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BlackBerry Bold 9780 Pearl White hands-on

Published Dec 2nd, 2010 1:05PM EST
BGR

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Our No. 1 UK ninja just hooked us up with an unbranded OEM BlackBerry Bold 9780 in Pearl White, and we wanted to give you guys a detailed look at it.

  • For starters, the device is visually identical to the BlackBerry Bold 9700 in white. While the black Bold 9780 traded in the chrome bezel for a glossy black bezel, the white version of the handset still sports the chrome bezel and metallic white paint job (Pearl White, as RIM likes to call it).
  • We would have loved a solid white finish on here, as it would look a bit more high-end as opposed to this glitter-laced white — oh well.
  • As far as the backlight is concerned, you might remember we had serious issues with the BlackBerry Torch 9800 in Pure White — we couldn’t use the device as a daily driver due to the fact that the cutouts for the keyboard backlight made the passing light look “blurry” to us. Thankfully, the 9780 is better. There is still an issue, however, and that’s the fact that there does not seem to be a backing to the keyboard like the black version has. RIM opted to simply leave the cutout letters and symbols bare, and this makes for a really poor and uneven lighting situation. Is it usable? Definitely. It’s just not perfect, and we kind of feel like it should be.
  • The soft-touch mid-plate of the 9780 is a shade of medium gray as opposed to black on the  Pearl White version. You know what’s even better than medium grey on a white handset? White.

Head on over to our Pearl White BlackBerry Bold 9780 hands-on gallery for some more shots.

Jonathan S. Geller
Jonathan Geller Founder, President & Editor-in-chief

Jonathan S. Geller founded Boy Genius Report, now known as BGR, in 2006. It became the biggest mobile news destination in the world by the end of 2009, and BGR was acquired by leading digital media company PMC in April 2010.

Jonathan is President of BGR Media, LLC., and Editor-in-chief of the BGR website.

What started as a side project at the age of 16, quickly transpired into 24-hour days and nights of sharing exclusive and breaking news about the mobile communications industry. BGR now reaches up to 100 million readers a month through the website, syndication partners, and additional channels.