BlackBerry Bold Review

Those of us in the US have impatiently waited for the BlackBerry Bold to arrive on AT&T. Released a few months earlier in various overseas markets, the AT&T-branded version, tuned for AT&T’s 3G network, is finally here. What’s so special about the Bold? It’s the first BlackBerry with 3G HSDPA and a widescreen 480 x 320 display (same resolution as the iPhone, but the display is smaller). The Bold has both WiFi and a GPS, a rare treat given that RIM usually includes one or the other in their phones, but rarely both.

Indeed the Bold’s 2.6″ 65,000 color display looks absolutely fantastic: it’s sharp, bright, colorful and one of the nicest we’ve seen. It manages to look great outdoors in sunlight too, an easier feat for a non-touchscreen phone but we appreciate it nonetheless. Photos and videos look wonderful and text is sharp and easy to read, even at small font sizes.

This is a fast ‘Berry thanks to its 624MHz CPU, and there’s nearly a gig of storage built in. We rarely encountered slow-downs, and the phone was very stable– impressive given that this is the first release of the 4.6 OS on AT&T.

Display

• Half VGA resolution 480 x 320 pixel color display
• Transmissive TFT LCD
• Font size (user selectable)
• Backlighting
• Light sensing screen
• Displays over 65,000 colors

Camera & Video Recording

• Camera: 2.0 MP camera (JPEG encoding) with flash, 3x digital zoom
• Video Camera: Depending on the amount of built-in memory available for use, a third-party microSD card may need to be properly inserted into the BlackBerry smartphone to enable the video recording feature

Data Input & Navigation

• Trackball
• QWERTY keyboard
• Keyboard backlighting

2 Responses to “BlackBerry Bold Review”

1. Viji Rajasundram says:

   May 12, 2009 at 10:43 am

   I have been using the Bold for awhile now. It is really terrific. Upgraded from the Curve. While the Curve was pretty dependable and had an excellent battery life, the Bold does not fair too badly. I get usually a day and a half of batter life ( never more ) . But the one issue that nags the phone is the ‘auto’ reboot it does once in a way. Have not figured out the pattern yet - but all of a suddent I look at it and it is rebooting - and not when I am using it either. It was just sitting there on the table and did that all by its lonesome. Anyway, how do I find out if there is a new version of the OS out for this.
   Mine is 4.6.0.1.90 on platform 4.0.0.172
   Is this old ?

   But I still love the phone - cos it really does improve productivity immeasurably. My favourite tools are WorldMate Live and BlackBerry Messenger
   Viji

   P.S. Your links for Wallpapers for the Bold are all broken. Thought you may like to know.
2. BlackBerry says:

   May 12, 2009 at 10:51 am

   Thanks for the tip about the broken links. We just moved from a windows to a linux server (linux servers are case-sensitive). All should be repaired now!