Review: The Blackberry Tour 9630 Four Months Later

It’s been a little over four months since the BlackBerry Tour 9630 was first released.  While it had a somewhat of a rocky start I think we can all agree it turned out to be a solid BlackBerry phone.  I am still waiting for the perfect smartphone but each new BlackBerry gets me closer to one.

My first ever BlackBerry was the Curve 8330 from Verizon.  I fell in love with that phone as soon as I bought it.   As time went on my Curve started to wear.  Probably because of all the leaked OS’s and other similar stuff that I put on it.  For a few months now I have had my eye on the new Storm 2 and in the meantime another device got my attention.  My good friends over at RIM sent me a free BlackBerry Tour 9630 to review and I had some time to get to know it.

The Design
The design of the actual phone is very beautiful.  It has a glossy look and the chrome side is amazing, it gives such more class to the device.  The battery door seems to be much more stable than the one on my curve 8330 and it is much easier to open.  The convenience keys and the audio input jack are very well placed and are very smooth and easy to press but the charging port seems to be in an odd place.  A lot of times I like to charge and use my device at the same time but with the charging port where it is I can’t type as easily as I would like.

The Keyboard

The keyboard is very different then it was on my Curve.  I felt the Curve keyboard stuck out and felt kind of cheap, but the keyboard on the Blackberry Tour feels much better.  It took some time to get used to because the keys are kind of close together but after I got use to it they felt very easy to type on.  The keys are very responsive and don’t take as much force to press down on.  One of my problems with the keyboard is that I can no longer press the atl key and the question mark button at the same time.  I have to push one, then the other.  But I do like how the call/end/application/return keys aren’t raised up like they were on the Curve, it gives the keyboard a much nicer feel.

Display

The 480×360 display is very nice.  The screen is crystal clear and makes everything look even better.  Movies on the Blackberry Tour are very comfortable to watch even with the screen not being the size of the Storm.  I love the fact that after the Tour has been not used after a couple minutes the display slowly fades away.  I know I am a geek but things like that amaze me.

Camera

The 3.2 megapixel camera makes taking pictures so much more fun.  The pictures come out very clear after I take them and I am not the best picture taker.  Don’t forget about the video camera which is also very good and taking videos is a breeze.

Memory

The memory on the device is sufficient.  I am a power user and I use a ton of apps and didn’t like the fact that the Blackberry Curve 8330 couldn’t handle what I wanted.   The Blackberry Tour has 256 MB of on board memory along with the expandable built in memory card.  It isn’t the most I’ve seen but it definitely supplies me with what I need.

trackball

Perhaps the most talked about topic with the Tour is the trackball.  Everyone knows about all the issues that were present in the early models.  Both Verizon and Sprint made statements about it and said those problems were fixed.  I can tell you first hand that they were.  I haven’t had any issues with my Tour trackball and it looks like all the issues are gone.  Justin had some issues with his because he had an early model.  But he easily returned it for a new one and Verizon worked with him to get it back fast.

Overall this is another solid BlackBerry phone.  It is great for every type of user out there.  I know many people who own one and say that they think it’s as almost good as the Bold. Now that might be a long stretch but who knows, the only thing it is missing is Wi-Fi but I heard it will be present in the Tour 2.

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