Blackberry Tour 9630

Full Review

The Research in Motion BlackBerry Tour 9630 melds the best of the BlackBerry Bold and the BlackBerry Curve 8900 into one slick package. Unfortunately, like the BlackBerry Storm, the Tour lacks Wi-Fi, a disappointing omission for a business-focused device and is too expensive for what all it offers.

Design & Usability

In appearance, the Tour shares attributes of the original BlackBerry Bold and of the BlackBerry Curve 8900. The Tour felt just right in the hand; the original Bold was too large for our liking, and the 8900 was almost too thin. The Tour has a subtle elegance: The phone's body combines a muted chrome bezel with smooth black rubber and textured plastic.

As with the Blackberry Bold 9700, the right spine of the Tour houses a 3.5mm headphone jack, a volume rocker, a dedicated camera key (which can be customized to serve as another shortcut) and a mini-USB port (for data transfers and power). The left spine accommodates the voice-dialing key (also customizable) and a speaker.

The Tour's display measures 2.4 inches--smaller than the Bold's--but it has the same 480-by-360-pixel resolution as the displays on the Storm and the Curve 8900. Our only criticism of it is that we found the thin black bezel that borders the display a bit distracting. Nevertheless, the Tour's display looks gorgeous: Colors looked bright, details were crisp, and text popped off the screen.

Beneath the display reside the familiar BlackBerry navigation buttons on either side of the trackball: Talk, Menu, Back, and End/Power. Holding down the menu key lets you switch easily between open applications. You can program either the dedicated camera key or the voice-dialing key (on the right and left spindles, respectively) as application switchers, if you wish.

Unlike the trackballs on other BlackBerry devices, the one on this model is a bit recessed into the hardware. Though it wasn't difficult to use, it was less touch-friendly than other BlackBerry trackballs.

The keyboard is the same size as the 9700, and is spacious enough to type long messages on. Like those on the Bold, the Tour's sculpted keys minimize finger slippage, which makes for a comfy and ergonomic typing experience.

Call quality was very good, with no background static or hiss. Voices were loud enough to hear easily, and they sounded natural. The Tour's speakerphone was equally impressive. I could hear parties on the other end of the line clearly while walking down a busy city street.
The Tour 9630 runs BlackBerry OS 4.7.1, which, like the hardware, is a mash-up of the operating systems used on the Bold, the Curve 8900, and the Storm. The home screen features background wallpaper and a customizable application-shortcut view known as the "ribbon."

Features & Multimedia

Not being able to connect over Wi-Fi on the Tour is the device's biggest disappointment. Also, the review model we received didn’t have any pre-installed GPS application nor maps, although other retail models we checked did have Blackberry Maps on them.

Even though the BlackBerry Tour is first and foremost a business device, it has solid multimedia features. The unit's fairly plain native music app is identical to the one on the Curve 8900 and the Bold. It lets you view your library by song, artist, or genre. During playback, a miniature album thumbnail appears. The app also has playlist and shuffle features, and a headphone equalizer. The Bold comes with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, boosting its potential as a media player.

Video looked great on the Tour's crisp display, but 2.4 inches feels awfully small in comparison to the dimensions of touchscreen giants such as the Storm and the iPhone 3G. Still, playback was smooth and showed little pixilation or distortion.

The 3.2-megapixel camera is the same as the 9700. It also has a flash, variable zoom, image stabilization, autofocus, and video recording. We were pleasantly surprised by the image quality of the photos we took. We found that the Tour's snapshots captured accurate colors (especially indoors, thanks to the flash), but had a significantly higher amount of noise and graininess. Videos recorded with the Tour had a noticeable amount of ghosting and color distortion.

Bottom Line

Reliance is selling the Blackberry Tour in India for Rs. 27,990. The Tour delivers exactly what users expect from a BlackBerry: an excellent keyboard; a slick design; and a hearty, messaging-friendly operating system. But at that price the lack of Wi-Fi is seems unforgiveable in a business-class smartphone.