Blackberry Bold 9900 Dakota Phone Review

Here we are…talking about the hottest Blackberry phone in the market, Blackberry Bold 9900 Dakota.

It took me 2 years to realize that my old Blackberry Bold 9000 was getting rusty and close to the point where I have been wanting to throw it to the wall. It failed me so many times. Imagine this…it froze every 2 days and sometimes, it even froze right when there’s an incoming call!! I ended up unable to receive the call and had to reboot the phone. So I told myself, “that’s it. I need to change my phone.” So I decided to switch to this sexy Blackberry Bold 9900 Dakota.

Alright…enough with my rambling about how I got this phone. Let’s get down to our business, shall we.

Specifications

• Network:  GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900;  HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100 / 800; HSDPA 900 / 1700 / 2100
• Dimensions: 115 x 66 x 10.5 mm
• Weight: 130 g
• Display: Type TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
• Size: 640 x 480 pixels, 2.8 inches (~286 ppi pixel density)
• Memory: Internal 8GB storage, 768 MB RAM; External Card slot microSD, up to 32GB
• Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n
• Bluetooth: Yes, v2.1 with A2DP, EDR
• NFC: Yes
• USB: microUSB v2.0
• Camera: Primary 5 MP, 2592×1944 pixels, LED flash
• Video: Yes, 720p
• OS: BlackBerry OS 7.0
• CPU 1.2 GHz QC 8655
• Sensors Proximity, compass
• GPS: Yes, with A-GPS support
• Media: MP4/WMV/H.263/H.264 player; MP3/eAAC+/WMA player
• BATTERY Standard battery, Li-Ion 1230 mAh
• Stand-by Up to 307 h (2G) / Up to 307 h (3G)
• Talk time Up to 6 h 30 min (2G) / Up to 5 h 50 min (3G)
• Music play Up to 50 h

Display

It has a beautiful display with vibrant color and spacious display. Blackberry Dakota also uses a Gorilla screen now, so you can rest assured knowing that your phone will stand the most “abusive” treatment.

Blackberry OS 7

Overall, Blackberry OS 7 is a solid operating system. However, there’s 1 major glitch on my Blackberry Bold 9900 Dakota phone. When it is rebooted, it oftentimes stuck around 70% of the process. Apparently, it is a known bug called a “reboot loop”. I’m currently using Blackberry OS 7.0 Bundle 2395. Some people said that this is just a minor glitch that will disappear once you upgrade your software. The one I’m using now is actually an upgrade from the previous one. I forgot that the Bundle # for the previous one, but it seems with this new bundle, I didn’t experience the “reboot loop” too many times. I hope your Blackberry Dakota reboots smoothly 🙂 It just annoys me sometimes when I have to pull out the battery and put it back in when something like this happened.

NFC

This phone is one of the few phones that has NCF (Near Field Communication) in it. I can’t really test this out since I can’t find any place that offers an NFC tag to read from. However, this youtube video will show you how it works. One caveat…one of my friend bought his Blackberry Dakota from US (FYI, I bought this in Indonesia) and he didn’t have NFC installed on his phone, so be careful and make sure you check your phone (or ask the customer service if you are buying it online) if it has NFC or not. You are definitely missing out if your phone doesn’t have one. True that it’s not very useful now, but I can see it will be very useful few years down the road.

Camera

This is where Blackberry Bold 9900 Dakota is lacking. It only offers 5MP camera! Granted that it has flash built-in. However, it doesn’t have auto-focus feature. So when you are taking a close-distant picture, your camera phone will be having a hard time to focus on the object and give you a blur image.

Below are the few images taken from Blackberry Bold 9900 Dakota.

Battery

Now…this is also another area that my Dakota is lacking and what most of friend asked me,  “How’s the battery?”

I would say my battery could last a good 12 hours. I usually unplug my phone from its charger at 7:30am, and it still has some juice left until around 9pm. Granted that I only use my phone to make few calls (around 3 calls/day), all day long using blackberry messenger, and  checking my twitter and email; but it is still good compared to my old Blackberry Bold 9000.

Some people said that you need to charge the battery 2-3 times a day. In my experience, I don’t have to. I did still buy an extra battery though, just in case…and a wall charger.

Case

The cellphone case that I used is made by Capdase. This is actually the first time I’m using that brand. I would say that it’s pretty sturdy, and the thing I like most about it is the thinness of it. Blackberry Bold Dakota 9900 is a thin phone, so if you were using a thick case, it will ruin the whole experience of using a thin cellphone.

Conclusion

Blackberry Bold Dakota 9900 is a solid phone in terms of technology. It has supreme display screen, fast processor, touch screen display, and NFC. However, its operating system needs some tweaks to make the whole experience of using this phone excellent. Would I recommend this phone to my friends? Yes, I would. However, I need to warn you that you might get few frustrations when you experience the “reboot loop”, so just bare with it. I bought this phone for around $450 without contract. I’m sure by the time you read this post, the price will be cheaper.

What do you think about this phone? if you are an owner of this phone, please give some of your experience of using one in the comment section below. Thanks.