Contributor: Godwin Bassey is a System Administrator, and an enthusiastic blogger with particular interests in concept devices, automobile tech, audio video tech, computing, gizmos & mobile devices. You can follow him on twitter – @DaTecNerd
Porsche Design’s executives use BlackBerry religiously, so when the time came for the luxury brand to consider adding smartphones to its portfolio, Research in Motion was a natural and a perfect fit. CEO Juergen Gessler got in touch with RIM to see if the two companies could collaborate on a phone that would take the best of BlackBerry and combine it with Porsche’s premium design.
One would expect a completely new device with unique features making it stand out as a premium smartphone but instead what we got in essence is a Blackberry 9900 in a different enclosure. Aside the name “P’9981” and the weird looking chassis, the BlackBerry P’ 9981 (popularly known as BB Porsche) has the same specs or clock works as the already popular 9900, yet it comes with a N300,000 extra price tag.
Reasons to buy the 9900: A much faster snap dragon mobile single core CPU (3x faster than it’s predecessors), assisted GPS, Bluetooth 2.1 support, 130g weight, a wider (very awesome) keypad layout, bigger more vivid touchscreen display, 720p video recording @ 30 frames per seconds; the list goes on.
Reasons to buy the P’9981: Well besides being a show off, you really have no proper reason to pick the P’9981 over the 9900.
Equal Specs: Both run on identical 1.2GHz CPU, 768MB ram, 2.8″ touchscreen, OS 7, 8GB internal user storage, 5 megapixel camera (no Auto Focus), same keyboard size (different keys though), compass, accelerometer, 11mm thickness, Micro SDcard slot, HSDPA (14,4 mbps), 3.5g network support, 802.11n (150mbps), NFC
Difference: the 9900 runs an assisted GPS & bluetooth 2.1 & weighs 130g while d P’9981 runs on regular GPS, bluetooth 1.2 & weighs 155g
I definitely would not pay over N300,000 extra for a phone that is exactly (in many ways) identical to what I already own, does not make any sense in the world – except you think having yourself associated with the Porsche brand for N300,000 is worth it.
BlackBerry Porsche 9981
BlackBerry Porsche 9981 and Bold 9900
