The NEW Blackberry Bold 9000 - This Is The Start Of My Crackberry Addiction!

Well I guess it's more like "MY NEW Blackberry Bold 9000" because it's been out for a little while :) None the less it's new for me and deserves a review. To start, I love having a qwerty keyboard with real buttons to be able to write emails and SMS messages. That is something I was convinced I would like before the purchase because it is so much faster than a phone keypad or a touch screen and having the feeling of buttons gives it another sense to work with which is nice. The other thing that I like is the speed of the device, much faster than I am used to. I have played around with my brother's Blackberry 7130, a friend's Pearl, a Curve 8300 at work and none have them have amazed with their speed, but the Bold seems much faster.

I am new to the Blackberry game but not new to smart phones. Before this I had an HTC Touch which I liked a lot at first but there were some issues that really got under my skin. The first issue was that the touch screen was not perfect. It did very well but on occasion it would miss a keystroke which caused me to not trust the input and made typing much slower. The other issue was that it was just too slow to run Windows Mobile well. If you don't want to do too many things one after the other then it isn't too bad, but on more than one occasion I would be writing an email and then try to make a call and going from the mail app to the phone app was 'head banging' slow.

The Blackberry has solved both these problems for me. To be honest the only 2 real contenders for me were the Bold and the iPhone. I am really into Apple products these days for the 'it just works' factor and the integrated feel, but the iPhone is a touch screen. I remember having a conversation about my touch screen woes with my HTC. My buddy convinced me to check out a YouTube video about the Storm and not a minute into the video and the person made a typo because of a missed keystroke. I have seen videos on YouTube about the iPhone as well and seen similar results. For some reason I am more frustrated at the device if it misses the keystroke than if I make a typo myself.

The Bold is quite feature rich. I doesn't have as much 'WOW' factor as does the iPhone but it does what it is designed to do quite well. Blackberry lists the Bold's key features as follows:
* Camera (2.0 MP)
* Built-in GPS
* Media Player
* Video Recording
* BlackBerry® Maps
* Wireless Email
* Organizer
* Browser
* Phone
* Corporate Data Access
* SMS/MMS
* Wi-Fi® support

I have taken some pictures and I would say that they are average. They picture quality isn't great but it is acceptable. The light helps in low light situations and is turned on automatically when needed.

The GPS doesn't do much for me in all honesty. I have a GPS for my car where I would need it most (TomTom 720) and it would always do a better job as it is designed to work in the car.

The media player again isn't very important to me. I have played with it a bit and it looks similar to what I had on the HTC and to what I have seen on other current phones. Most of us will use an iPod for these features.

Video recording - quality isn't different from the still image function. The screen is pretty quick to refresh so the image is quite smooth.

Blackberry Maps ties into the GPS function. I have played with this but won't have a use for it unless I am out of town and on foot where my TomTom wouldn't be practical. If in that situation I would find this feature handy I am sure.

Wireless email... to me there is no question that Blackberry does this well. I am not using it with a BES server and all I needed was my email address and password (hosted my Google) and it figured out the rest. It just works -> AWESOME! The action of writing an email is all the more easy with the integrated Qwerty keyboard.

Organizer is a standard calendar. All phones have a similar problem displaying the whole week on the screen because they are too small, that's just physics. The features are standard but it would be nice to sync with my Google calendar automatically out of the box. I ended up doing this with a 3rd part app and that made me happy :)

They have outdone themselves with the browser on the Bold. It is able to display an entire website (not mobile version) quite well and then allows you to zoom in before clicking on links so they are more readable. Using the small scroll button in the middle which works like a trackball makes it even better.

Phone... uuh yes. Easy to use and has great reception. I work in a office build in the basement (why do they always put IT there?) and not many phones work in the center of the building. The Bold worked on a conversation from one end to the other yesterday.

Corporate data access... still don't use a BES :|

The SMS/MMS is tied into the email if you wish and that's how I set it up. All messages come into the same single box and it makes communications seamless. The Qwerty keyboard helps here a lot as it is quick and accurate.

Wi-Fi Support is another great feature. At home and at work I set up my Wi-Fi connection so my data usage is kept to a minimum over 3G. 3G is nice to have when you need it but Wi-Fi is great due to it's cost savings and speed. Another thing to note is the little effect is has on the battery. I noticed with my HTC that the battery would die quickly with Wi-Fi turned on. Doesn't seem to affect the Bold all that much.

So in the end I am very happy with this new purchase. It feels more like a phone that can do a hundred other things than a unit that does 100 things one of which is make phone calls. And to top it off I think it's a good looking unit :)



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