Mobile phones: Compare features & prices Blackberry Bold 9790 review http://www.which.co.uk/technology/phones/reviews/mobile-phones/blackberry-bold-9790/review/

Caveat: I'm a Blackberry convert - I also have a company iPhone but choose to divert all call and mail traffic to my personal Blackberry rather than the other way around - I just believe there's no substitute for the speed and accuracy of that qwerty keypad (and the speed dialling functionality it provides). Needing to replace my Bold 9700 - and as Orange don't offer the 9810 (which has a rather compromised keypad layout anyway) I opted for a 9790. Sadly I've been very disappointed with many aspects of the phone's performance, though to be fair there are some great features which have rescued the 3-tick review. Here goes; The good... The camera - easy to use and effective, taking fine "snaps". The keyboard - in my experience this is the best qwerty keypad I've ever used on a handheld - feel, key spacing and shape are superb - and yes, I've got fairly big hands... Social media is easy to access too. Browser performance is far, far faster than my 9700, though I miss the ability to adjust detail browser settings. The phone is still wonderfully compact too of course - it's one of the few true "shirt pocket" phones out there, a key reason I chose not to buy a 9900. The surprisingly OK... the touchscreen/trackpad combination works. Yes the touchscreen is small, but it is better than none, if not quite as versatile as my iPhone for games. The audio player is good too - just not with the awful standard headset (I guess Blackberry are cutting cost heavily right now to survive their business transformation - the headphones seem to be a victim of this). The bad... The battery. The battery. The battery. My 9700 has superb battery life - it can run for four days between charges with light use and I've never, ever had to rely on same day recharging (even though that phone is now 2+1/2 years old). The 9790 battery actually ran out at 4pm early in the phone's life. OK, I was browsing a fair bit, but nothing that would have worried my old phone. If Blackberry do go bust, I'd wager gurus will look back and declare it was because they lost sight of the things which made them special - and battery life was certainly one of these (what would you rather have; 50% more battery life, or a phone that's 0.5mm thinner?). Other "bads"? The built-in UMA (wi-fi call routing, sometimes called "signal boost") doesn't work reliably, with voice calls intermittently warbling incoherently - this is annoying, I've lost a couple of business calls with this. Orange have advised me to update my router's firmware(!) and in fairness I've not had a chance to do this yet, so I'll try and update my review if this fixes the problem. Having said that, as the router still makes calls without any problem from my old 9700, I consider this rather poor. Finally, the phone doesn't feel as robust as my 9700 either; it has plastic screen too, which isn't best for touchscreen durability as microscratches start to show. There is no glove case with this phone either, which doesn't help.Would I buy again? Just - as much because buying into a new fixed term deal with this phone was cheaper for me than staying on a rolling monthly contract with my old one. If I'm on business trips I take my 9700 though - I can't afford to be without battery. If someone had been able to promise me better battery life if I waited three months, I'd have hung on. Trouble is, I can see no signs of a Blackberry with better battery life - can you?