With the launch of the first generation Bold a little over a year ago, BlackBerry pretty much destroyed the cliché that business phones have to be boring by design and function. It then followed it up with the Curve 8900 and 8520, the latter making news for being the most affordable ’berry yet. With the launch of the Bold 9700 a.k.a the Bold 2, BlackBerry has made some …bold moves on both the design and performance fronts. Is it the best BlackBerry yet? Let’s find out!

If you’re a casual observer, you’ll have to look long and hard to differentiate the latest Bold from the Curve 8520, which is mostly a good thing. The Bold 2 retains the same pocket-friendly footprint and optical touchpad (no more guck-collecting trackball!) of the Curve, but packs in a premium stainless steel bezel around the edge of the handset rather than the plasticky piano black finish on the Curve.

The design is gorgeous and so very refined. With its reduced size though, the screen and the QWERTY keypad have been scaled down too. If you’re large fingered, please try out the phone in the shop before you buy! Even though each key is very distinguishable from the next, the keys are physically smaller, and I found it difficult to type quickly with two thumbs without making a ton of mistakes. Even regular Bold users found it a little troublesome at first, but improved with a bit of practice.

The reduction in display size, with the new display measuring 2.44-in diagonally — the previous Bolds’ was 2.6in, doesn’t hurt as much. Sure, you miss every little bit of space when you’re surfing the web, but the Bold 2’s display is head and shoulders above most business phones and still one of the best in the business, and its ultra-sharp 480x360 resolution display is a sight to behold. Visually stunning, the display is bright and colourful, with vibrant colour reproduction and crisp images.

But since it’s been a while since the first Bold hit Indian shores, I can’t help but feel that the display is largely wasted on the bland and dated looking BlackBerry user interface. Don’t get me wrong — it’s still very functional, but other modern operating systems literally run circles around the BlackBerry’s.

Menus, media players, even productivity applications — all need a serious revamp if it is to stand strong in the face of a far prettier competition. The redemption comes by way of the Bold 2 running a whole side faster than the previous generation Bold, thanks in large part to the speedy processor and the tweaks in Version 5 of the OS.

On the multimedia end, the Bold 2 continues in the tradition of the newer ’berries — reasonably good audio quality and pretty good DivX (movie/media file) support ensures that if you’re going to be dragging and dropping different formats onto this for your commute, the Bold 2 will be up to the challenge.

There’s still no FM Radio though. You also get good connectivity options — 3G, Wi-Fi, EDGE, Bluetooth 2.1 and GPS, though the utility of GPS is limited only to Google Maps since BlackBerry hasn’t launched Maps for India yet. There’s an app store present, but again, strangely, no paid apps available.

But, at the end of the day, it is still a great BlackBerry. Everything you should need for business communications is there and e-mail is still the core strength of the Bold 9700. Setting up the device for your corporate account is very straightforward once you’ve got all the required settings from your network administrator and your carrier.

Of course you can also read Office documents (or compose and edit them too at an extra cost), plus you can connect to your office intranet using its built-in VPN client. So, at Rs 31,990, this is the best BlackBerry in terms of performance and form factor though not it’s price. Unless you own the original Bold, this is one seriously worthy upgrade.

Quick Specs:

Display: 2.44-in 480x360 pixel colour display, Transmissive TFT LCD with support for over 65,000 colours

Camera: 3.2 MP autofocus camera with image stabilisation, flash. Video camera recording at 480 x 352 pixel or 176 x 144 pixel

Connectivity: 3G (HSDPA) compatible, GSM: 1900/1800/900/850 MHz, Wifi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, GPS with A-GPS

Battery: Battery: 1500 mAh Lithium cell with upto 6 hours talktime and 504 hours standby

Dimensions (W x H x D): 60 x 109 x 14.1 mm

Weight: 120gm

Rating: 8/10

Price: Rs 31,990

URL: http://in.blackberry.com/devices/blackberrybold9700/

A gripping design

The original Gorillapod garnered overnight success by allowing photographers to easily set up cameras, camcorders, and lights in tricky spots, either by standing up or wrapping the legs around a convenient object, like a railing or a pole. Now, the Gorillapod is going one step further with the Gorillapod Magnetic – you get the same flexible-legged tripod design, but now with powerful magnets in the feet. Suddenly, everything metallic is kosher — refrigerators, desk drawers, even car roofs. It’s a shame it only holds 300 gm of weight — which makes it about okay for small cameras, not dSLRs.

URL: http://joby.com/gorillapod/magnetic/

Price: €25

Surf ‘n’ shop

Are you reading this from way outside Calcutta? Then this may interest you. Rediff’s Shopping site has now tied up with India Post as its logistics partner. With seven-day delivery across 1,56,000 locations, covering 614 districts, 28 states, 7 union territories and serving around 29000 PIN codes all across India, I’d wager that most of you are covered! No more hunting for the best tech deals at the expensive local retailer, head online and shop in peace!

URL: http://shopping.rediff.com/

Security drive

Think your bank password file is more top secret than classified government files? Carry it around on the Padlock 2, Corsair’s latest USB drive. It features password protection that works independent of any operating system, and the 4-10 digital password is entered via the keypad on its side. If you’re still worried, your data is protected with 256-bit encryption, should thieves manage to pry the device open.

What if you forget your own password? It lets you create a new PIN if the original PIN is lost, but it also securely erases the contents of the drive! Tough love, this.

URL: http://www.corsair.com/products/padlock2/default.aspx

Price: $59 for 8GB