The drastically reduced size is another thing altogether. It feels nice and is easily pocketable, but it does make the Bold family feel less… buxom. The original 9000 was beefy compared to the Curve and Pearl, but it had absolutely every feature crammed into it – the Bold was very clearly the daddy. With the 9700, the line is becoming less distinguished, both in terms of style and function; the Storm2 is perfectly on par with the 9700 when it comes to specs, the 9100 Striker will have 3G, Wi-Fi, and presumably GPS and OS 5.0, and the Tour 9630 is being updated with Wi-Fi and a trackpad. The differentiation between the Curve, Bold, and Pearl families is blurring, leaving only form factor as the real defining factor (which, perhaps, is RIM’s new strategy). That being said, the only real downside I’m finding in the case of the 9700 is that the keyboard and display sacrifice the luxurious real estate of the 9000. Typing is a bit harder, and though the actual screen resolution is bumped up 40 pixels height-wise, I would prefer the few extra millimeters of real space.
Keyboard
The keyboard is a signature classic first found in the Bold 9000 and replicated in the Tour 9630. Each key has a raised arc to catch your thumb, and frets between the rows offer some nice, clean differentiation. As mentioned earlier, the 9700 shaves off a few millimeters from its width, and and if you’re coming straight from the 9000, you can tell the difference right away. Even after almost two weeks, I find the keyboard is too cramped for my mammoth man-hands, and am looking forward to going back to the old Bold almost exclusively for that reason, but if you’re coming from the Tour, the difference will be considerably less noticeable. Aside from the small issue mentioned earlier about the keys along the edge of the device (Q, A, alt, P, del, and enter) being a little too raised, the keyboard remains world class, and it’ll be hard to find another smartphone that is as enjoyable to type on.
The trackpad deserves an honourable mention here, too. It’s a major step up from the trackball, and though most of the novelty newness has been blown by the 8520, it’s still a needed and welcome addition to the Bold family.