I’d like to say that this is the only blackberry bold review that you will ever need, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll read at least five more before you go out and buy.  If you are said consumer… kudos to you.  This review will include some of the basic things that you’ll find in every other review, but it will also include some of the things that I wished I had known prior to buying it.  And without further a due, I present to you the Blackberry Bold.

Background

Just so you, the reader, know what my review is based on, over the course of the past twelve months, I’ve carried five, count them, five phones:  a Blackberry Curve, a Nokia E65, a Treo 750, an iPhone 3G, and finally the aforementioned Blackberry 9000, better known as the Bold. That’s a lot of phones and a lot of pretty incredible features to stand up to.  A lot of my review, consequently, will be comparisons to those phones.

What I look for

There are several things that I look for when buying a phone.  Some of which come without question.  Battery life and reception are important.  Lucky for me, the Bold, of course, runs on the At&t network.  Another thing that I want in a phone is responsiveness.  It seems like a simple enough request to ask for a phone that does what I ask it to do without lagging 3-5 seconds to do it.  This was the primary reason I decided to abandon the iPhone.  While it was powerful, I found myself not responding to text messages just because it took about 5 seconds for the keyboard to show up when writing a message.  In terms of cell phone time, that’s forever, and it might as well not even show up at all.  The E65 and the Treo… same slow lagginess.  It’s like they try to pack too many features into a phone without letting the hardware catch up.  Okay enough complaining.  Moving on….

Why the Bold?

Of all the phones I’ve carried, why did I choose the Bold?  I’m glad you asked.  Out of all those phones, the first was my Blackberry Curve, and it gave me one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve ever had with a cell phone.  There were, however, a couple things that I wanted to see.  3G and Wi-fi were not a part of the mix.  Imagine my excitement when I heard of a Blackberry phone that would add both!    It’s still lacking a couple other things, but I’ll get to that.

Awesome Epic Design (screen, case, keyboard)

The Blackberry Bold is one of the best looking phones I’ve ever seen.  If you’ve read any other reviews other than this one, you would already know that the screen is absolutely stunning.  Sporting the same resolution as the iPhone but in a smaller window makes reading text, watching videos, and surfing the web look fantastic.  The new icon design on the home screen does help.  In fact, the icons alone make it worth the purchase.  Put those icons on let’s say a Curve and it would be just as sexy.  Yes, I went there.

The casing on the Bold is equally sexy.  Plastic and pleather, yes, but it truly is a solid design.  It feels good in your hand (that’s what she said).  It’s slightly too wide to fit comfortably in your palm.  But that is neither here nor there.

I have to admit that the one thing that I was probably the most skeptical about before I bought it, but yet the most happy with now that I have bought it, is the keyboard.  I held mini typing competitions between the Curve and the Bold while I was in the At&t store.  I must say that at that time, the Curve won.  But, (there’s a but) remember I carried the Curve for 6 months and I was very used to its design.  Now (there’s a now) I can honestly say that the keyboard on the Bold is hands down the best keyboard I have ever used on a phone.  It’s firm enough to have good feedback to it, yet it’s soft enough to keep it quiet (unlike the curve’s loud clicking) .  The keys are nicely spaced and if you have ever used a Blackberry with a qwerty keyboard before, then this will be very easy to get the hang of as symbol locations have not moved.

Features

Not much has changed as far as functionality from the the Curve to the Bold besides the fact that everything looks nicer.  A few small changes that I noticed.

• The alarm’s snooze can now be set to 1, 5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes
• Blackberry Messenger now has an “on the phone” and “Now Playing” presence status. (This may have been on the curve, but I don’t remember it)
• Cellular Video is now available as is streaming media (I have Orb working with mine)
• Vertical Zen and Today themes are no longer on the device out of the box.  The horizontal zen is nice, but I miss having the today screen.  Why they removed it, I don’t know.  I imagine there will be a lot of long time Blackberry users who will be ticked about this as well.  Hopefully we’ll see some more themes in the near future.
• A lot more ringtones.  All the classic obnoxious Blackberry ringtones that we have come to love are there.  But they have added many more new ones, and to be honest, they are pretty nice.
• The left convenience key by default is now kind of an alt-tab for the phone, quickly showing you running and frequently accessed applications.
• The camera now has video mode (booyakasha!)

The Bad

N/A

Just kidding; I wish it wasn’t applicable.  There are a couple gripes that I have with this new phone:

1. Still no direct support for Exchange.  I know why.  (BES is a big chunk of RIMM’s business)  However, if you really want to compete with the iPhone, OTA syncing with exchange would be a nice necessary touch.
2. Applications… or lack thereof.  Granted there are a lot of nice apps out there.  But they are all over the place and often difficult to find.  I’ve heard rumors that Blackberry is working on an App. store like iTunes , but I will believe it when I see it.  One of the things that I would certainly use, would be a nice wordpress app. like I had on my iPhone.  How am I to mini blog while on the go?
3. Threaded (chat-style) texting.  Both the Treo 750 and the iPhone include threading text messaging.  This is basically like chatting on IM on your phone.  Blackberry messenger, of course, has this, but I only know about 3 people that I can use it with.  Not everyone has a Blackberry, Blackberry!!!  Give me threaded texting!!

Comparisons

The following table is a score system to give an idea of how I rate the phones I have carried.  Some of the categories below are all or nothing (Wi-Fi, GPS, Video Capture).  Others are ratings of how well the phone performs on the given aspect, five points being the highest, one being the worst.

Clearly the iPhone loses a lot of points because it doesn’t have video capture, and it has the worst battery life of any phone I’ve ever used.  The E65 probably doesn’t belong in the list because it is the only phone here that isn’t a PDA.  But it actually did pretty well.  Email on the bold is fantastic if you have access to a Blackberry Enterprise Server or if you just use IMAP or POP3.  However, if you are like me and run Exchange, I miss the OTA syncing that my Treo, my E65 and of course my iPhone sported.  Add a contact to the address book from the phone, and when I go home, it’s already on the computer.  With the Blackberrys, I have to manually sync.  Oh well.

Bring it Home

No really.  Bring it home.  Go get one.  Don’t buy an iPhone, don’t buy a BB storm (the touch screen gets old, trust me).  The Bold is the best phone I have used thus far.  If you are thinking about buying one… don’t think… do.  I welcome any questions or comments.

Cheers.

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(Special thanks to edans for the image.)