Need a phone for email with great battery life? RIM's BlackBerry Bold 9700 is an excellent choice

Physical keyboards aren't as common on smartphones as they were a couple of years ago, but one thing hasn't changed - the ones you find on RIM's BlackBerry handsets are still the best.

Its subtly-shaped keys make typing a pain-free process, and sensible spacing means you rarely accidentally hit a neighbouring key. The touch-sensitive thumbpad makes navigating the OS easy too.

That means the 9700 is one of the easiest-to-use smartphones in this Labs, despite the fact that it's small, light (at 124g) and pocketable, and has no touchscreen.

It isn't just the physical controls that make this phone a pleasure to use. General responsiveness is excellent, and the OS lets you get what you want done quickly - even the 3.2-megapixel camera fires up in a trice.

Email and messaging capabilities are second to none. As with the other RIM handsets, the Bold allows you to aggregate email from multiple email accounts, pushing messages to the handset as they arrive, and social networking communications are handled just as elegantly.

Each account gets its own mailbox, and there's an all-in-one view. Battery life is fantastic, with 70% capacity remaining after our 24-hour torture test, a result that means you should be able to use the phone for around three days before charging.

Neither is there anything significant missing from its feature set. The screen is bright, colourful and its 480 x 360 resolution means web pages look good. There's GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HSDPA and video capture too.

But it isn't perfect. In our web browsing tests, the browser loaded the SMH homepage in a sluggish 30 seconds, 22 seconds slower than the iPhone 3GS. BlackBerry App World is okay, but it isn't a patch on Apple or Google's offerings.

That's enough to knock a point from this phone's performance scores, but it isn't enough to prevent us liking the Bold. Its responsiveness, great battery life and competent messaging mean it deserves its Recommended award.

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