I’ve had the Blackberry Tour (9630) for a few months now, so I think I can accurately assess the thing at this point. It was the first Blackberry I’d ever seen that I actually could imagine myself using, since I’ve never really been a fan. Ben came back with it in his pocket one day, so I grabbed it and started playing with it. The Blackberry, naughty-pants. Then he blurted out the phone’s biggest immediate flaw: “It doesn’t have wi-fi, dude.”

At this point I was a bit turned off to the phone, but I persevered, inspecting every aspect of the operating system relentlessly to see if it could live up to the imaginary standards I had in my head. Surprisingly, it met most of them. The lack of wi-fi was a glaring absence, and remains one to this day, but that aside, it seemed like a relatively elegant, functional device, and a decent investment.

So I splurged (two gay jokes in three paragraphs, not bad) and spent $250 on one with my upgrade discount. The first thing I noticed about the device is how long it took to turn on, literally like 15 minutes. Once it was activated and on, it took me a while to get used to the trackball, which to this day I’m not the biggest fan of. The lock button is an essential for a phone when you’re not using a case, and in this case that button is on the top left corner of the phone, except there’s no button. You just push the top of the case in. It would seem like a great idea, except for the fact that RIM apparently has a hard time pulling it off correctly half of the time. This is where my relationship with the Tour started to take a turn.

So I noticed that my lock button was kind of hard to press in, much unlike Ben’s, which was easy to push and worked well. After a day or two of it getting even worse, I took the phone in and told them I wanted a different one. After a little insistence on my part, they complied, and I got one with a much better lock button. For a while, this phone was great. It worked like I hoped it would, and I enjoyed using it until two days ago, when I pulled it out of my pocket and found the screen all white for some reason. The phone still worked, but you couldn’t see what was going on. So I took it in, and they sent a replacement, which conveniently arrived at my house the next day. Now that I have this third Tour, guess what? Crappy lock button!

So now I’m sitting here, settling for a slightly less functional device than I should have, having paid $250 for it, waiting for yet another problem to arise, hoping it happens while I still have some sort of warranty.

But back to the review. The phone fits nicely in two hands, but is a little wide for one, unless you have large hands. The keypad is pretty great, the best I’ve ever used on a Blackberry by far. The 3.2 megapixel camera is adequate and looks pretty good, with a 2x zoom. The interface is pretty sleek, with an almost Mac-like dock of six items at the bottom of the screen that you can customize. It actually looks pretty good on a variety of custom backgrounds, too. I prefer this interface to any other I’ve seen on a Blackberry. The trackball is black, which makes the phone look more consistent, I think. The blinking light on it is red, because of Verizon, unfortunately. The speaker is decent enough. Email works well, except for the fact that when I check it on one device, it doesn’t get marked read on the other. That’s a gripe I have. Call quality is actually pretty clear, and I love how loud the speakerphone gets, that’s a huge plus. Texting is pretty simple and streamlined. The browser doesn’t compare to an iPhone browser, but is adequate enough to be used on a regular basis. As I said before, there’s no wi-fi so you’re always on Verizon’s EV-DO network, which I assume is why there’s a required $30 unlimited data plan. The 480×360 display is definitely nice. It’s a pretty good phone with just a few minor quirks. For example, sometimes I’ll hit a key to bring up a contact, then try to go to sms but before I can it just goes to the recent calls screen, as if I’d never hit the letter in the first place, but rather the send button. Just little things like that build up and detract from the quality of the phone. I guess it’s worth it if you get a good warranty.