In the BlackBerry Bold 9790, RIM has tried to bring together the benefits of a capacitive touchscreen and a real-world QWERTY keyboard to produce a really usable business handset. While it hasn’t quite managed to pull it off, there is still plenty here to appeal to the business user.

Pick up the handset and you’ll realise it is no heavyweight – in fact at 107g it’s one of RIM’s lightest phones. And yet it still manages to feel pretty sturdy. It looks like a Blackberry, too, with the physical QWERTY keyboard sitting below a square touchscreen measuring 2.45 inches.

The capacitive touchscreen works well enough if you’re prodding it, but unfortunately it is a far more hit-and-miss affair when it comes to swiping. We found, for example, that if we wanted to input a meeting time into the calendar, we needed to flick a spinning dial; this either went round far too quickly, or hardly moved at all. We resorted to the trackpad, which happily is far more usable, although it can actually be a tad too sensitive.

Berry nice

The Bold 9790 runs on the Blackberry operating system, which will of course be comfortably familiar to existing BlackBerry owners. To get to a quick menu, simply tap the bar at the top of the screen (which also shows battery level, time and signal strength). This quick-access menu lets you quickly change connections such as NFC, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. There are more complicated menus should you wish to change call settings, themes, and security measures or check on your account.

The menu system is generally easy to work your way around and is pretty deep, although we did have problems finding the GPS settings, which have been tucked away in the Devices menu. Really, we’d rather have this on a quick access menu rather than NFC.

A tap on the home screen makes a notifications bar appear, where you’ll see a list of texts, emails and so on. Look at the bottom of the screen and you’ll see app shortcuts – they are brought together into categories including All, Frequent, Favourites and Media. The shortcuts panel can be altered so that it is out of sight or extends across up to three rows – it makes keeping your screen free of clutter much simpler – particularly important on a smaller screen.

Net surfing

Surfing the net is a bit disappointing. Although we found sites loaded speedily and pinch to zoom worked well, actually browsing around the sites was stilted because the screen doesn’t respond well. Plus, the small screen does not lend itself to reading sites that are heavy on words. Also, the browser is not Flash compatible, so you’ll have issues with sites such as 4OD and BBC News – an app for YouTube has been included however.

Apps shortage

Talking of apps – Blackberry is still way behind the Android and iOS stores – there are 20,000 apps to choose from, and omissions include pretty major ones such as Skype. Having said that, business users will find plenty to please them, such as BlackBerry Messenger and Documents To Go. There are Twitter and Facebook apps, as well as a Social Feeds app if you’re keen on social networking. But don’t expect to do any video conferencing, as there is no front-facing snapper.

Key points

This is a BlackBerry handset so of course there is a physical QWERTY keyboard. Some people are big fans of the BlackBerry keyboard, although those with bigger fingers may find it a struggle – we’d definitely recommend trying one out in store before making a decision.

On the small screen

While the smaller display doesn’t lend itself to surfing the net, it does mean that the battery juice isn’t drained as it is on handsets with far larger screens. We eked out a good two days from a fully charged battery as we used the phone for making calls, taking pictures and texting. Even if you made lots of phone calls you should still get a good day out of the battery, so it’s great for business people who are out and about all day. The on-board 1GHz chip has enough power to help the phone perform well, even when multitasking – and it starts up really quickly too.

At the movies

It is possible, should you wish, to copy films onto the on-board 8GB of memory (which can also be expanded using the microSD slot) so that you can watch movies while you’re out and about. However, that small screen doesn’t really lend itself to film viewing. If this is one feature you think you’ll use, it’s worth considering the BlackBerry Curve 9380, which has eschewed the physical keyboard to allow more space for the display. Having said that, the Bold 9790’s screen may be small, but it is vibrant and sharp.

Making pictures

If you’re taking snaps, the Bold 9790 has a dedicated snapper button on the right edge of the handset. There’s a 2X digital zoom (controlled using the volume keys) while location tracking and flash are controlled using the on-screen buttons. There are a number of shooting modes to choose from, such as night, landscape and portrait.

The resulting images were not consistent, unfortunately. For some odd reason, the snow mode produced better results outside than landscape, even when the sun was shining. However, autofocus worked well and we got good images in decent light conditions – you will definitely need that flash for low light. There’s also a VGA movie mode, which produces reasonable results too.

Our conclusion

If you’re after a business handset for keeping in touch, emailing and a bit of web browsing the Blackberry Bold 9790 does a decent job. However, the small screen and unreliable responsiveness makes web browsing a stilted affair. If you already own a BlackBerry, you won’t find much here to persuade you to upgrade.