Review of the Blackberry Tour 9630 on Verizon Wireless

The Blackberry Tour 9630 is my third Blackberry device. It is unusual to Verizon Wireless, and so far, it is the best Blackberry I’ve ever owned. Manufactured by Research in Motion (RIM) located in Waterloo, Ontario Canada the Blackberry Tour 9630 is one of the first devices to implement RIMs new, sleeker design.

After several years of success, RIMs Blackberry Curve (83xx series) line was beginning to acquire a bit out dated. RIM had recently launched the Blackberry Storm on Verizon, their first touch shroud devise, which included an updated physical design. Adding darker colors, and steeper angles, the Storm looked like a completely new devise. The Storms initial lackluster sales prompted RIM to hit the acquire floor and begin to update as grand as possible to avoid losing market share. The Tour 9630 was one of the first results of this redesign process, and designed to replace the aging 8830 World Series, a popular corporate unit.

The Blackberry Tour is a QWERTY devise, similar to the Curve 83xx series. It boasts a 480×360 hi res display, showing over 65,000 colors. It comes in slightly larger then the Curve 83xx series at 4.4″x2.4″x.56″, but still smaller then the powerhouse Bold 9000 series, and its predecessor the 8830. It packs the standard features, such as GSM and CDMA radios, a 3.2mp camera, GPS, and full 3G capabilities. Battery life is listed as 14 days standby, 5 hours talk time. In my experience, with light to moderate use, you may be able to pull 2 days, but nightly charges seem necessary. Of course, battery life is subjective to your usage, background apps, and many other factors. The Tour has a Bold style keyboard, which features raised keys, with no place in between, unlike the Curve 83xx series, which had individual keys with spaces in between. This seems to have really sped up my typing, and its one of the easiest thumb QWERTY keyboards I’ve ever used. In fact, I’m tying typing this review on my Blackberry Tour. The phone is very light, at 4.5oz, almost too light. I’m coming from a Motorola Droid, which is very heavy, so I’ve had to adjust to make sure the Tour doesn’t fly out of my hands. The back battery mask is plastic, but boasts a nice carbon fiber design.

All in all, the Blackberry tour is a spacious devise, that I am enjoying using. The Blackberry operating system is a work in progress, but it’s a professional system, that’s focused on getting the job done, instead of looking pretty. Email is what RIM built their business on, and that’s what the Blackberry shines at. SMS, MMS, Instant message, chat, and their own Blackberry Messenger application all work together to make certain that you can contact whoever you need to, whenever you need to. The phone handles multimedia well, but it’s not designed for watching movies, and the screen is a bit small for some multimedia functions, but will work in a pinch. One of my favorite recent additions is the Kindle app for Blackberry. Many complain that the screen is too shrimp to read on, but I’ve had no trouble, and really enjoy having my eBooks with me wherever I go.

I would recommend the Blackberry Tour to any Verizon user who wants a QWERTY devise, and who doesn’t want to be bogged down by flashy social networking phones. The Blackberry is a work horse, and will get the job done.

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