In mid July we got out hands on Blackberry Bold. Testing it in last few weeks, we find the new 3G Blackberry more of evolution than revolution, even with all new technologies involved. Most important is the 3G of course, but also tight integration of functions, that now for the first time in RIM’s history offer camera, Wi-Fi, GPS and 3G within one phone.

Blackberry 9000 was talked to be iPhone clone or iPhone answer from RIM, but we do not agree with that. I mean – one of RIM’s executives told us, that most every phone RIM creates is approximately 3 years in making. Which means that Bold was “almost done” when original Apple’s iPhone came out. Sure, we can see some similarities between phones, but fact is that Bold is a business device, while iPhone is fashion device. Anyhow, Blackberry 9000 was renamed to Bold in mid year, when RIM made official presentation of phone. Phone is still not selling in US, as RIM only unveiled full release version of OS few days ago - on august 5th. This is also the reason, why we decided to wait with this review.

Examining Bold

Bold is the most beautiful Blackberry to date, superbly stylish. On back side there is leather-like texture, which will probably open market to exchangeable backplates… Default theme and menu interfaces has been replaced with more modern look and feel. Overall phone is more elegant than past models , with curvier edges and a silver trim that complements the black casing. Icons are new as well. And user experience? Well, new stylish look does not necessary mean better user experience… To be honest – we still miss the scroll-wheel on side, that was so useful on 8700’s.

Bold builds on OS 4.6, which is one step beyond current release 4.5, which is making space in all RIM’s phones until now. Major changes are under the hood, but an average user will not notice any big changes, besides user interface lift up.

Bold is based on 624MHz Intel PXA270 CPU, and  it is faster than any other BlackBerry to date. It has 1 GB on board memory storage, and 128 MB flash for applications. Slot for microSD card moved from under battery to its own slot at left side of the unit, and now supports cards up to 16GB. WiFi supports 802.11a/b/g. There is Bluetooth 2.0 with full A2DP and mini USB port. Camera is 2.0 megapixels and offers 5x digital zoom, with flash.

Blackberry is 3G - it supports quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) and HSDPA/UMTS (850/1900/2100).

At 1500 mAh battery is twice as large as before (even physically – see pictures below) and in our experience it offers at least the same talk/standby time as 88xx and Curve (which is great, considering brighter, bigger screen and 3G).

Bold is roughly the size of 8800 (4.5 inches tall by 2.6 inches wide by half an inch deep, and it weighs 4.7 ounces; Length: 114mm, Width: 66mm, Thickness: 14mm and 133 grams). At the center of Bold is big, gorgeous screen with resolution 480×320 pixels and with transmissive TFT LCD that displays 65k colors, which we think is the best screen we have ever seen on a mobile device. It has high resolution and displays vibrant, color-rich and sharp images, and also the smallest fonts are easily read. Brightness of screen is dynamic as before – auto dim mechanism controls it based on ambient light level – but screen can be more bright as 8820, which is great for outdoors on sunny day. Since screen is on same level as border – it can easily be scratched, so watch out!

Keyboard is good, although I would say not as good as on 88xx - but very, very similar.. Keys are large, little squishy, but firm, with some spacing in between. Definitely different than plastic keys like found on Curves (but this gets down to personal preference).  Layout of keys is unchanged. After few minutes you will be able to catch up to your normal typing speed. Keyboard back-lighting is appropriate – only letters and symbols light up, not entire key like on Curve.

Sound is so, so … We don’t have any complaints with call quality as people sounded clear, but when playing music, overall quality was just average. There are grills for speakers on both sides, and when playing music at normal levels quality is good, but we want it louder, and at higher settings music gets distorted.. We still can’t forget Motorola A1000 which had great sound! The earpiece volume was sufficient, there is 3,5mm headphone jack on side.

Regarding build quality we are a little worried. The most critical part in our mind is the trackball, which feels as cheap as in Curve – compared to way better one in 88xx. Besides that Bold’s build quality looks decent. There are no creaks, and device is firm. We anticipate problems with screen and scratching, and we do not like plastic chrome-like parts. We confirm what some early reviewers pointed out - the back battery cover can be a little loose, and can easily jump out when you look at it.

Using Bold

Turning the device ON takes approximately 4 minutes, which is a long wait. Setup Wizard greeted us, and offered to uninstall languages (which you can also do later).

After phone connected to network (gsm, EDGE, 3G) we fired up browser, and immediately noticed the difference. Browser is FAST! Also, rendering of pages is completely different than on old OS's as-I-WAP-or-am-I-WEB browser, and most of pages were displayed correctly. Like in Opera Mini you see whole page, and can then zoom in to various parts - with the option to view pages in a full desktop HTML style or in a mobile version. On page navigation is now easier with trackball, which acts like a mouse cursor. Default click of trackball is zoom, or you can use with letters “i” and “o”. Whole web pages, including images were transferred in seconds, and crisp and sharp looking! RSS is supported, and browser streams video clips from web sites! Overall we would say that finally browsing without Opera is fine again, with exception of advanced content like flash, which is still unsupported…

Other applications preloaded on Bold are Messenger (which looks mostly the same, but offers some new settings and features like notifications, broadcast messages, automatic status change when you are in a voice call or playing mp3…), and Facebook app. New applications also include WordToGo, PowerPointToGo, WordMole, and few new games, most of which use new BlackBerry Game Service, that allows true multi-player games over gsm or WiFi.

Making phone calls and messaging does not look and feel any different, but with call log and phonebook we noticed smaller changes in layout.

3G connection and usage worked as promised. Even 3G and Wi-Fi at the same time proved to work without problems, although in previous OS’s this was not always the case. Funny thing is that you can’t use Wi-Fi if you turn radio off, but at least you can use it when you have no gsm signal. Maybe for all smarts onboard airplanes? What will happen when FCC allows Wi-Fi onboard planes? Few times we noticed, that while using Wi-Fi, the device will lost and then immediately regained connection to the gsm network – exactly which also happened few times on our test 8820. Whether this is a battery-saving enhancement or bug remains undiscovered.

We still miss connection manager – something that Nokia (on E61 for example) offers for ages. A mechanism that would detect all networks we can connect at any given moment, and choose the fastest one as default path. Which would mean that when we are at home within our WiFi reach, Bold would use that for browsing, and when on road, it would switch to 3G/EDGE automatically (and then again to Wi-Fi later at home)… But Wi-Fi connection wizard it easy to use and understand.

A-GPS in the Bold works as expected. We were a little skeptical about A-GPS, as full GPS in 88xx was also OK. But when trying out with included BlackBerry Maps and then Google Maps, we always got fast and accurate lock on location.

Pics and Video

Camera on Bold is only 2.0 mega pixels and offers only 5x digital zoom, which is nothing spectacular comparing to other trendy phones. There is white-led flash function, but its reach is not useful past few feet or 1 meter… Camera can also make video clips, but again – any compact camera made in last 3 years does it better. Still, still photos taken outside are OK - if you use them for MMS/screen usage they are great, if you see them on 20+-inch monitor they suck.

We tried the media player as well, and although this should now support divx as well (besides Divx 4, Div X 5 & 6 are partially supported, XviD is partially supported, H.263, H.264 and WMV3 on video and .3gp, MP3, WMA9 (.wma/.asf), WMA9 Pro/WMA 10, MIDI, AMR-NB, Professional AAC/AAC+/eAAC+ on audio side), we had problems with playback, as only audio was heard. Maybe with next OS fix?

But we should say, that watching supported videos on Bold is an awesome experience, as we did not see any blurriness that typically pest phones and small digital media players.

All iPod owners will love that Blackberry media sync now allows you to transfer music from desktop’s iTunes to Blackberry.

Connecting with PC

We used the 4.5 desktop client. We tried migrating data from our 8820 to Bold, and after backuping everything on 8820 (you know, we are experienced), we run the migration manager, and it again copied everything from 8820, and then prompted us to connect new phone. Bold was immediately recognized and migration was finished few minutes later… With a bit of skepticism we checked Bold… And – all of our data was there – and even applications! Whoa, that was super easy!

When we got new final release-grade OS from RIM, we decided to upgrade the phone – and we were very pleasantly surprised, as previous hour you needed to update the phone (with slow backup and update), now shortened to not even 10 minutes – where transfer of data was really , really fast, only the part where desktop was waiting for the device to initialize after everything was copies, took three minutes (after we finished Bold review, we synced data back to 8820 - again without a glitch! Very good RIM!)

Summary

After great anticipation, and sober realization that Bold is nothing revolutionary… 14 days later, after using it all the time, I fall in love with it. It is still complete Blackberry, so nothing changes for existing owners, but at the same time it offers so much of the new functions and features.

We have not mention HTML emails in this review, as this is now available on all Blackberry phones with OS 4.5 upgrade; but on Bold, because of bigger screen, everything looks even better, and that really does shift BlackBerry one step further on usability scale. For trendy users - we can promise that Bold will steal looks from people around you, most so because of superb display… even if it is not iPhone 3G, or just because of it…

For complete package we would like to see another camera on front side, to enable video calls, and smaller tweaks like connection priority and proper playback of divx videos. With more mature OS versions, we hope to see even increased device speed, although even now we did not experience any waiting and delays (besides one when turning device on), and even longer battery time.

 

Availability

As far as we know, BlackBerry Bold isn't available outside of Canada yet. But all carrier certifications should be nearing end, as RIM is preparing mass-market availability in September! In US, you will have to contact AT&T in Europe Vodafone… While pricing depends on the carrier, RIM is hinting at $300-$350 price range.

 

PROS: looks great, great and big screen, GPS, Wi-Fi, full QUERTY keyboard, OS 4.6 rules – HTML mail and fast browser is worth the upgrade alone, 5x faster OS upgrades and backuping of data

CONS: display can easily be scratched, trackball marble is low quality, there is no secondary camera for 3G video telephony (but do businessmen need this?)

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