Blackberry Tour 9630 Review: Impressive Global Support, Disappointing Lack Of Wi-Fi

It's a little hard to justify a high-end phone without Wi-Fi support.  That's exactly what RIM expects us to do with the top-of-the-line Blackberry Tour 9630, which offers plenty of talents to more than make up for it.

The Tour's main selling point is its world-roaming capabilities (dual-band CDMA and quad-band GSM), automatically switching between networks for seamless international use.  Doing regular travel phones better, it also supports both Verizon's EV-DO Rev. A stateside and 2100MHz UMTS/HSDPA band elsewhere in the world for internet connectivity.  Overall, the handset supports voice coverage in 220 countries along with wireless data in 175, making for a phone you can practically use anywhere you end up.  You will pay for international roaming rates, though, so be sure to arm yourself with knowledge of the charges wherever you're traveling before indulging yourself.

Apart from the multi-country support, the Tour offers a good deal of niceties for smartphone users of all shapes and sizes.  Design borrows on the best features of both the Bold and the Curve 8900, turning out a good-looking and very pocketable phone.

It features a relatively small 2.4-inch LCD that offers a very good 480 x 360 resolution.  Display is very crisp and clear, with bright colors.  Keyboard is a 35-key QWERTY that's similar to the one found on the Bold, which means it's a spacious and ample-sized panel that responds very well to regular use.

As a phone, the Tour offers pristine calls with very loud volume and a natural-sounding tone.  Messaging, of course, is a high-point, offering Blackberry's typical suite of features that include SMS, MMS, visual voice mail (extra costs), multiple emails (pretty much every service you can imagine) and IM.  The email, by the way, comes with an attachment viewer that offers support for a wide range of file formats.

While the lack of Wi-Fi is definitely a disappointment (essentially forcing you to pay for data access every time you use it), it does get plenty of other capabilities.  For instance, it supports tethering as a wireless modem for your computer, although that option requires a separate data plan purchase as well.

Other specs include a full HTML browser, stereo Bluetooth, aGPS, a considerably versatile media player and a 3.2 megapixel camera (with image stabilization).  Implementation for the aforementioned features is pretty impressive, definitely pitting it as a worthy competitor among handsets with similar offerings.  By the way, Verizon will also offer a camera-less version, which will probably be a tad cheaper, if you don't have much use for in-camera optics (I personally don't and would appreciate that option for all phones, actually).

If you are frequently on-the-go and are in search of a single phone to carry around, the Blackberry Tour 9630 is a great option, working in pretty much every country in the civilized world.  Of course, the lack of Wi-Fi support may be a deal-breaker, especially if you like to avoid expensive data costs when traveling.  Still, there are very few phones that can match its balance of roaming compatibilities and professional feature set that make it a compelling choice for any serious traveler.