Launched as the replacement for the 8830 world edition the Tour 9630  has been designed with its predecessors faults in mind. Performance, features and design have all been highlighted as problem areas and work has gone in to ensuring any faults previously highlighted have now been removed. There is some concern voiced at the fact that BlackBerry have omitted the option of WiFi on this handset and there are further niggling issues that have been raised but as far as we are concerned the plus points of this phone far outweigh the negatives that it clearly has.

Rather than whine on about the issues that BlackBerry have got wrong lets tell you about where they have got it right. The Tour 9630 has a crystal clear display screen, although it is slightly small at 2.4″, a full QWERTY keypad and it has world-roaming capabilities, Bluetooth, a decent 3.2 Megapixel camera and GPS.

Looking at the face of the Tour users will see that directly underneath the display screen there is the BlackBerry famous Trackerball, love it or loathe it, as well as the call command buttons, a back button and menu shortcut key. Switching between applications is made easy by using the Alt and menu key at the same time which will allow users to view different applications easily and there is also an option which allows you to assign the switch option to the convenience keys which are located down both sides of the phone.

Like its brothers, the Curve and Bold, the Tour boasts an updated UI that is simple enough to navigate through. Users are able to customise the home screen to suit their personal preferences on themes and colours but should be aware when attempting to view their favourite applications that there are several menu icons that look similar so they are not always that easy to distinguish between.

Tour 9630 at a glance;

Size: 112 x 62 x 14.2mm

Screen:

  • Clear, high-resolution display
  • Half VGA+
  • 480×360 pixel screen
  • Displays over 65,000 colors

Memory: 256 MB Built-in memory

Battery:

Standby time (maximum):

14 Days

Talktime (maximum):

5 Hours

Camera: 3.2 Megapixel