[richard cheese]

I have an opportunity to get a 9700 for a decent price. I was wondering how the 9700 is compared to the 9000

also browsing and downloadind speeds

i am on the AT and T 3g network

thanks

[evanagreer]

Originally Posted by richard cheese

I have an opportunity to get a 9700 for a decent price. I was wondering how the 9700 is compared to the 9000

also browsing and downloadind speeds

i am on the AT and T 3g network

thanks

I'll be honest. I just got the Bold 9700 yesterday and have been playing with it since I got it...

The browsing is extremely slow. Also, the Google Maps application takes FOREVER to find current location. It takes a good 30 seconds of waiting to figure out directions to a place just 3 miles away.

pretty frustrated...

[G M Fude]

Originally Posted by richard cheese

I was wondering how the 9700 is compared to the 9000

If nothing else, the 9700 has vastly better battery life. The screen on the original Bold 9000 was beautiful but there was a penalty for that; colleagues at work who had them say theirs used more power than the Death Star. All our users had to have two batteries to avoid being caught with a flat unusable phone.

I had a Pearl 8110 until last Friday and put up with the SureType input (RIM's predictive text) to get a smaller form factor. But with the cleverly proportioned 9700 and reports of a plethora of less visible improvements, I made the switch. It was 6 days before I had to charge the device from the initial charging, and that's with a lot of use during the "playing with the new toy" period. That will do me.

Yeah as reported it's not fast connecting to the 'Net but I only do that when I positively have to (and it is a good "emergency" feature of smartphones) and there is no PC nearby. Frankly, for me web browsing sucks on anything less than a 15 inch monitor.

This is my third BlackBerry over the years and previous ones have elicited a "Hey, pretty cool device" reaction from me. This one blew me away, a huge step up from the Pearl 8110 and in the intervening two-and-a-bit years since I got that one, RIM has really improved the OS.

[wjereb]

I find that with the 9700 Google Maps finds my position almost immediately where my 8900 would take minutes. I see no difference in battery life but then again I am a heavy user. I never turn off WiFi or BT, send & receive over 100 emails a day, several hundred text and BBM messages and several calendar/contact updates. With all that I barely make it through the day without charging. I am amazed at people that get 2 days on a charge, 6 is unbelievable to me.

That being said the 9700 has a TRACKPAD and that alone is worth the upgrade. I was forever using canned air and alcohol swabs to keep my trackball clean and rolling smoothly.

Bill J

[the-economist]

Originally Posted by richard cheese

I have an opportunity to get a 9700 for a decent price. I was wondering how the 9700 is compared to the 9000

The 9700 is more snappy and responsive for sure. Battery life is noticeable better. Has less overall board memory than the 9000 but more application space (which is the important part since for anything else you can stick a 32G SDHC in).

Personally i don't like the form factor. The 9700 is smaller. We got corporate upgrades some time back and i managed to live with it for 2 weeks before returning it to my admin and requesting another 9000. I feel i can't type on it and i'm not prepared to "give it time" as advised. I suspect if something new doesn't come along that has the 9000 form factor and the new trackpad i would eventually have to give in to the 9700. For now application space is not an issue for me, apps seem to almost fit in the rather limited app-space and podtrapper happily drops my podcasts to SD along with any non-app files, pdf files etc.

Go to a shop and play with them. Fire up notes and type a couple of sentences. See how it feels. You're coming from the 8310 so the smaller form factor of the 9700 should make you feel right at home.

The 9000 with a 32G SD and a 3800mah 3rd party battery is my personal preference but you'd rather get the 9700 for more app-memory, more snappy processor, better battery life and the trackpad.

Hope you find something that works for you. Let us know.