The folks at Wirefly sent me over a Blackberry Tour 9630 to have a look at, and I was actually pretty happy with this one.  There was a lot to like here, even some deeply unexpected surprises, that won my attention over.

The Blackberry Tour 9630 is a candy bar style smartphone with trackball navigation.  It also offers Bluetooth connectivity, mobile web (you’ll need to sign up for Verizon’s Mobile Broadband Connect plan, though), mobile email, a 3.2 megapixel camera with 2x digital zoom and video recording, GPS, a to-go version of the entire Microsoft Office suite, audio player, video player, game demos, mobile TV service (only if you get this hooked up through Sprint–Verizon’s VCast Mobile TV doesn’t work here), two hundred fifty six megs of onboard memory and a battery that yields five hours of talk time on a single charge.

Now, the “big surprise” I was talking about before came when I was trying this sucker out.  I noticed that the buttons on this thing were glowing pretty bright, and this was at about ten o’clock at night.  So inspiration struck, and I took to my darkened basement to see how this thing worked as a flashlight.  Sure enough, I was getting sufficient light to see about six feet ahead of my feet shining it down at the concrete floor.

When you can use a cell phone as an emergency flashlight you know you’ve got some seriously bright buttons, as well as great utility.  The phone itself comes with plenty of great features, though the trackpad control is once again too sensitive.  Though they have toned it down from earlier versions, this one is still sliding around like a crazy thing in the night.

Still though, there’s plenty to like about the Blackberry Tour 9630, and you should be fairly happy with it if you decide to go with one.

The Good

Bright enough to make an emergency flashlight

Nice sound playback

Lots of features

The Bad

Internet access is an issue

No wifi

Oversensitive trackpad

Score 7 / 10

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