The BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900, when launched in May 2011, was seen as a big step forward for BlackBerry, then known as Research In Motion. This was their first high-end phone with the touchscreen plus QWERTY combination.
Between then and now, time has moved very slowly for BlackBerry. The good thing for them is – none of the rivals have staked a claim for the QWERTY smartphone market, while they were in a slumber. But, can the newly introduced BlackBerry Q10 really take over the mantle from the Bold Touch 9900, which was, and still is, a very popular smartphone in the market?
We compare the specs to see how far along the device category has evolved over time.
| Model | BlackBerry Q10 | BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900 |
| Display Size (in inches) | 3.1 | 2.8 |
| Display Type | Super AMOLED | TFT LCD |
| Resolution (in pixels) | 720 x 720 | 640 x 480 |
| Keyboard | QWERTY | QWERTY |
| UI Navigation | Touchscreen | Optical trackpad |
| Processor | TI OMAP 4470 | QC 8655 |
| Clock Speed (in GHz) | 1.5 | 1.2 |
| Cores | Dual Core | Single Core |
| RAM | 2GB | 768MB |
| Internal Storage | 16GB | 8GB |
| Expandable memory | microSD | microSD |
| Camera | 8MP | 5MP |
| Battery | 1800mAh | 1230mAh |
| OS | BlackBerry 10 | BlackBerry OS 7.1 |
From what we can easily decipher, everything seems to have been given an upgrade. First up, the biggest difference between the BlackBerry Q10 and Bold Touch 9900, is the missing optical trackpad. The loyalists will take some time getting used to using just the touchscreen for navigation, but the new BB10 operating system demands that. With OS7, you still had to rely on the trackpad for most of the tasks. The bright side of that is there is extra real estate available, which is why the slightly bigger display.
BlackBerry says the Q10 has been given a glass casing to prevent any damage to the phone in case of any snicks. The QWERTY keypad remains ever present in its full glory. The QWERTY on the Bold Touch 9900 was brilliant, and we can only assume that BlackBerry would have built on that, rather than re-inventing the wheel. A keypad, like audio, is something that varies in terms of comfort from user to user.
The Q10’s display has undergone a massive upgrade. The screen on the Bold Touch 9900 was fairly good in its own right, but not to forget that it was a plain-Jane TFT LCD display. The switch to Super AMOLED takes it into a different league altogether. It will be interesting to see how good this display is, side by side, with the Bold Touch 9900, when we do the detailed review.
Keeping with the times, BlackBerry has sent the Q10 into the wild with a dua- core processor, and paired that with 2GB of RAM. We don’t even need to go into the specifics when we compare this to the old generation single core processor paired with 768MB of RAM on the Bold Touch 9900.
The Bold Touch 9900 came with 8GB of internal storage, with a microSD option for expansion. The Q10 betters that by having 16GB internal storage, and a memory card slot. We will not compare the camera quality and specs, till we test the picture quality. The Q10 uses a micro SIM card, while the Bold Touch 9900 used a full SIM card.
All in all, everything in the Q10 has been given a boost, but how does that handle the BB10 operating system is going to be the critical bit. We are expecting BlackBerry to launch the Q10 and the Z10 in India by the end of February. We will do the detailed review of these smartphones then.