BlackBerry Bold 9650 Teardown and Review

Introduction

Our fantastic friends over at iFixit got lucky and scored a BlackBerry Bold 9650 yesterday. They were nice enough to share some images – let the analysis begin!

Teardown Process

RIM makes a solid device. They come apart easily, everything is modular, held in with a minimal number of well-placed and cleverly hidden screws. These devices can be fixed, although with the new optical trackpad, what would you need to fix?

This is a gorgeous device, enough said – it will probably look better disassembled.

Step-by-Step Teardown

Remove the battery and back cover. There you will see 4 hex screws just waiting for your T6. Remove them.

The device is still held in the upper (camera level) portion. There are two screws located underneath the ear speaker. This is the same construction as the original Tour. Removing this piece of plastic requires a plastic spudger, patience, and a will of steel. You can actually break the plastic tabs holding this portion in – be careful.

Once this piece is removed, you’ll see the missing links. Remove these screws and that’s it – everything – PCB, Antennae, inner and outer shell were held in with these 6 screws. Simple and extremely effective.

Now for the PCB. RIM is still using solid ESD cans without clips. We can remove the solder with a heat gun or powerful soldering iron. They took this a step further and tossed in some epoxy as well. After much deliberation, we settled with a dremel.

Argh!

Device Analysis

The BlackBerry Bold 9650 is a world-phone, allowing access to the following GSM networks: GSM850, GSM900, GSM1800, GSM1900, UMTS2100. You’ll also get CDMA800 and CDMA1900 support. Hardware-wise, there isn’t much difference from the 9630 Tour as you’ll see below:

The 528MHz ARM 11 MSM 7600 reined on the 9630 and we see its face again on the 9650. The 9650 competes with some pretty heavy 1GHz A4 and SnapDragon devices. However, battery life on this device is fantastic, and it handles its built-in functions well, with little processor lag.

Technical Specifications

• Processor: 528MHz ARM 11 MSM 7600
• RAM: 256MB of RAM provided by Samsung on the KAT00M NAND + SDRAM MCP
• USB PHY: SMSC USB3326
• PMIC and RF: Qualcomm PM7540, RTR6500, and RTR6285
• PA Array: Skyworks (SK77336-13), Avago (FEM-7758), and TriQuint (TQM613031)

As a small aside, you’ve probably all heard about the iPhone 4’s antenna issues. You may have seen Jobs’ jab at RIM and attenuation loss on the hallowed 9700. This device is a perfect example of RIM’s mastery in wireless communication. This PCB is more secure from ESD and heat than Alcatraz. It’s rare to see such solid shielding as it undoubtedly drives manufacturing costs up. Kudos to RIM on this one – it just makes our job harder!

Review

Overview

The BlackBerry Bold brand has always been reserved for RIM’s highest-featured handsets. The BlackBerry Bold 9000 entered the market as the company’s first 3G handset while the Bold 9700 was the glossy new premiere of the coveted optical trackpad and new BlackBerry plastics. The BlackBerry 9650 is the next handset to enter the Bold family and rounds out the lineup with its world-class capabilities.

Last July, RIM launched the BlackBerry Tour 9630 with Sprint and Verizon. It provided traveling BlackBerry users with an updated version of the BlackBerry 8800 world-phone. Since then, RIM has been trying to streamline their many brands – subsequently pushing the Tour under the Bold brand.

Offered by Sprint and Verizon, the features of the 9650 encompass all of the great features from the 9000, 9700, and 9630 Tour and wraps them up in a slightly new design.

Price

$449.99 from Sprint or $509.99 from Verizon

With a 2-year contract, the device will set you back $199.99 from Sprint or $149.99 from Verizon.

Greats

Like I mentioned before, the phone is essentially a mash-up of what is good about the latest Bold family with added network capabilities.

Hardware

Size-wise, the phone is a hair larger than the 9700 (Taller, Wider, and Thicker). The keys are the same accordion style/guitar frets we see in the Tour and previous Bold devices.

The optical trackpad is a bit more raised on the 9650 compared to the 8500, making it easier to find and use. The optical trackpad is quick and responsive, a giant improvement from the inconsistent and unreliable mechanical trackball.

As for the O/A Form-Factor and housing design, RIM could have done more – but why fix what ain’t broke! The plastics are identical to that of the Tour, so much so that the backing of the previous tour can be used interchangeably with that on the 9650. Fortunately, the carbon f(o)bre look is gone. Heavier than the 8500, the phone holds very steady and has a weighty palm feel. Given the Tour was widely accepted among BlackBerry users as having the best BlackBerry exterior (previous to 9700), we couldn’t be happier with the exterior of the 9650.

RIM is also looking to increase their memory capacities. Internal memory in the 9650 was doubled to 512 MB. Strangely enough, this is still less than the OG 900, which contained a 1GB MoviNAND.

Software

The Bold 9650 comes out of the box equipped with the new BlackBerry OS 5.0 (specifically 5.0.0.6990). As is with all BlackBerry interfaces, the buttons are crisp and clean. Booting up from a battery pull or cold reset is about 30 seconds faster than a BlackBerry running OS version 4.6. Not much, but it’s a start in tackling BlackBerry’s notoriously long boot time.

The two most unique features of the 9650 would be the phone’s WiFi connection and OpenGL support. The Tour’s lack of WiFi was a source of complaint from many users. Despite the phone’s wide selection of radio connectivity, a traveling user may find it difficult not being able to take advantage of free WiFi connections in areas of low-connectivity or just for the sake of saving possible roaming fees.

OpenGL support is a new offering from BlackBerry handsets, and the 9650 is the first phone (and currently the only phone) to have it. This addition makes the 9650 capable of 3D graphics. This means it’s only a matter of time before some awesome 3D apps become available.

Middle Line Features

The 3.2-megapixel camera is really the only run-of-the-mill feature of the 9650. At PW, it’s understood that megapixels do not always equate to better pictures, but we would love a 5MP CMOS.

It isn’t totally awash, however, as BlackBerry does include a host of camera options to enhance pictures. You can get a variety of effects using these options. We took the liberty of presenting some below.

Image A – Default Settings, Autofocus = OFF

Image B – Default, White Balance set to Fluorescent

Image C – Default with AF set to Macro

Image D – Default with Image Stabilization

All images are taken with automatic flash setting. Autofocus provides the most clarity although other options such as White Balance and Image Stabilization are nice features to have. The camera also gives you the ability to enable Geotagging, a feature native and akin to the iPhone. These new options redeem the camera’s lack of resolution, however not enough for it to be a strength.

Gripes

To be honest, there is little to really pick apart on the 9650. Overall, it does its job as a smartphone very well and shows that BlackBerry definitely takes user feedback into consideration when defining new handsets. The only drawback may be the media player, which doesn’t seem to appear as sharp as that of the Bold 9000. The speakers are also not as powerful in terms of volume as the 9000 either. However, pictures are still vibrant and beautiful as always.

The one major weakness of the 9650 is the side loading performance. The memory options are very confusing. With the recent movement to MTP support, BlackBerry has tried to remain flexible and provide users the ability to do mass storage class. A nice gesture but a little confusing to the general user. The default memory setting enables both MTP and MSC, however, data movement through either method is unbearably slow. When MTP is shut off, MSC is still not as fast as we would like to see on PW. And of course, when MSC is disabled, MTP is slow, no news there. Overall, the side loading performance is a bust.

As always, the BlackBerry browser could be improved. This is not a fault of the phone but more so a fault of the BlackBerry OS. Hopefully, new updates (BB 6.0 and the Flash enabled WebKit browser) will alleviate this common gripe.

Conclusion

BlackBerry was right in lumping this handset with their high-end products. It certainly delivers in both functionality and style. Although they could have done a bit more in terms of feature enhancements (camera and display). RIM has released so many handsets in the last few years and this phone wraps up all of their best components and presents them beautifully. That said, RIM seems to be falling behind the curve – we can’t wait for BB 6.0 and their inevitable re-hash on touch screen devices.

BlackBerry Bold: 8.5/10

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