Blackberry Bold 9000
November 26th 2008 14:01
Category: Mobile Phones
The AT&T BlackBerry Bold is probably the slickest BlackBerry ever with it’s industrial design, that precedes the Javelin (the new Curve that will be released later in 2009). The Blackberry Bold extends off of the Curve and the 8800 series Blackberry. It just has features that are just much more elegant than the Curve.
The Bold has the full QWERTY keyboard with individual keys (IE there is no gap between each key). The keyboard is more usable than any other Blackberry on the market with the spaced out keys, and RIM has made the keys soft and quiet without being squishy.
There are four main control buttons- Send, End, Back, and to activate the BlackBerry menu- that are all oversized to be more user friendly; although, it does make the use of the trackball harder to use. The trackball actually sits a little higher up, so it does give more traction, but with the larger keys it can be a little hard to get accurate at times.
The Bold’s screen is awesome, clear, and crisp. There is a relatively low level of brightness, but there are plenty of pixels behind the 2.25 inch screen, especially as the higher pixel density of 240ppi packs a big punch. The resolution is 480x360 and features larger icons.
The icons are larger, but they will take a bit of getting used to as they are more stylized than the regular Blackberry icons. They are essentially squares with a flat, 2D outline with just a dab of color.
There is slight transparency between menus, when you have multiple menus open. But, the menus are overall much cleaner and easier to read when at a glance.
The Bold is pre-packed with BrickBreaker, Soduku, and Solitaire, as well as 2 other online games with multiplayer modes that allow you to play against other Bold users.
You can set your own wallpaper.
Now, as for email, it’s still available, but now it’s got limited HTML features such as bold, italics, and underline. You may have trouble downloading email images, but they are there and available.
Another cool feature is that the Blackberry Bold offers users to open and read Word, Excel and PowerPoint in Microsoft Office formats via your memory card, but you still can’t view PDF or RTF files unless it’s an email attachment. And, don’t worry the screen for email attachments is much easier to read than before.
You can even create Office documents, but you’ll have to upgrade to the “professional edition’ Docs to Go for about $70.
The web browser also got a makeover with richer rendering of web pages with zoom. Although zooming can be a bit uneven, the web page will resize itself to the screen.
The Bold supports AVI and MPEG-4 formats for video playback, as well as DivX and XviD codecs, along with WMV and 3GP clips. Although, you may encounter problems and inconsistencies with DivX.
The little speakers on the Bold is still more than sufficient for headphones, as it has a 3.5mm audio jack or you can just use the bundled ‘Premium’ stereo headset which includes hands-free microphone. And, don’t forget that the Bold features a radio as well as the ability for playlist and download uploads.
You can record videoclips with the Camera at 480x320 resolution or on MMS Mode with 176x144 res. You can create your own playlist as well as skip and go to previous songs in your tracks.
Although, the camera isn’t the most impressive thing at 2.0MP, the Blackberry Bold does include a camera the supports video and still shots with a max resolution of 1600x1200. There is a 5x zoom, but it can be hard to get it to move past 3x. You can geotag your photos and write them to memory with ease.
Picture taken with the Bold
The Bold comes with 3G speed and multimedia, and a 624MHz XScale processor, and you can still add your microSD chip.
There’s no lag worthy to mention when using the Bold, and video play smooth without skipping. The Bold is a pretty fast and peppy cell phone, generally speaking with faster downloading and Web browsing times with its Wi-Fi connection.
You will notice the spinning hourglass every now and then, but it doesn’t pop up much.
The voice quality when using the phone is clear and crisp, and you still have mute, speakerphone, and other call adjustments.
There should be plenty of software updates for the Bold within the near future, so when it’s time for your next cell phone upgrade, definitely consider the Blackberry Bold if you are with Cingular/AT&T.
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Whitney
