Long awaited, the RIM BlackBerry Tour 9630 has finally arrived in town, and it's putting on quite a show. As the replacement to the RIM BlackBerry 8830 World Edition, the Tour offers 3G world roaming capabilities and brings a number of improvements in all three departments of design, features, and performance. While we're disappointed by the lack of Wi-Fi and other minor annoyances, the pros far outweigh the cons.

The RIM BlackBerry Tour 9630 looks like the lovechild of the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 and the RIM BlackBerry Bold, inheriting some of the best traits of the two smartphones. In terms of size, the Tour is more similar to the Curve 8900, though slightly bigger and heavier. Still, the device is much more pocketable than the Bold and the BlackBerry 8830. Plus, the extra weight gives the phone a satisfyingly solid feel, and the back of the phone also features a partial soft-touch finish for extra durability.

The Tour features the same screen as the Curve 8900. It measures 2.4-inches diagonally and shows 65,536 colors at a 480x360-pixel resolution. Images and text look crisp and vibrant, and and colors pop off the screen.

Like the Curve and Bold, the Tour features an updated user interface that's fairly straightforward and easy to navigate. Several of the menu icons look similar, so they can be hard to distinguish at a glance, but overall the user interface is very straightforward and easy to navigate. You can rearrange the icons and organize them in folders, and as always, you can customize the home screen with background images and themes.

Features
As the replacement to the RIM BlackBerry 8830 World Edition, the RIM BlackBerry Tour offers dual-mode functionality (supporting dual-band CDMA and quad-band GSM networks) for world roaming capabilities and ships with a SIM card. With this capability, the phone switches automatically between CDMA and GSM networks to offer seamless international roaming--all while keeping the same phone number. In addition to voice coverage, the BlackBerry Tour supports the 2100MHz UMTS/HSDPA band, so you can get 3G support overseas, while working on Verizon's EV-DO Rev.

Other phone features include a speakerphone, voice-activated dialing, smart dialing, conference calling, speed dial, and text and multimedia messaging. The Tour also supports Visual Voice Mail. The phone book is only limited by the available memory with room in each entry for multiple numbers, e-mail addresses, work and home address, job title, and more. For caller ID purposes, you can attach a contact photo, group ID, or a custom ringtone.