The Blackberry 9700 was launched as an upgrade to the 9000 series. To prove its worth, it is sleeker, faster and more able device than its predecessor, with 16g lighter, 6mm less wide, 5mm less in length and a whopping 0.9mm thinner. The leather back that gives its character is tweaked to give it a more contemporary and sophisticated look.

The phone has a high resolution of 480 x 360 pixel color with display capability of up to 65,000 colors. The screen measures 2.44" diagonally and thus is great for playing videos, browsing photos and displaying images and significantly eases navigation. A navigation pad is added to this model to make it more user friendly like a small laptop. Another benefit being, that it increases durability of the phone when compared to the track ball in the earlier version.

With the enhanced 3.2 megapixel camera and 2x digital zoom taking pictures is a delight. To add to that experience is the video recording capabilities of up to 480 x 352 pixels.

It gives you a more powerful battery that gives you up to six hours of talk time, and twenty one days of standby time and 35 hours of audio playing time.

With an expanded storage capacity, you can load a large collection of songs and enjoy incessant flow of music. It supports MP3, WMA9, WMA9 Pro, WMA 10. MIDI, AMR-NB, 3gp and Professional AAC.

Probably the best upgrade this mobile phone as professional and casual users, is that, it is Wi-Fi enabled and has a 3G (HDSPA) connectivity. This model has been provided with a microSD card that can be enhanced up to 16 GB.

The Blackberry 9700 is a significant upgrade to its older version in both features and style. The keyboard seems more cluttered but the shape of the body makes up for it making usage easy. With all aspect of the phone enhanced it certainly meets all expectations of the consumer.