So Telstra Australia have finally released the BlackBerry Bold 9700.  And if you loved the BlackBerry Curve 8300 series, you’ll love the new Bold.

If you have a BlackBerry Bold 9000, you’ll love it not as much.  That’ll be because the 9700 is a 9000 in a smaller package.
And you Curve users?  Well it’s the same size, and thinner than the Curve.

What’s to like about the 9700?

• Size, it’s smaller than the current Bold 9000, and a little thinner than the BlackBerry Curve.
  
• It’s lighter than the Bold 9000.
• While in the holster, you can have an audio cable plugged in.
  (this is one of thing that annoys me about some PDAs)
  
• Faster than the Bold 9000.
• The BlackBerry 9700 has a physical lock button, which means we don’t need to place a Lock icon on the home screen.
  

What’s not to like about it?

• The physical lock button.  I kept hitting it by accident.
  I’m sure I would get used to it.
• The microSD card is hard to get out.
  There seems to be some sort of lip or catch that holds the card in.
  
• Trackpad takes a little bit of time to get used to.

How do I think it’ll go in the field, amongst real users?

Very well.  I think it will sell like hotcakes.  And with the Trackpad replacing the fault prone TrackBall means we’ll see a lot less (faulty) handsets being returned to us.
It’s definitely a GOOD thing.  FASTer than the Bold 9000, but unfortunately not any CHEAPer than the current Bold 9000.
I’m looking forward to our customers getting their hands on the 9700.