RIM makes a solid device. They come apart easy, everything is modular, held in with a minimal number of well placed and cleverly but not impossible to find screws (a la Motorola Droid). These devices can be fixed although with the new optical track-pad what would you need to fix?
This is a gorgeous device, enough said – it will probably look better disassembled.
Remove the battery and back-cover. There you will see 4 hex screws just waiting for your T6. Remove them.
Here comes the tricky and slightly clever part. You’ll probably notice that the device is still held in the upper (camera level) portion. There are two screws located underneath the ear speaker. This is the same construction as the original Tour, and should come as no suprise. Alas, removing this piece of plastic requires a plastic spudger, patience and a will of steel. You can actually break the plastic tabs holding this portion in – be careful.
Once this piece is removed, you’ll see the missing links. Remove these screws and that’s it – everything – PCB, Antennae, inner and outer shell were held in with these 6 – screws. Simple and extremely effective.
Now for the PCB. Dag-nabbit, RIM is still using solid ESD cans without clips. In the past, we’ve found we can remove the solder with a heat gun of powerful soldering iron. They took this a step further (a la Palm Pre) and tossed in some epoxy as well. Alas, after much deliberation, we settled with a dremel.
Argh!
As a small aside, you’ve probably all heard about the iPhone 4′s antenna issues. You also may have seen Jobs’ jab at RIM and attenuation loss on the hallowed 9700. This device is a perfect example of RIM’s mastery in wireless communication. This PCB, is more secure from ESD and heat then Alcatraz. It’s rare to see such solid shielding as it undoubtedly drives manufacturing costs up. Kudos to RIM on this one – it just makes our job harder!
Since the 9650 is a world-phone, the hardware allows access to the following GSM networks: GSM850, GSM900, GSM1800, GSM1900, UMTS2100. You’ll also get CDMA800 and CDMA1900 support. Hardware wise, there isn’t much difference from the OG Tour I mean Bold I mean, 9630 as you’ll see below:
The 528MHz ARM 11 MSM 7600 reined on the 9630 and we see it’s face again on the 9650 – there’s nothing wrong with the IC, but the 9650 competes with some pretty heavy 1GHz A4 and SnapDragon devices. That said, battery life on this device is fantastic and it seems to handle it’s built in functions well, with little processor lag. Apps? Not so much, it’s not really RIM’s current forte.
Interesting to note is the 256MB of RAM provided by Samsung on the KAT00M NAND + SDRAM MCP. Will this device have enough RAM to run BB OS 6.0? We guess not, seeing the advent and pending launch of the 9780. Worried about your device handling that OS upgrade? Maybe hold out for the 9780 or the other rumoured devices launching with OS 6.0
USB PHY win goes, once again to SMSC with the USB3326, PMIC and RF back to Qualcomm with the PM7540, RTR6500 and RTR6285 respectively. The PA array is courtesy of Skyworks (SK77336-13), Avago (FEM-7758) and TriQuint (TQM613031).
That’s and that’s all! Stay tuned, we’ve got a very interesting device in the queue – looking forward to tearing it apart!
The BlackBerry Bold brand has always been reserved for RIM’s highest featured handsets. The BlackBerry Bold 9000 entered the market as the company’s first 3G handset while the Bold 9700 was the glossy new premiere of the coveted optical trackpad and new BlackBerry plastics. The BlackBerry 9650 is the next handset to enter the Bold family and rounds out the line up with its world-class capabilities.
Last July, RIM launched the BlackBerry Tour 9630 with Sprint and Verizon. It provided travelling BlackBerry users with an updated version of the BlackBerry 8800 world-phone. Since then, RIM has been trying to streamline their many brands – subsequently pushing the Tour under the Bold brand.
Offered by Sprint and Verizon, the features of the 9650 encompass all of great features from the 9000, 9700 and 9630 Tour and wraps them up in a slightly new design.
Price: $449.99 from Sprint or $509.99 from Verizon
With a 2-year contract the device will set you back $199.99 from Sprint or $149.99 from Verizon
Greats
Like I mentioned before, the phone is essentially a mash-up of what is good about the latest Bold family with added network capabilities.
Hardware
Size wise, the phone is a hair larger than the 9700 (Taller, Wider and Thicker). The keys are the same accordion style/guitar frets we see in the Tour and previous Bold devices.
If even for just the addition of the optical track pad, the older Tour deserved an update. The wildly popular ball-less pad is a bit more raised on the 9650 compared to the 8500 making it a bit easier to find and to use. The optical trackpad is as quick and responsive as all other models with this feature. This interface is a giant improvement from the inconsistent and unreliable mechanical track ball.
As for the O/A Form-Factor and housing design, RIM could have done more – but why fix what ain’t broke! The plastics are identical to that of the Tour, so much so that the backing of the previous tour can be used interchangeably with that on the 9650. Fortunately, the carbon f(o)bre look is gone. Heavier than the 8500, the phone holds very steady and has a weighty palm feel. Given the Tour was widely accepted among BlackBerry users as having the best BlackBerry exterior (previous to 9700), we couldn’t be happier with the exterior of the 9650.
RIM is also looking to increase their memory capacities. Internal memory in the 9650 was doubled to 512 MB. Strangely enough, this is still less then the OG 900, which contained a 1GB MoviNAND.
Software
The Bold 9650 comes out of the box equipped with the new BlackBerry OS 5.0 (specifically 5.0.0.6990). As is with all BlackBerry interfaces, the buttons are crisp and clean. Booting up from a battery pull or cold reset is about 30 seconds faster then a BlackBerry running OS version 4.6. Not much but it’s a start in tackling BlackBerry’s notoriously long boot time.
The two most unique features of the 9650 would be the phone’s WiFi connection and OpenGL support. The Tour’s lack of WiFi was a source of complaint from many users. Despite the phone’s wide selection of radio connectivity, a travelling user may find it difficult not being able to take advantage of free WiFi connections in areas of low-connectivity or just for the sake of saving possible roaming fees.
OpenGL support is a new offering from BlackBerry handsets and the 9650 is the first phone (and currently the only phone) to have it. This addition makes the 9650 capable of 3D graphics. This means it’s only a matter of time before some awesome 3D apps become available.
Middle Line Features
The 3.2 megapixel camera is really the only run of the mill feature of the 9650. At PW, it’s understood that megapixels do not always equate to better pictures, but we would love a 5MP CMOS.
It isn’t totally awash however as BlackBerry does include a host of camera options to enhance pictures. You can get a variety of effects using these options. We took the liberty of presenting some below.
Image A – Default Settings, Autofocus = OFF
Image B – Default, White Balance set to Florescent
Image C – Default with AF set to Macro
Image D – Default with Image Stabilization
All images are taken with automatic flash setting. Autofocus provides the most clarity although other options such as White Balance and Image Stabilization are nice features to have. The camera also gives you the ability to enable Geotagging, a feature native and akin to the iPhone. These new options redeem the cameras lack of resolution however not enough for it to be a strength.
Gripes
To be honest, there is little to really pick apart on the 9650. Overall, it does it job of a smart phone very well and shows that BlackBerry definitely takes user feedback into consideration when defining new handsets. The only drawback may be the media player which doesn’t seem to appear as sharp as that of the Bold 9000. The speakers are also not as powerful in terms of volume as the 9000 either. However, pictures are still vibrant and beautiful as always.
The one major weakness of the 9650 is the side loading performance. The memory options are very confusing. With the recent movement to MTP support, BlackBerry has tried to remain flexible and provide users the ability to do mass storage class. A nice gesture but a little confusing to the general user. The default memory setting enables both MTP and MSC however, data movement through either method is unbearably slow. When MTP is shut off, MSC is still not as fast as we would like to see on PW. And of course, when MSC is disabled, MTP is slow, no news there. Overall, the side loading performance is a bust.
As always, the BlackBerry browser could be improved. This is not a fault of the phone but more so a fault of the BlackBerry OS. Hopefully new updates (BB 6.0 and the Flash enabled WebKit browser) will alleviate this common gripe.
Conclusion:
BlackBerry was right in lumping this handset with their high-end products. It certainly delivers in both functionality and style. Although they could have done a bit more in terms of feature enhancements (camera and display). RIM has released so many handsets in the last few years and this phone wraps up all of their best components and presents them beautifully. That said, RIM seems to be falling behind the curve – we can’t wait for BB 6.0 and their inevitable re-hash on touch screen devices.
BlackBerry Bold: 8.5/10
Stay Tuned for the Teardown. Don’t forget to follow us!Sharp’s “Waterproof” and Dustproof 841SH came by our desks and we couldn’t resist taking it apart. Most of the devices we teardown are built by large well known ODM’s or OEM’s and have fairly distinguishable reference designs. We knew that Japanese devices were different. What kind of IC’s did they use? Are these Asian phones prone to using unmarked, knock-off IC’s?
The answer is not as simple as you might think. Different networks and broadcasted TV capabilities mean different IC’s. The phone definitely includes stuff we haven’t seen before – so what are the familiar devices?
SMSC’s PHY is a device we’ve seen before. USB is a standard in any multimedia enabled mobile phone – even the proprietary connectors on these Japanese phones require a USB transaction device.
This device has both an application core and a baseband – a common design decision employed in many American devices. The difference being that the Toshiba app-core in this device is more or less a fixed function “Multimedia Engine”. This engine handles broadcast TV, and various video codecs render natively on the device.
Taking apart the device wasn’t the most fun thing in the world. Sharp’s ODM used a 5 prong screw – we’ll call it a penta-screw. This is very unlike most phones we see, which have hex screws (6 prongs). Unfortunately, it’s hard to find these in North American, we had to order one from overseas.
The PCB had common, clip-in shields that can be easily pried off with a metal spudger or staple remover.
Once the shields were removed, all of the IC’s were covered with translucent shields, that needed to be pried/melted away. The residue left behind had to be cleaned before we could even ID the devices.
The Applications core we mentioned before is worth a quick discussion. This product is designed by Toshiba and is a device we have not seen in any North American market phones. The T5GE devices contain 3 hardware accelerators – a video codec, a 3D graphics accelerator and JPEG codec. These features are common, with the exception of the support for TV reception. The T5GE’s also incorporate an LCD controller that supports LCD display at resolutions up to FWVGA (864 x 480)
This Phone is also a Dual-band WCDMA ( FDD I / FDD XI ) & Tri-band GSM (GSM900 / DCS1800 / PCS1900 ) Dual mode Cellular Phone. These are bands we definitely do no regularly see in North American devices.
So what’s the skinny? We had a hard time ID’ing many of the chips on this phone. If anything jumps out at you, let us know!
Our conclusion is that some of these devices might be knock-off IC’s but it’s hard to say. The fundamental phone architecture remains the same.