There are plenty of examples of making a bad decision. I have a friend who once roller-skated with a blindfold. Another guy I know once put a bottle-full of Tabasco on a single slice of pizza, and ate it. Yours truly once decided to try bowling on a skateboard. Needless to say, the results were disastrous. There were a few cracked bones, a few knocked off teeth, a lot of tears, but most of all, broken pride. And in each case there was at least one person who came around and said, “Told you so.”

But what have stories about bad decisions got to do with the new BlackBerry 9720, you ask? The mere announcement, that BlackBerry has decided to come out with an OS 7.1 device, made me ask aloud – have they gone out of their minds? It is one thing to keep their Curve models in the market while they run OS 7, but at least while coming out with a new device, shouldn’t it have the latest BB10 OS that’s being received more positively? And at a point in time where BlackBerry’s existence in the industry looks bleak, can they really afford to do such a thing?

Design and build

It’s like any other BlackBerry, the 9720 – the design cues are carried over from the old Curve models. The build is mainly plastic, but feels tough nonetheless. The back hatch has a rubber coating, that offers a decent grip, and the sides too, are rubber coated. Running along the right spine are the volume rocker and the camera launch button, which also doubles up as the shutter control once the camera app is activated. On the left spine there’s the single BBM launcher. The screen lock lies on top.

On the front, the most sought after feature in a BB device, the QWERTY keyboard, sits along with an optical trackpad and call function buttons. The keyboard, I must say, feels a lot better than the older models in this price segment. The keys have the good tactile feedback, and in no way feel plasticky.

Now there’s one thing I really fail to understand – why do we need an optical trackpad and get confused about what to use where when the IPS capacitive touchscreen is responsive enough? With the Q10 and Q5, it was very clear that a good touchscreen, along with a well laid out keyboard was enough to keep things simple and yet very functional. Oh, wait, that was BB10. The 9720 seems like a mission to give a refurbished BB to hardcore fans of the old format.

Specs and performance

The chip that powers the BlackBerry 9720 is an 806 MHz processor, which is coupled with 512MB RAM. Really, now? Dealing in megabytes when the world is playing with gigabytes? The first thing that any prospective buyer does is to check the specs. If the specs look decent enough, they move on to find out about performance, camera, and battery life and so on.

Nonetheless, the processor is just enough to make the OS sail smoothly through processes and apps. And why shouldn’t it, older devices such as the Curve models with the same OS and similar specs also worked pretty decently. It was only when you loaded the eMMC with too many apps and didn’t clear out the cache for a long time that the devices froze. There’s one new feature, though, ‘Multicast’, that allows the user to update the same status on Twitter, Facebook etc at the same time.

As far as the camera is concerned, the 5-meg snapper produces results that are just average. It’s good enough for taking impromptu shots to update on Twitter or Facebook, but nothing that can be called impressive. The LED flash makes night shots just a bit better, which are otherwise grainy and lack detail.

With a 1,450mAh battery, I could use the 9720 for more than half a day with consistent social media usage. This usage included a lot of BBM messaging and Twitter usage, over WiFi. With data usage only, the battery life goes down to just about 8-9 hours, depending on app usage patterns.

Verdict

The BlackBerry 9720 has a great form factor and a great price tag. It’s light but durable, and is priced just right for the young smartphone user. It has a nice QWERTY keypad, and a touchscreen that is responsive. So far, it looks like a skimped out Q5. But it isn’t. It doesn’t have the latest OS and has the older app ecosystem. The specs are far from being on par with the competitors on other platforms. And it doesn’t have anything that we haven’t seen on a BlackBerry so far. It might appeal to those who still like the BIS experience and like the feel of OS 7.

If, it had a bigger RAM, a few gigabytes of internal memory, and BB10, it might just have had been quite appealing. But, it’s not. It’s just something that BlackBerry shouldn’t have bothered making.

Rs 15,990

Love – Good keyboard, functional build

Hate – Old OS, sub-par specs

sabyasachi.b@thehindu.co.in

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