corrected the spelling to BlackBerry, thanks. Your other two comments, while correct, do not appear to be present in this article. The only reference to "BlackBerry's" is on the summary page where we state, "the Torch and the Bold can both run the latest revision of BlackBerry's OS 6". While it may be more correct to say "RIM's OS 6" or simply "BlackBerry OS 6", you can look at it as the OS belong to BlackBerry and it would be correct. I've removed the apostrophe S anyway, as the full OS name should be BB OS 6.