BlackBerry hits 88MPH, goes back to the future with NEW old 9720 mobe

BlackBerry has announced a new phone for emerging markets: the BlackBerry 9720. It's not part of the shiny new BlackBerry OS 10 line-up of mobiles because it's powered by the ancient BlackBerry 7 OS, which last saw action in 2011. It's the consequence of a mismatch between BlackBerry's swanky modern QNX-based operating system …

[Anonymous Coward]

There's always a place for good solid phones with a good battery life, call quality and reception. This is why people bought such phones for business.

But somewhere along the line companies decided that rather than give their employees something dull that it perhaps helped their general feeling of job satisfaction to use something more interesting?

[dillonlawrence97]

There's always a place for good solid phones with a good battery life, call quality and reception.

Not a Blackberry then...

[returnmyjedi]

The Bold 9900 has the most appalling battery life of any smartphone I've ever owned.

[AJ MacLeod]

My 9105 has a battery life that rivals the Nokia brick that it replaced - even now, three years on, it'll stretch to about a week of normal usage (i.e. mainly calls and the odd email/BBM) or a few days of heavier usage (lots of photography / GPS / browsing )

It's easily the most practical smartphone I've ever used, not lacking any feature I'd even "kind of like"; sadly most of the market apparently doesn't actually want a reasonably priced practical smartphone, they want flashy fashionable gimmicky toys.

[David 14]

You must have never owned anything except a blackberry!

I have had a 9900 for about 2 years now, and just recently replaced the battery because of recent reduction in life. I can get 2 days out of a full charge without excessive use.... a fully day is never a problem, even with heavy use.... as long as I am not in a 3G area (luckily, there is no longer any legacy 3G towers in my area).

When travelling to other locations that are 3G, the battery life is reduced pretty noticeably.

I would suggest a fresh battery, available pretty inexpensively on ebay - just beware of cheap knockoff batteries!

[Captain Scarlet]

Correction

*But somewhere along the MD spotted the iphone and said I don't want to pay for my own, the company should get it for me This then followed with other managers going :O gimme.

[TheRealRoland]

I miss my berry

Having been on 8310 and a 9930, i switched to a Samsung Note 2.

Yes, i like the large screen, and the battery life. I do like my DSLR Controller application, hooked up to my Canon 7D. But that's about it.

Compared to OS7, too many hidden settings, settings that should be global, rather than app specific, rinkydink calendar, email client. 4g data consumption (no longer the Blackberry BIS compression)

And most of all, i miss my physical keys.

I probably should have gone for the Q10 or something, or maybe try out the Z10. But that screen of the Note 2...

On topic: why are people bashing Blackberry for keeping market share in the emerging markets? Not everywhere is the buying power and infrastructure enough for the latest and greatest phones.

[Daniel B.]

Re: I miss my berry

I changed my BB 3 weeks ago ... and went for a BB 9790. I hate keyboardless phones, and in the "I wanna ripoff the iPhone" frenzy it seems that most smartphone manufacturers have gone for big-ass, shatter-prone monstrosities. No thanks.

Also, BB still has the security strength on its side, something that actually has much more sway on me than having ADD-fueled games or the latest shiny. So basically, I'm ok with BB even if it isn't "the hot thing" to have. Because I don't care about what's hot, I care about what works for me. And in my case, it's a secure handset with a keyboard. Also, one that survived DEFCON's public wifi w/o getting 0wned. ;)

[TheRealRoland]

Re: I miss my berry

I know, I was weak :-(

[Captain Scarlet]

Re: I miss my berry

*Rubs salt into wound*

The Q10 is lovely

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd pick one of these any day, but only if it had dual SIM. If BB want to do well in those Asian markets the need to stick in a second SIM socket. In fact, dual SIM need to be more widely available over here, ideal to have one phone with your work SIM and your personal SIM. The western networks will not subsidise such phones for obvious reasons and that's why I mainly get my dual SIM phones sim free from overseas internet sellers, never had a problem yet.

[Daniel B.]

Um... geography?

The 9720 will not be available in the West but in Asia and Latin America.

Um... all of Latin America is in the West.

[Bronek Kozicki]

I am sorry, do I read this right ? "Its ancient OS has been tweaked to allow access to BlackBerry Messenger, FaceBook and Twitter"

My ancient BlackBerry 9900 supported these from initial release in 2011, and I'm pretty sure so did older phones. So the "tweak" here is simply to carry basic OS7 functionality forward, rather than remove them (as RIM did with some features in OS 10, DOH!)

[Anonymous Coward]

$150 segment

That should have much better specs than all the android phones, something like the Cubot GT99 is $150 USD RRP. The clearout and cycles mean last years phones twice the spec are sub $50

Blackberry

320 x 480 pixel display, an 800MHz processor with 512MB RAM, 5Mp camera and a 1,450mAh battery.

GT99

1280 x 720 IPS 4.5" display, Quad 1.2GHz A7 + GPU, 1GB RAM 4GB ROM, . 12.0MP Camera and a 2200mAh battery.

[Belardi]

No title

AJ MacLeod said "My 9105 has a battery life that rivals the Nokia brick that it replaced - even now, three years on, it'll stretch to about a week of normal usage (i.e. mainly calls and the odd email/BBM) or a few days of heavier usage (lots of photography / GPS / browsing )"

Sure you can get almost a weeks usage from a tiny 360 x 400 pixels, 2.25 inch screen, with 3G. The modern features of todays phones EAT batteries. 4G, modern internet functions, etc. Try using this site and others on that 360x400 screen.. it blows. When I use my 1yr old Android phone, I view sites in desktop mode in 1280x720 res. GPS on todays phones are more accurate than 3+ year old tech. (* According to a phone site GSMArena, Talktime on the BB 9105 = 5hrs while the Galaxy IV is 17hrs)

What BB/RIM is doing is NOT good. Their OS should be portable for a slower phone (hence, there are NEW cheap Android phones today with single core CPUs @ 800~1000mhz using Android 2.3). Its bad to be selling "new" phones that cannot RUN new software. Think of the Days of Amiga when C= was selling the A1200 with ADOS 4.0, A600 with ADOS 2.2 and the A500 with ADOS 1.3.

A person buying the older phone has not future support, software wise. They will most likely buy an Android that WILL run the software they want or need.

I'm not a Blackberry hater. Their older phones did suck many ways, thou. Their new phones are top of the line... but I'm not seeing much advantage over Android. With newer versions of Android 4.x and 5.0, you can run two APPS on the screen at the same time (certain ones, as they code them). So today, I was able to TEXT and use Google Maps at the same time - which was handy.

BB screwed up years ago, taking over 3 years to release an OS upgrade and have orphaned their tablet owners. BlackBerry tablet is *DEAD*. They aren't even going to try to make a new version or upgrade the OS for their only 2year old tablet.

BlackBerry is a mess and Microsoft is not much better - but they have far bigger pockets.

[Bronek Kozicki]

Re: No title

I disagree with you. OS7 is fine operating system, its app store still works, the applications that were there 2 years ago have not disappeared and the upgrades to existing apps still appear, occasionally.

As for the CPU and RAM utilization, OS7 is very frugal on resources but OS10, based on POSIX-compatible micro-kernel based QNX OS, simply cannot be. Which is a shame.

BB hardware? I love keyboard on my 9900, everything else is just above average.

[TheVogon]

Re: No title

"based on POSIX-compatible micro-kernel based QNX OS, simply cannot be"

Windows Phone has a POSIX compatible micro-kernel based OS, and that is incredibly efficient with resources....

[d3rrial]

I always say: If Nokia started producing the Nokia 6210 mobile phone again, now with µUSB jack and higher capacity batteries, but same old hardware that made the phone so very durable, they'd have their business right back on track.

I mean same processor, same display, same keypad, same software, just new battery technology and new charging interface. If there can be improvements to the processor and display, that make them last longer while still creating the same experience, I'm sure people would be fine with that, too, but these are the kinds of things, that people would really pay for, and not too little I might add.

Also changable batteries, like the olden days. Its a horrible idea to build in batteries into phones and not allow users to change them.

[David 14]

embedded batteries = lower refresh cycle

Lets be honest.... having a phone that cannot replace a battery is simply a way to make the electronics "wear out". Otherwise, people (like myself) who are not hard on their electronics may not need to replace their device in 2 or 3 years.

The electronic portion of a phone (smart or otherwise) will continue to function for well over a decade without issue if treated well and kept dry. The battery, on the other hand, will wear out relatively quickly. Even modern lithium cells fade with use... losing (if my memory is accurate) 20% capacity annually, on average. So after 3 years, you have significantly less functionality from the battery than before, and by then the software updates are likely chewing more and more power, making the situation even worse.