Customer Reviews

BlackBerry Tour 9630 Phone, Black (Sprint)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I have very much looked forward to having a BlackBerry that was a cross between the Bold and the Curve. The Bold is beautiful, multi-functional, and has quite a nice leather-ish back, plus it has both WiFi and 3G, but the big size is kind of a turnoff. Besides, it's on the AT&T network, which is expensive since minutes, data and messaging are included separately. (One of the reasons I had to cancel and give up on the iPhone 3G, as much as it pained me to do so.) The Curve is smaller, lighter and has WiFi on the T-Mobile network, but no 3G. What is a multitasking mobile girl to do? Why, I got the BlackBerry Tour 9360, of course! The Tour, while beautiful and functional, is not free of flaws, but more on those later.

The Tour is a little larger than the Curve 8900, but not by much. It is available on the Sprint and Verizon networks, and it is a CDMA/3G EV-DO phone. This replaces the old World phone. The look of it is quite nice. Black with silver/chrome edges (Verizon's Tour's edges are somewhat darker) and with a slick black finish on the back, it is indeed very attractive. (However, the battery cover feels a little flimsy to my taste, like it would break if I accidentally dropped it.) It's got the latest BB operating system, which means you will get the neon-like menus. The resolution is gorgeous, much brighter than the Bold's, and that is saying a lot! The QWERTY keyboard is smaller than the Bold's though, and it might take some getting used to the slightly sparse keys, depends on what rocks your boat. With Verizon you get VCast and with Spring you get the Sprint Music Store. Both networks are similar in speed and voice quality, but I admit that the phone calls sound better on the Sprint network. You get all of the goodies -- applications from BB's App World, the Mobile Office applications that go well with push e-mail (the main reason why I switched to the BlackBerry), FaceBook, AIM, and RIM's new multimedia functions. You can watch YouTube videos, but there is no dedicated YouTube app. The phone is quite good, but there are some areas that need improvement. For example:

Poor Battery Life: You will have to charge this baby up at least twice a day if you're one of those people who can't put their BlackBerry down or has to use multiple functions.

Crashes/Lags too Much: It's very frustrating to have to remove the battery, put it back in and do a force reboot because of some glitch that shows up from nowhere or because the phone is lagging. I hope there will be a firmware update that will fix this problem soon.

No WiFi: I knew I had to give this wonderful function up when I decided to get this phone. Alas, I still have the iPhone. Even though I can't make calls with it because I've cancelled service with AT&T, I can not only still use the iPod feature, but also watch YouTube videos, download songs from iTunes and surf the web via Wifi. It's like an iPod Touch now, really.

Doesn't Sync with a Mac: Well, it can sync with a Mac, but only with buggy third party software like PocketMac.

TrackBall is Tricky: It either moves too fast or doesn't move at all at times. This isn't a big deal, but it's nevertheless irritating at times.

A Mediocre Browser: Even though the BB browser can now load HTML web pages, it is still a far cry behind Mobile Safari (iPhone), WebOS (Palm Pre) and Android (G1). The browser is slow, especially if you allow scripts to load, and you need the trackball to zoom in and out and scroll up and down and side to side. Very time consuming and annoying. And no matter how much you zoom in, you still have to strain your eyes to read the content.

That is all I can think of at the moment. All in all, it is a good phone, one of the best smartphones on the market now, in fact. If you're not into touchscreen (I do, but having used the iPhone, I wanted my next phone not to be touchscreen) and love BlackBerry, then get the Tour. It's got a more updated look, plus all the things you love about the BB. Choose which network works best for you. As for me, I chose the Sprint network because of its affordable data/voice/messaging package bundle and good network capabilities in this area. However, the Verizon version has a more marketable appeal to it, even with the complaints about call quality and whatnot. It's your choice.

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.

After witnessing the near addiction Blackberry owners seem to have with their thumbs feverishly flying all over the keyboard in near ecstasy, it seemed like maybe it was time to see what all the enthusiasm was about. I travel internationally every week so the tour seemed like a no-brainer. For a few days it seemed I had joined the zombie army also and couldn't put it down. After having it a few months to make a level headed assessment now I can pass on my accurate impressions and sorry to say they aren't very positive. On the plus side, the "push" technology is welcome. While this feature is especially ideal for the business user which comprises the core of Blackberry users, it holds great appeal to the e-mail addicted among us who like to feel like the newscasters who receive a paper from off camera and then solemnly say, "this just in". Like most smartphones, having the icons on screen waiting to be easily accessed is convenient and there are a fair number of simple apps available at modest cost. The negatives are many and serious. Most irksome is the processor itself and the fact that the unit is painfully slow. It takes forever to boot; if it is receiving a message or downloading something in the background i.e. news or weather, it is completely unresponsive to commands. Second is the abysmal functioning of the trackball. It constantly gets stuck or moves with no result. Exasperating. The battery time is ridiculously short. Depending on usage it may not even last an entire day. You simply must have a second fully charged battery at the ready to swap out and then wait for the sloooow boot up again. Although the keyboard is supposed to be improved, I still find myself constantly mis-hitting. The tour 2 is making a debut and is said to address some of these and other issues. In fairness, I have talked to people who love their Tour. But if I could do it over again I would not make this purchase and discourage like minded users to avoid it.

I heard many friends describe how they are addicted to their BlackBerry. A few months ago I decided to see what the hype was all about. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this phone lives up to the hype and then some.

PROS
1) Big, clear screen
2) Push email
3) Built in CDMA and GSM radios (great for international use)
4) BlackBerry messenger and BlackBerry App World
5) GPS with Google Maps
6) Fairly good camera
7) Good call quality and battery life

CONS
1) Takes forever to boot up
2) Sometimes gets sluggish
3) Text messaging system is antiquated (needs iPhone-like threaded messages)

Overall this is a great phone. It allowed me to sync all my social outlooks (email, IM, facebook, etc) to the phone seamlessly. The BB browser, although not great, does an decent job at rendering web pages. I've heard some people complain about the trackball wearing out, so far I have seen no signs of this on my phone. If you want a complete smartphone, you would be hard pressed to find a better one than the Tour. I have become a Crackberry addict.

Blackberry Tour is my new phone. It replaced my not so old Blackberry Curve from Sprint. So far, Sprint is offering it in just one colour but I don't see to many people complaining about it. This is slightly more pleasing in terms of looks and design. Anyone who hasn't had this phone and is considering buying it, would usually give in just by the looks of it. The graphics are a substantial improvement from the quite good Blackberry curve display. I won't go into boring specifications such as pixels and resolution but yeah the resolution is improved as one would notice while surfing the internet.

Now, let us talk about the major features of the phone. Everyone is wondering, what is different about the Blackberry Tour and the Blackberry Curve? In simple words, the tour has a better camera, different keys, no trackball ring, brighter display and new interface, a SIM card slot so you can use the phone in places outside of USA when you don't wish to use Sprint's global service.

Where the Blackberry has improved -

1. The memory stick can be removed without taking the battery out and switching the phone off.
2. The speaker is louder than before and if you try using Pandora, it is I dare say, flawless at 65% volume for a living room. The playlist is slightly better looking and doesn't look like an 8bit arcade game anymore.
3. When you're going through your files, the browsing is slightly faster and you won't need to wait minutes while going through your pictures. Also the camera is a 3.2 MEGAPIXEL and in simple terms, the camera is WAY BETTER than the blackberry curve. The blackberry curve gave grainy photographs and the pixels seems to be all over the place. The tour's camera takes better pictures in the dark and there is not a very big lag between when you press the click button and the picture is captured. The best camera on any Sprint phone would be the Palm Pre's camera but we're not discussing that phone.
4. The charger is now the other side of the phone and this headphone jack doesn't always accept all earphones despite being 3.5 mm. No more standard USB jacks - the new Blackberry uses mini usb and rightfully so.
5. Even on 10% brightness, the TOUR seems more vibrant and colour conscious.

6. A lot of people moan and whine about the trackball on this phone but its way better than the Curve!

Where the Blackberry Curve is missed -

The keypad on the blackberry tour may appear better but I could fly on the blackberry curve without making any errors. This was mainly because there was a slight gap between the keys, that gap is missing on the Tour...The tour's keys don't allow for the easiest typing experience and though I'm fast on it, I really think the Blackberry Curve keys were flawless. The Tour sometimes heats up, it is very moody that way.

The blackberry curve has a great battery life. The Tour will last you for about a day. Enough said about battery.

I would advise everyone to backup all your data. If for whatever reason your internet is working slow, then I would suggest you backup your TOUR, reset it (erases all data and sets the phone back to factory condition) and restore the backup which you saved on your computer. This fixes most internet issues. The Blackberry Tour is not the world's best upgrade for Blackberry Curve.

The Blackberry Curve was coming from a Blackberry Pearl so it seemed like the sibling everyone wanted to engage with. The blackberry tour is the step-child in the same RIM family. I know my ideas sound slightly insane but I'm trying to explain this to you. Am I happy with my Blackberry Tour? I most definitely am but when I first got this phone and coughed up the full price of it, my phone didn't work in a foreign location, this was because the phone doesn't come unlocked but SPRINT has fixed this issue and all blackberry tours being sold now are UNLOCKED and ready for international use.

If you have an 8830, you must be dying to change that phone unless you don't care much for cameras.

A new 8530 will be here in a few days. The Tour lacks wifi but I don't care for Wi-Fi because the EV is express speed and rather fast. Surfing a webpage on the blackberry tour was wayyy better than the blackberry curve. Especially caue you can view the page in whatever format you want (full page or blackberry customized) .. It comes with some good sample wallpapers and you can download more from Blackberry App World.

It might just be arguably the best phone out there. Call quality is still very good and the charging port isn't easily destructible.

Suggestion - BUY THE OEM BLACKBERRY SKINS for about $20 cause they're worth it. The phone looks smashing then.

Should you upgrade from the Blackberry Curve and extend your contract? I did anyway and am more than satisfied because the Curve taught me how to truly use a blackberry.

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.

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.

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.

After reading all the exciting things about Black berry Tour, I got my fiance (who is currenlty in another state) a Blackberry tour on Sprint. However, so far we are very disappointed with the Call Quality with this expensive smartphone. My fiance could hear me fine, but her voice seems to be muffled (hot potato speech) and I have to struggle hard to unsuccessfully understand what she is saying. There seems to be a background noise as well.
So after spending a great deal of time, my fiance was able to exchange it for another Tour hoping that it's probably an issue with that particular phone. It's definitely, better, may be 60-70%, however still unsatisfying call quality experience, because of the above mentioned issue to a lesser extent.Unfortunately, I am not close to the phone to see if tweaking would help. I have Treo 755p (on SERO) and my fiance had Motorola V3M(Tmobile) prior to this phone, and never had this issue. This seems to be an issue more on the listener end and seems to affect female voice more than male voice. I had tried Blackberry Curve in the past, without this issue. We are really disappointed with this experience, but want to give few more days to the 2nd phone before returning. Unfortunately, Sprint is charging $35 for each exchange. I have been with Sprint for the past 2 years and am very satisfied with their voice and data service so far, and would like to stay with Sprint. But, $35 per exchange is forcing me to look for alternatives.
I don't want to conclude that it's an issue with almost the entire line of Tour, at least not yet. So I will try to come up with an update.

Update 08/21/09: The call quality continued to be disappointing even with the 2nd Blackberry Tour, forcing us to return the phone.

Excellent phone and no problems at all - except the trackball. I am sure you've read the trackball issues with this phone already so I won't bore you with them.