Blackberry 9720 vs Lenovo S890: Is Blackberry Still Living in The Past?

While Apple and Google are perfecting their already wonderful new mobile operating systems, Blackberry has chosen to live in the past by announcing its Blackberry 9720 smartphone which runs on an obsolete Blackberry 7 OS. While consumer's are still skeptical about the Canadian phone maker's more modern BB 10 OS, which comes pre-loaded on the Z10 and Q10, the company somehow believes that the 9720 with BB OS 7 is still a relevant product in the Indian smartphone market.

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Blackberry has officially announced the 9720 handset in India for Rs. 15,990. It will be available from September 14th onwards. Our question is simple, how does it compare to other smartphones in that price bracket? After taking a stab into the dark, we came up with the humble Lenovo IdeaPhone S890 that retails at Rs. 14899.

Form Factor

Staring with its form factor, the BB 9720's design has borrowed the best aspects from previous Bold and Curve models and will be available in black, blue, pink, purple and white. As for the Lenovo S890, its an all plastic body and the device stays in line with the design scheme see in most IdeaPhones, with the exception of the all metal K900. So both devices offer decent build quality despite all-plastic bodies.

Display

When it comes to display, the S890 has a 5-inch IPS LCD capacitative touch screen Display (540 x 960 Pixels). It might not be the best looking screen out there, but its definitely bigger and better than the 2.8-inch (480×360 pixels) touchscreen display on the 9720. We're surprised that Blackberry still thinks that it can get away with such a mediocre, lackluster display at this price point.

Performance

The 9720 uses a 806MHz Tavor MG1 processor along with 512MB of RAM, which is decent for the functionality and capability. The Lenovo, however, goes on to use a 1.2 Cortex A9, Dual Core and 1GB of RAM, again far ahead of the Blackberry.

Camera

For imaging, the 9720 calls upon a 5-megapixel EDOF (Extended Depth of Field) rear camera with Image stabilization and 4X digital zoom, surprisingly powerful when compared to previous handsets in the BB OS 7 family. However, it isn't enough to take on the Lenovo, which goes on to use a 8 MP, 3264 x 2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash in the rear and a VGA camera in the front for video chats.

Battery and more

Moving onto battery backup, you're guessing that the Blackberry wins, right? Well, turn data on and you can squeeze out only one and a half days of battery life. The Lenovo, like most other smartphones, manages to last an entire day, which is good in comparison since it utilizes powerful hardware. Also, talking data, Blackberry users will have to shell out Rs.400 a month for a simple data plan that allows them to use Whats App and other apps over their phones. This is somewhat exorbitant when compared to other smaretphones, since they don't have such steep pricing for data.

Bottom Line

All said and done, this comparison proves that Blackberry is refusing to move on form its glorious past and tend to the actual needs of the Indian smartphone market. Yes, the BB OS7 devices have their advantages, are good for a corporate emails and a few other things. But apps have become a vital part of our digital lives and Blackberry handsets, despite all their attempts, cannot deliver in that department, allowing them to come off as obsolete. Moreover, Blackberry fans have been complaining about how the company has failed to bring out any new devices in the sub-20,000 price range.

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