It’s been a long time since I last wrote anything for BerryTastic, but when I finally got my hands on the new BlackBerry Bold 9700, I just had to tell you about it.

The BlackBerry Bold was probably my favourite of all BlackBerry devices when it dropped last year, and saw me travel a round trip of 250 miles to Edinburgh just to have one weeks before my local stores stocked it.

It’ll come as no surprise to you that, once again, I went on a mission to get my hands on the new Bold, this time going over 400 miles round trip to Birmingham. You know it has to be done.

My carrier is T-Mobile UK, and the only store in my area with a sniff of stock claimed to have “issues” hence the drastic measures. So I take the four hour trip to Birmingham only to suffer at the hands of my credit card company who had foolishly failed to activate my new credit card.

No security check. No phone. Major disappointment

Frustrated I tried to call the company only for them to say it’ll take 24 hours to resolve. The following day being a Sunday, there was no chance I could repeat the journey. Sunday morning I called my local store with the stock issues only to discover there was no stock after all.

Credit card issue resolved and without the time on a Monday to travel another 400 miles, I hit the T-Mobile website, job done in a little under five minutes. Initial e-mail confirmation, and a call back later that afternoon to confirm my order had been successful, and I’d receive my phone between 8am and 1pm the next day.

Tuesday morning I was like the child on their birthday waiting to get their presents, I sat in the lounge with a coffee waiting, hoping I wouldn’t have to sit there for five hours. Lo and behold, just 13 minutes into my wait, a friendly knock at the door, and a parcel for me. I couldn’t sign for it quick enough and run to my desk to unwrap it and get to the good stuff.

Different carriers offer different goodies in the box. Here’s what I received:  A very shiny new BlackBerry Bold 9700 sat in the middle of the box in all its glory.

Underneath that, came a mains charger with the usual different regional plugs (note that the charger is different to the old Bold, in following the micro format as seen on other recent releases), wired headphones, a micro-USB cable (again, your old USB cable is no good here, unless you get a convertor), an MS-1 battery, a leather pouch – complete with holes for cables, a new T-Mobile SIM card, and some free satnav trial, oh and a 2GB memory card already in it.

So, the next steps are obvious. Battery door off, detach and insert SIM, insert battery, replace battery door, GO, GO, GO! But no, it did take me about 20 seconds to get the hang of the new battery door cover.

Unlike previous models (I didn’t bother picking up the 8900 or Storm models), there are no buttons to press to release the door, you have to assert pressure to the sides and push towards the bottom of the phone to remove the door. Disaster averted.

As ever, T-Mobile UK’s preloaded themes are rather lame. There is their branded Precision theme, and the Precision Zen theme (they really aren’t worth taking shots of, just to punish you). And that’s it. Basic, does the job, but far from impressive.

I was, however, impressed with the new boot up screen which is a sleek black with “BlackBerry” logo and a status bar, followed by the T-Mobile logo, and then BANG! we’re in (screenshots below).

The T-Mobile UK Bold 9700 comes with OS 5.0.0.321 (Platform 5.1.0.90) already installed (screenshot below). So all that waiting when running OS 4.6, all the hours of playing with leaked versions of OS 5.0 and BBM 5.0 is over. OS 5.0 and BBM 5.0 are here, officially!

BBM 5.0 many of you will have seen before. And having had a problem with my Bold 9000 for so long, which left many life-depending features unusable, it has been great to have BBM back, and with so many amazing new options and tweaks you can make to everything from styling, back up and restore, music, barcodes, group barcodes, and the rest.

It just makes the BBM you’ve always loved, even better! See below for some screenshots for those of you who perhaps haven’t seen anything of BBM 5.0’s new layout. (Yes, feel free to add me on BBM!)

There are a number of other things I could show you, but that’s maybe for later. I don’t want to spoil everything for anyone picking this up on upgrade in the coming days and weeks.

So, BBM looks awesome. Works awesome, and no doubt will take over my life again very soon, but hey, that’s a good thing, right?!

Custom ringtones and alerts? Available from the Contact Menu within your Address Book:

You’re going to find, as I did, that a few options have been moved around, and mostly for the better. Easier to find, easier to edit! There are certainly way too many for me to go into here, and consider I’ve had the phone less than 24 hours, and not really explored everything thoroughly yet, although I intend to over the next few days.

Reports from other sources say that battery life is much improved over the problems with the Bold 9000, and I cannot confirm or deny that just yet on this OS with this carrier, but rest assured I will be pushing it in the next few days to find out.

My overall first impressions of the Bold 9700 are very positive. Compared to the Bold 9000 it’s more compact, and is comparable in size to the Curve 8900, but has the very added benefit over the Curve with more memory, better processor, and of course 3G, and if the battery life really as good as they’re saying, then it’s a winner.

The camera is also a very welcome upgrade at 3.15MP (3.2), although with Sony Ericsson releasing the Satio with a resolution of 12MP, and Samsung pushing similar, it really baffles me why RIM haven’t pushed to work in a 5MP camera on their high end handsets – something that has been standard now on most mid to high end phones for years now.

Sure, a camera isn’t the most important feature of your BlackBerry, but it’s a very welcome addition, and would certainly remove the need to bring along a separate digital camera.

Elsewhere, the keypad will take a little getting used to if you’ve been working the 9000 for the last year, and the trackpad is so brilliant, it makes me wonder why we’ve been using trackballs for the last few years. Again, it will take some getting used to as it is a lot more responsive than the ball.

Oh, and for those who like to tether or access Wi-Fi, it’s the same as before.

If you’re coming to the end of your contract with older models, there is no choice for you for a new BlackBerry, it has to be the Bold 9700. If you have the 9000, you may have longer to wait (and something better may come along during that time), but you’d be mad not to try and get your hands on this (just steal your mate’s, as long as it’s not mine)!

Once I’ve had the chance to play around with other features, I’ll report back anything else I find out.