ToGadget , The Guide to Gadgets

Research In Motion's BlackBerry Tour 9630 for Verizon Wireless (and Sprint) is the newest member in RIM's 9000 series of flagship smartphones. The Tour takes the basic BlackBerry Bold recipe and stuffs the ingredients into a smaller, more compact form factor. The Tour also gets updated features like a 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera, which bests the 2.0 megapixel unit found on the Bold. Measuring 112mm x 63mm x 14mm (4.4in x 2.5in x .6in) in size, the BlackBerry Tour 9630 for Verizon shaves 1mm of thickness and 3 to 4mm of height and width from the BlackBerry Bold design, placing it nicely in between the Bold and the slim Curve 8900 models. At 132.4g (3.7oz), it's also a tad lighter than the Bold - but not much. The Tour features a 2.4-inch non-touch display that offers 480 x 360 pixel resolution, the same display used on the Curve 8900. It's quite bright and crisp, and does its job nicely.

The keyboard on the BlackBerry Tour is very nice. The keys are shaped like those on the Bold, but are more compactly arranged, like those on the Curve series. They have a really good feel to them, providing a firm click when pressed. The trackball controller on our Tour didn't seem to work as well as those found on other BlackBerry devices, but that could have been a firmware issue or just a problem with our particular handset.

Build quality on the Tour is top notch, though it doesn't feel or look quite as rich as the BlackBerry Bold. It does, however, sport an attractive pattern on the rear cover, which is solidly affixed to the back of the phone - unlike the battery cover found on Curve 8900.

Outbound call audio quality on the Tour was middle of the road, perhaps even at the lower end of acceptable, while inbound sound was very clear. The speakerphone was usable, but not very pleasant sounding. The Tour 9630 is rated for 5 hours of talk time or two weeks of standby time when operating on CDMA networks like Verizon's. The Tour also has quad-band GSM/EDGE and 2100MHz UMTS support, too, which means it can roam onto 2G and 3G networks around the world when travelling.

Contact management on the Tour 9630 is very good, and the ability to search for contacts merely by typing a first and/or last name from the home screen is handy. Ring profiles on the 9630 are still hugely customizable, like they are on all BlackBerries, but the process has been greatly simplified on the Tour. Speed dials and speaker independent voice dialing are also available to Tour users