I originally had a Bold 9700, but after a year of heavy usage, being a typical teenager, and a broken screen, it was finally time to send it away. I wasn't expecting to get the old model as a replacement, as the 9780 had already been released, but I was very pleased to see it arrive in the post, after all, it is a new phone!

As many reviewers would agree, there isn't much difference to this phone in comparison with its predecessor, apart from a better camera (5.0 M.P compared with 3.2 M.P), double the onboard memory and the new OS already installed onto it. I never managed to get the new OS onto my old phone so I was glad to finally experience it on this one, the set up is different and looks far more manageable, with an easy to scroll menu so that everything on the phone can be found easily, including the ever so convenient 'frequent' option which means that any applications you would like to visit regularly are easy to reach. In my opinion, Blackberry phones, and especially the Bold lets you access all your messages as quickly as possible.

On the whole, everything works relatively fast, however I find that app world can crash, especially when trying to install multiple updates at once. Another issue, which I had with the other phone as well, is the Facebook application's failure to send notifications, often when the cache is deemed to be 'full' and this causes me to have to reboot my phone, but this could be blamed more on the application rather than the phone alone.

Even though the camera is more powerful, the pictures are taken almost instantly, especially without a flash, this may appear as a benefit to show the actual speed of the phone, but a lot of the times the pictures end up blurry and need repeated attempts.

The last actual issue is rarely the 3G service is poor, but this has only happened a few nights and is more of a network problem (I am on three mobile), however, the problems I have highlighted seem typical to any blackberry, and they are only a few compared to the benefits they give. The media players all work very well, and its very quick to access the music library.

In general, the 9780 is a very good smartphone, especially for the price, and honestly there isn't much better on the market yet without a larger price hike!