BlackBerry Tour 9630 Phone Black Sprint

Posted by Smartphone Review on November 21, 2009

BlackBerry Tour 9630 Phone Black Sprint

The feature-packed and highly refined BlackBerry Tour 9630 world phone for Sprint keeps you connected and lets you roam the globe in style. In addition to accessing the reliable and fast Verizon Wireless voice and data network, the Tour is also compatible with 3G-enabled GSM networks outside the United States, giving you the option to make phone calls in over 185 countries and to access email and Internet in any of the nearly 150 countries where Sprint provides data roaming services.

Roam where you want to with the BlackBerry Tour 3G world phone, which provides the option to make phone calls in over 185 countries and to access email/Internet in nearly 150 countries where Sprint Wireless provides data roaming services (see larger image).

Ideally suited for those who want to stay socially connected, the Tour 9630 lets you share pictures and videos via MMS and instant message on popular IM services or BlackBerry Messenger. It also offers easy access to your favorite social networking sites like Flickr, MySpace and Facebook.

In addition to fast 3G speeds from Sprint’s Wi’s high-speed 3G network, you’ll enjoy GPS navigation capabilities for accessing the optional Sprint Navigation turn-by-turn direction service as well as access to Sprint TV’s video-on-demand with full-motion video and vivid sound. And the Tour comes packed with all the communication and professional functionality you expect from a BlackBerry device, including a push-based mobile solution for email and access to Microsoft Office files.

The BlackBerry Tour includes a large, highly tactile, full-QWERTY keyboard and a large 2.4-inch display with one of the highest resolutions available yet on a BlackBerry device. Other features include a 3.2-megapixel camera/camcorder with geo-tagging capabilities, Bluetooth connectivity for handsfree devices and stereo music streaming, MicroSD memory expansion (a 1 GB card is included), support for BlackBerry App World, and up to 5 hours of talk time.

Sprint Services
The BlackBerry Tour operates domestically on the Sprint 3G network, and globally on 2100 MHz UMTS/HSPA and quad-band GSM/EDGE/GPRS networks (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) where Sprint has international roaming agreements. With the Tour, Sprint customers have the power to make or receive phone calls in more than 185 countries and access BlackBerry data services including email and Web browsing in nearly 150 countries.

Stay connected with a push-based mobile solution for e-mail, messaging (IM, SMS, MMS), and social networking.

Sprint’s Worldwide BlackBerry plan gives customers unlimited BlackBerry email and Web access in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and other locations using CDMA technology, and with GSM/GPRS carriers abroad where Sprint has applicable roaming agreements. The plan is available for $69.99 per month, or just $40 per month (excluding taxes and surcharges) as an attachable to Simply Everything, Everything Data, Everything Data Family or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data.

Supporting the EV-DO high-speed data standard on Sprint’s U.S. network, this phone enables you to download and stream high-quality video, straight onto your phone. Where coverage is available, EV-DO connectivity provides average download speeds ranging from 400 to 700 Kbps, with peak rates up to 2 Mbps. With Sprint TV, you can make your cell phone your always-on source for news, weather, sports and more. This comprehensive video service combines high-quality streaming audio and video from channels including the NFL Network, ABC, The Weather Channel, Fox Sports, E!, CNN, The Discovery Channel, and more.

The Sprint Music Store enables you to buy, download, and then jam out wherever you are with new songs or old favorites. Offering a growing selection of more than 1.6 million songs, the store provides you two copies of each song–one for the phone and another for the PC, as well as the ability to burn songs to a CD using Windows Media Player. Save your songs to a memory card with a capacity that’s right for you. You also get several streaming-radio applications, including Sprint Radio with more than 150 channels.

This GPS-enabled phone provides optional access to Sprint Navigation for driving directions on your mobile phone–by voice and onscreen. Along the way, turn-by-turn directions will be announced in a clear voice and displayed on your phone. For example, Sprint Navigation will say, “Go 1.2 miles and turn right on Elm Street.” As you approach the turn, you will hear, “Turn right on Elm Street.” Sprint Navigation also provides proactive traffic alerts with one click re-routing. And it’s easy to find restaurants, banks, cafes, hotels and more from over 10 million points of interest across the U.S.

Other features include GPS location services, a 3.2-megapixel camera/camcorder with geo-tagging capabilities, Bluetooth stereo music streaming, MicroSD expansion (with included 1 GB card).

Stay Sporty with Sprint
With NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile, instantly connect to the NASCAR information you want, when you want it. Follow NASCAR action from practice to race day with real-time leaderboard and alerts. Get exclusive access to your favorite NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver with real-time driver stats, breaking news and more. Live in-car audio, race radio, NASCAR on SPEED and other audio/video only available on select phones. Visit sprint.com/speed for details.

To access, just text “NASCAR” to 7777 on your Sprint phone or visit the Sprint Digital Lounge to download NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile (standard text messaging and data rates apply).

This phone also provides access to NFL Mobile Live–your all-access pass to the NFL from DRAFT to Super Bowl. Stay on top of every game with real-time red zone alerts, game center scores, stats, and more. Manage your fantasy football team like a pro with up-to-the-minute insights, analysis, stats and alerts. Access by texting “NFL” to 7777 on the handset to download NFL Mobile Live from Sprint Digital Lounge (standard text messaging and data rates apply).

Phone Features
The BlackBerry Tour 9630 features a chic black finish with chrome highlights surrounding its sleek design and a bright 2.4-inch display that delivers the highest resolution available on a BlackBerry smartphone (480 x 360 resolution at 245 ppi)–presenting pictures, web pages and videos with incredible clarity. The Tour includes a trackball navigation system located on the top of the QWERTY keypad with finely sculpted keys for fast and precise typing. It also features an integrated spell checker with a customizable dictionary to help maintain accuracy while on the go.

It offers premium phone features including voice activated dialing, enhanced background noise cancellation, and a low-distortion speakerphone. This phone also provides Bluetooth wireless connectivity (version 2.0), and includes profiles for communication headset, handsfree car kits, and file transfer. With the A2DP Bluetooth profile, you can stream your music to a pair of compatible Bluetooth stereo headphones. You can connect your laptop (either via Bluetooth or wired USB) and enjoy dial-up networking–surf the Internet, send email, and access files from a server (additional charges or subscription applicable).

With BlackBerry push technology, you don’t need to retrieve your e-mail. BlackBerry devices are designed to remain on and continuously connected to the wireless network, allowing you to be discreetly notified as new e-mail arrives. Support is also built-in for viewing e-mail attachments (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, WordPerfect, and PDF formats).

With the BlackBerry Internet Service, you’ll be able to easily access up to 10 supported personal and work email accounts, send and receive text and instant messages, and connect on popular social networking sites with friends, family and co-workers. It’s also compatible with BlackBerry Enterprise Server, which provides advanced security and IT administration features within IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise environments.

In addition to the industry’s leading mobile email and messaging solution, the Tour supports text (SMS), picture (MMS) and instant messaging (IM) on today’s most popular platforms as well as social networking sites. Take your social life on-the-go with Facebook for BlackBerry and Flickr Photo Uploader for BlackBerry application. A Mobile IM feature provides access to Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo!, Windows Live, and AIM instant messaging services.

The media player can play movies smoothly in full-screen mode, display pictures and slideshows quickly and manage an entire music and video collection, and with BlackBerry Media Sync you can quickly and easily sync music from iTunes and Windows Media Player with the smartphone. The Tour comes with a 256 MB flash memory (and 256 MB of RAM), and the device is expandable via MicroSD/SDHC memory cards up to 16 GB in size (a 1 GB card is included with the Tour).

Other features include:

• 3.2-megapixel camera with auto-focus, image stabilization, 2x digital zoom, geo-tagging capabilities, and video capture
• Support for BlackBerry App World, featuring a broad and growing catalog of third-party mobile applications developed specifically for BlackBerry smartphones. Categories include travel, productivity, entertainment, games, social networking and sharing, news and weather, and more.
• Voice Activated Dialing: The built-in speaker independent voice command lets you use your voice to look up contacts, place phone calls and get key information from your device.
• Preloaded DataViz Documents to Go, allowing you to edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files directly on the handset.
• BlackBerry 4.7 Desktop Software with integrated email, phone, SMS, browser, calendar, address book, and additional organizer applications
• English, French and Spanish language support
• Ring Tones: 32 Polyphonic + vibrate (MIDI, MP3)
• Password protection and keyboard lock
• 3.5mm stereo headset jack
• Video format support: MPEG4 H.263, MPEG4 Part 2 Simple Profile, H.264 (encoding and decoding 30fps), WMV
• Audio format support: MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, WMA ProPlus
• Hearing Aid Compatibility = M3

Vital Statistics
The BlackBerry Tour 9630 weighs 4.58 ounces and measures 4.4 x 2.4 x 0.6 inches. Its 1400 mAh lithium-ion battery is rated at up to 5 hours of talk time, and up to 336 hours (14 days) of standby time. It runs on the 800/1900 MHz CDMA frequencies and is compatible with the EV-DO 3G data network when on the Sprint network in the US; in international territories, it’s compatible with 850/900/1800/1900 MHz GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks as well as 2100 MHz 3G (UMTS) networks.

User Ratings and Reviews

1 Star slow performance kills this model of Blackberry
I’m the network administrator for my company, and we have a fleet of 10 Blackberries - mostly Curves and 8800s. This was our first Tour, and I’m unimpressed with its responsiveness. It seems to be a common complaint, so it seems to be an inherent flaw with the model not a problem with this specific device.

To be specific, when you move the trackball, there is a lag to when what you’re doing happens on the screen. We’re talking 1/4 to 1/2 a second - but that’s a big deal. If you had “messages” highlighted and wanted to go to the calendar, this issue would present itself. It seems to be universal - happens all the time, not periofically.

As I’m writing this, I hit messages with the trackball. It took literally one second to open (not exaggerating as users tend to do when estimating time). I pressed the Blackberry (menu) button. I waited another full second. I hit compose message, which took another full second before the screen came up to write a new message. So then I begin to type a message. I wrote “this is a test message.” Th appeared and then after I finished typing - 2 full seconds later, the rest of the letters appeared. That’s completely unacceptable. I was ready to give this phone 2 stars, but I’m going to 1. This phone was note ready to release.

A new software update needs to come out ASAP to fix this.

Of note - this is a Verizon Blackberry Tour 9630. I opened it up on Friday of last week. I had the user transfer her number to the device and then I set the device up on my Blackberry Enterprise Server. No third party apps. No music. No nothing. This is pretty much an out of the box Blackberry. Very unimpressed.

1 Star Worst BB Ever
I have been a BB user for years and used many devices on many carriers in my time. The Blackberry Tour 9630 is by far the worst phone ever made by RIM. Let’s start with the most obvious flaw… the trackball. It doesn’t work. Period. There is a serious manufacturing issue with this phone and none of them have working trackballs. I have had mine replaced more times than I can count and I still don’t have a working phone.

The keyboard is poorly designed. I came from the 8830 WE, and there is no comparison. I do like the keys all being together more than say the Curve, but the indicidual buttons on the Tour do not have ridges like the 8830 WE. They have odd little despressions on the corners that make it very hard to type on, plus the keyboard being smaller than the 8830 WE.

The speed of the phone while using the OS is very slow. Slower than the Curve or 8830 WE. I am not sure how they accomplished this with supposedly better hardware in the Tour, but they did.

Stay away from this phone if you want one that will actually work.

4 Stars Best Blackberry on the market
The Blackberry Tour is a good phone, and might be the most consumer-friendly Blackberry to date.

As usual, the Tour features a great QWERTY keyboard. The best Blackberry keyboard I’ve used, but not quite as nice as a horizontal slider - but it can be easily used with one or two hands. Blackberry has a powerful suite of messaging applications, but they, along with Blackberry OS as a whole, are starting to get dated. Where is my threaded messaging, RIM? I do love the combined messages inbox, but seriously, threading is sorely missed. The screen is bright and sharp. Internet browsing is fairly fast, and better than old Blackberry phones, but not quite webkit-level.

The new Blackberry App World is a nice touch, but has a low count of applications to date. However, despite the small number, they are generally good quality. The App World itself is mediocore - slow, not all that intuitive compared to competing app stores. Definitely a good starting point though, and there are a ton of third-party applications out there for Blackberry not in the App World yet. The Sprint version came bundled with SprintTV and NFL applications, which worked great on the Tour, along with Sprint Navigation. GPS connected quickly and held a signal well.

The phone multitasks, but not as smoothly as some other phones. There is no way to manually close applications, and they don’t always interact well - for example, on the Palm Pre, if you’re listening to music with Pandora and using Sprint Navigation, Pandora will play full volume until there is a voice prompt, where it seemlessly dims the Pandora volume. Doesn’t work nearly as well on the Tour.

I did have some issues with speed and stability. The phone crashed every now and then, requiring a hard reset - which takes a very long time. While generally the phone is very snappy, sometimes it randomly takes several seconds to load or switch applications.

All in all, the Tour is a great phone for both business and casual users. Hopefully, update to the operating system can move it into a more modern system with other phones.

2 Stars Disappointing offering from Blackberry - inattention to detail and the marketplace
I recently upgraded from the Blackberry 8830 to the new Tour 9630. While my old 8830 still functioned well, it kept running out of memory (only has 64 MB). The upgrade to the 9630 has been frustrating. In terms of functionality, not much has really changed in the two years since the 8830 came out. From looking at the Tour, one would never know that competitors have drastically altered the smartphone market in the past two years. Unhappily, hardware glitches, software bugs, and the incompatibility of popular 3rd party apps have made the 9630 less functional for me than the old 8830. I hope fixes for these will soon appear, but one wonders why Blackberry didn’t address these issues before shipping. My overall impression on using the new Tour is that there was a lack of quality assurance and an overall inattention to detail.

My impressions of the Tour are influenced by my second phone, an iPhone, and the Palm Pre that my wife recently bought.

Pros:

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Integration into the corporate world - of course one of the main reasons to use a Blackberry is the access the Blackberry Enterprise Server allows to one’s business email and calendar. Note: Sprint charges an extra $20 a month for BES access above and beyond their “Everything” plan.

Form factor - one of the advantages of a Blackberry is the physical keyboard. The 9630 keyboard is very nice. I like it a little better than the 8830’s keyboard.

EVDO Rev A - another reason I use Blackberrys is their ability to tether to my laptop for internet access on the go. The Tour is a bit faster than the EVDO Rev0 on the 8830. Downloads are about 20% faster and uploads are much faster.

Cons:

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Trackball - as many posters on the web have noticed - the trackball can be finicky. Sometimes it seems to be the OS that is lagging, other times it seems like a physical issue with the trackball not properly engaging. The Tour’s trackball is a big step backward from the 8830. This is a huge miss by Blackberry and greatly affects the device’s usability. I wish Blackberry would offer touch screens in this format - that would greatly enhance usability over the slow trackball - especially with web browsing and menu selection.

Build quality - overall, I like the form factor of the Tour. However, the battery door on mine isn’t tight and flexes and creaks as I type - giving it a cheap feel.

Web browser - the web browser in the Tour has improved a bit from the 8830, but it is still slow, hard to navigate, and has rendering issues. I only use it if my iPhone isn’t handy.

Calendar - the Tour does fine with my work calendar. For my personal calendar, my wife and I share a Google calendar. I would love to be able to view them both on my Blackerry. While Google provides a sync utility for Blackberry, it doesn’t allow the user to specify which Blackberry calendar to sync. So, all of my personal calendar events wind up on my work calendar, which I don’t want. Blackberry should provide out of the box integration with various cloud calendar services,like Google, and for a way to keep them separate. The Palm Pre does an excellent job of this.

Google incompatibilities - one of my favorite apps on the Blackberry is Goggle Maps, which, unfortunately, doesn’t work on the Tour. From what I’ve read the issue is that Google needs to modify Maps to use new GPS APIs. While I can understand that, it’s inexcusable that Blackerry didn’t have the foresight to make sure that one of the most popular 3rd party apps runs on the new version of their OS. Can you imagine the iPhone or the Pre shipping without Google maps working? Blackberry needs to realize they are not an island and start working with the app vendors.

Camera - the inclusion of a camera is nice upgrade over the 8830. However, the camera is very slow (2-3 seconds to take a picture after the shutter is pressed) and isn’t very intelligent about when to use flash.

Poor apps - doesn’t really need to be mentioned, but the app selection is limited. Some of the apps can also be relatively expensive. The capabilities of the apps are normally primitive compared to what you will find in the iPhone’s app catalog.

Small memory - the Tour comes with a paltry 256 MB of memory for applications. True, media can be put on the removable SDHC card, but why not apps?

Missing Today theme - the old 8830 had a nice Today them that shows you recent emails, upcoming calendar events, and missed phone calls on the home page. This function is missing on the Tour. Why? Does Blackberry not know how people use their devices?

Old OS - the Blackberry OS is really showing its age compared to its competitors. It has some nice features buried in its myriad of options screens, but usability is poor for people new to smartphones. Note however, that many of my issues could be addressed without a major OS rewrite. Fixing the bugs, hardware issues, and adding better integration with Google would go a long way to making the Blackberry a very useable platform.

Summary

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For the moment I’m undecided as to whether or not I’ll keep the 9630 or go back to the 8830. The sad thing is that if Blackberry had paid a little more attention to detail and to features their competitors are adding, this could have been a very nice phone. If it wasn’t for needing to access corporate email, I would definitely switch to another smartphone.

5 Stars haters to the left, this tour is good
The Blackberry Tour 9630 is an excellent device. Most of the complaints I’ve heard are either anomalies or some kind of shortcoming with the software. The UI is very polished, works, and is fine. Integration with google works. Phone applications are all very small (usually less than 1MB) and 256MB is more than adequate for the average user. As a phone the call quality is excellent, if you have good reception (incidentally, if you think the calls are muffled, try adjusting the bass/treble boost, it might make all the difference). Criticizing reception should be directed at Sprint, not the device. Optical might be the future but the trackball is a proven technology that works. Optical users right now say that it has a lot of trouble interpreting your swipes, so the trackball might be the best thing for now anyway. The media player is not fancy but easy to use and has everything I need. Every aspect of the phone and UI is an evolution from the earlier BBs, and it shows that every aspect has had user feedback, been tweaked, and polished. If you insist on cutting edge (and the bugs that come with it), there are other options better for you. The bottom line is that the Tour satisfies every basic need in a smart phone, is a proven brand for durability, and is excellently designed.

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