The BlackBerry Bold 9930 is an interesting device. On the one hand, it's easily the best BlackBerry on the market right now, and it's an obvious choice for business and executive types. It's got a brand-new, slimmed-down aesthetic and is one of the five devices that Research in Motion (RIM) is rolling out over the coming months that run the new BlackBerry OS 7.

But on the other hand, not much has changed. The BlackBerry has always been king of the business-oriented handsets, and BlackBerry OS 7 only shows minor changes and is clearly a placeholder until the next version, which will be a complete revamp based on QNX OS. And because there isn't a whole lot of change, that means many of the standard BlackBerry flaws are unfortunately still intact.

Just because it's the best BlackBerry doesn't make it the best smartphone out there, and its failure to make any serious adjustments for the better make it a less appealing option when it's put up against competition like Android, iOS, and even Windows Phone 7 devices.

BUILD & DESIGN

Far and away the best part about the 9930 is its build. Beyond being very aesthetically pleasing with a slick brushed-steel trim, it is the thinnest BlackBerry to date, measuring only 0.41 inches thick. The slimmed-down profile is a welcome change from the previously bulky, brick-like design of older BlackBerry models.

With the sleek design also comes a decrease in weight, adding to its portability and allowing me to easily carry it around in my pocket. The back panel of the phone is just glossy plastic and therefore fairly slick, but it can still be comfortably gripped thanks to a rubberized lining around the edges of the phone's rear.

Screen
In a big get for the BlackBerry, the 9930 now sports a touchscreen. It has a resolution of 287 dpi (awfully close to the 300 dpi minimum to be considered a retina display) and images generally look crisp and a clear, but the pixels are crammed into a really small space: the display is a paltry 2.8 inches. I can understand that the screen could not have been made much bigger on account of the full keyboard; RIM can only make its BlackBerrys so big before they're no longer practical.

Nevertheless, such a small amount of real estate is a bit of a problem when it comes to utilizing the 9930's newly-acquired touchscreen controls. At this size, my thumb or finger would often take up the better part of the display when I was trying to navigate, and my attempts to select things on the touchscreen were often misplaced.

Because of that, I'm very grateful that the trackpad is still present. Using the trackpad and touchscreen in tandem makes for an excellent control scheme, and one that is certainly a lot less frustrating than using solely the touchscreen. For instance, when web browsing, I would use the touchscreen for fast scrolling and navigating the page while using the trackpad for finer movements of the cursor and selecting small targets like hyperlinks.

Keyboard
As has become the BlackBerry standard, the 9930 has an exceptional keyboard. Sporting rounded, angled edges on all of the keys to help minimize unintentional presses, the keyboard is responsive and comfortable to use, even with one hand. Key depressions give off a nice click to let you know they're registering, and the keys are big enough to be hit easily and small enough so as not to result in a gigantic keyboard.

I only wish that the auto-correct was a little more diligent; depending on what application I was using, many typos would slip by uncorrected, even when the desired word was quite obvious. But even in spite of that, typing on the 9930 still is a dream and I would take this physical keyboard over a touchscreen keyboard any day.

Other Buttons & Controls
As I mentioned, the trackpad is still present on the 9930 despite the addition of the touchscreen, and I'm glad that it is. Located directly below the screen in the center, its sensitivity can be adjusted to your liking and it serves as and good way to navigate the screen in conjunction with touch controls. To the left of it is the BlackBerry "option" key, which serves as the equivalent of Android's capacitive menu button that I personally find to be very convenient.

There aren't many buttons on the edges of the 9930 and it makes for a minimalist design. There is a "convenience key" on the lower right side, to which you can assign virtually any function, but by default it serves as the camera key. This is probably for the best because, unfortunately, should you change the assigned function on the convenience key, you no longer have a dedicated camera button.

Beyond that, there is just your standard lock key on the top of the device and a volume rocker on the top right side (with a mute button in the middle of the two rocker ends). I did have a huge problem with the fact that the rocker did not allow you to make adjustments to the ringer levels; if you're not on a call, the rocker switch does nothing, a design choice that I just don't understand. Virtually every phone I have ever handled that has a rocker switch allows you to adjust your ringer level or bring it down to zero, thereby switching it to vibrate. Instead, on the 9930, the only thing the rocker switch can be used for is adjusting (or muting) the earpiece volume during -- and only during -- calls.

Finally, there is a micro-USB port on the left side (which can be used for both syncing and charging) and located directly above it is a full-sized, 3.5 mm headphone jack. The camera and flash are located on the back of the device.

PERFORMANCE

On paper, one of the biggest draws of the BlackBerry Bold 9930 is that it's one of the first devices to run the brand-new BlackBerry 7 OS. That being said, it's not much of a change. There are plenty of minor tweaks and, of course, the integration of touchscreen controls, but in terms of the user interface and app selection, it's pretty standard BlackBerry fare; that is to say, not particularly appealing when considering the user interface of Android and App Store for iOS devices.

The handset also sports 8 GB of storage (expandable up to 32 GB via microSD) and a very respectable 1.2 GHz processor. The CPU is plenty powerful and ensures everything runs smoothly, especially when running apps or games that do not rely on an internet connection. That's not a knock on reception -- which was just fine -- I just mean to say that when a task falls entirely on the processor, it handles the job very well.

Communication
The Bold 9930 functions just fine as a phone, with calls coming through crisp and clear on my end. I never had any dropped calls during my time with it, though on one or two occasions I had people on the other end of the line say that they couldn't hear me very well. I think that fell more on the network than the phone, though, as I just relocated and everything was fine. I made sure to test the messaging as well, and that went down without a hitch.

Though some people would be concerned about the fact that the 9930 is not 4G enabled, I would venture to say that it's kind of a moot point, mostly because web browsing on the device -- like all BlackBerrys -- is a miserable experience and still would have been regardless of its network.

The browser in BlackBerry OS 7 is substantially faster than the one found in previous iterations of the operating system, so much so that it took my editor's Bold 9650 roughly 15 more seconds than the 9930 to load the TechnologyGuide webpage. But a good browser by BlackBerry standards is not saying much. In the grand scheme of things, it's still very slow and can take a good 10-15 seconds to load a simple webpage. The browser is especially slow when loading blogs or blog-type sites in which the pages are vertically quite long, with multiple images and stories running down in a straight column. Often with these pages, even when the browser said it was finished loading, many images and assets would still be missing. It may be an improvement, but in the grand scheme of things, this still is not a very good browser.

Productivity
Geting work donwe is where the 9930, as usual for BlackBerrys, really shines. Email and messaging is extraordinarily streamlined and easy to use, with notifications for any types of messages (be they BBM, text, voicemail, or email) popping up in a convenient link right on the home screen. Personal email accounts as well as corporate Exchange accounts can be easily synced to the phone, though I did find it a bit odd that regardless of what kind of email address you use, you're still required to sign up for a BlackBerry account.

Many other productivity staples are here, including an address book for your contacts and a simple calendar app. It also comes preloaded with DataViz's Documents to Go app, which allows you to view and edit Microsoft Office documents. Not only is this useful -- especially for the business folks -- the ability to edit documents is far more appealing on a device that has such an excellent keyboard and control scheme (that is, when you use the touchscreen and trackpad together… trying to edit documents with just the touchscreen can be tough).

And while the 9930 does come with the BlackBerry Maps app, I would suggest avoiding it like the plague. Compared to Google Maps or even the Bing Maps app that I have on my Windows Phone 7, this is just dreadful. Aside from the fact that it takes forever for the device's GPS to find your location, load times are painfully long (especially when zooming) and it does not seem to have a particularly extensive index of locations. I tried typing the name of a popular restaurant chain, P.F. Chang's, and yet the app could not find any locations despite the fact that there are a handful of them in the surrounding area. Navigation is made marginally better by the fact that you can now do pinch to zoom, but beyond that, the mapping software is just as bad as ever on the BlackBerry.

Entertainment
There are a decent number of preloaded apps on the Bold 9930, including the ubiquitous media suite of music and video players, as well as a camera, camcorder, picture viewer, Slacker Radio, BlackBerry Podcasts, and a whole lot of that blasted V CAST software.

It has social networking in spades too, as it comes preloaded with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube apps, along with a healthy choice of messenger apps including Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and Google Talk.

It's light on games -- it only comes with Brick Breaker and Word Mole -- and unfortunately, the app selection for BlackBerrys is neither expansive nor is it of particularly high quality. For some odd reason, the most recently added app to BlackBerry App World is, at the time of this review, the Evansville Indiana Police and Fire Dispatch Scanner for $0.99. Take that however you will.

Camera
I never really know what to say in this section of my reviews because, with a few extremely rare exceptions, camera phones are never really any good.  Like most other camera phones, the 9930's is serviceable for quick, casual picture taking in the event that you have a celebrity sighting or something, but otherwise this 5-megapixel camera is nothing worth writing home about.

It can also shoot 720p video which is certainly not the worst I've ever seen, but like I said about the still shots, don't lean on this for anything more than casual usage. And, unlike some phones, the 9930 is not equipped with an HDMI out that would allow you to share your videos on a larger screen, so you'll have to rely on uploading to share the love.

Battery Life
The battery life on the Bold 9930 is outstanding. Even as I was putting the phone through its paces by testing out every feature and application I could, it lasted about two and a half days on a single charge. And the thing is, I wasn't even trying to conserve battery life, so I had my email settings on push and for most of the time I had Wi-Fi on (that was because I didn't realize it was on until the third day, so I turned it off at that point).

So I was very happy to see that despite me using the 9930 for some power-intensive tasks like retrieving directions, browsing the web, and taking pictures and video, I still got a very solid run on a single charge.

CONCLUSION

When it comes to BlackBerrys, the Bold 9930 is the cream of the crop. But that's exactly the problem: it's a BlackBerry and ultimately, that means it pales in comparison to the competition in many areas.

Yes, the Bold 9930 now has a touchscreen and a slimmed-down profile, and it maintains the great BlackBerry cornerstones of an excellent keyboard and a solid email application, which is why I'm sure it's still the smartphone of choice for many businesses.

But when compared to the likes of Android and iOS, the Bold 9930 still comes up very short. Introducing the next version of the BlackBerry OS -- the one based on QNX -- would have been a great way to overcome this obstacle and improve the user experience, but in the end this just a minor upgrade, not a major overhaul.

The tweaks to improve the user interface and integrate touchscreen controls are certainly welcome, as is the much faster browser, but RIM needed something much more drastic to make the Bold 9930 a more desirable choice than the other, more user-friendly devices that are out there. And let's honest: the browser may be improved, but it still doesn't hold a candle to BlackBerry's competitors.

There's nothing wrong with the BlackBerry Bold 9930 per se, it's just that the OS hasn't changed much and it's still very much a niche device for the business-oriented. Others looking for a vastly different BlackBerry experience should probably hold out until next year for a new device with the QNX OS.