Now, I’m not going to complete the Star Trek line, but I’m glad I had an opportunity to use it.

AT&T sent me a Blackberry Bold to review… so let’s get on with it.

Now, this is just the second Blackberry phone I’ve ever used.  The first being the Storm.  The Storm’s novelty was that it was providing a Blackberry-like keyboard on a touchscreen.  Well the Bold’s novelty is that it provides a Blackberry-like keyboard that’s the best I’ve ever typed on.

A finer typing experience, I have not seen in a mobile phone. (Image courtesy: www.blackberry.com)

The Keyboard

I’m not the first, and I dare say I won’t be the last to gush about the keyboard. There is substance to the buttons, and after getting used to the phone you can get fairly speedy.  Being a Blackberry, the Bold should be a champion of texting, emailing and text input in general and it is.  It’s got the full QWERTY keyboard, with shift and alternate keys to change your input.  One of the bloggers at www.crunchgear.com declared it the best keyboard ever.  I can’t say that with certainty, seeing as I have not tested nearly as many phones as him.  What I can say though is the Blackberry Bold has the best keyboard I’ve ever used. It’s better than the touchscreen on my personal phone and I dare say it’s better than the input on the Blackberry Storm.

The Scroll Wheel

The Bold, like other non-Storm Blackberry phones, uses a scroll wheel as its cursor.  This took some getting used to.  Once acclimated, I actually became a fan in almost every respect.  Navigating menus, scrolling through text, playing games were all high points.  Navigating the web was not.

The Browser

The Bold suffers from the same malaise as every other phone I’ve encountered with respect to the web.  It’s not the iPhone.  The Blackberry browser is capable.  It’s better than a lot of other mobile browsers on a lot of other phones.  It utilizes the scroll wheel fantastically.  It’s still not mobile Safari.  The bar has been set high, so high that no other mobile phone browser has been able to reach it.  That’s not to say the browser is bad. Like I said, it’s pretty capable, just not the best.  It does share a very excellent feature with the iPhone, a WiFi connection.  Taking the browsing experience off of the cell network and on to your home (or work) network just provides for a faster (and ultimately better) experience.
Email

The Bold functions like a Blackberry should.  If you have multiple email addresses that you need to be accessing at all times, that’s its strong suit.  There’s a fairly painless setup feature that guides you through the personal email setup.

Other

There are also guides to help you setup the phone itself, including language, date and time, navigation, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and importing SIM contacts.

The camera is 2.0MP with a flash.  It’s not as great a shot as the Blackberry Storm, but it’s still fairly capable and having the flash is nice.  You can also record videos and send MMS messages.

Another high point for the Bold is its incredible boot times.  I noticed this while reviewing the Storm.  Both phones go from off to on faster than any other I’ve used.

In terms of games, and downloadable programs, this is no App Store like the iPhone has.  But, some games are better without a touchscreen, namely Tetris.  It’s not scroll wheel compatible, which would have been nice, but I’d rather have a button to push when dropping blocks.

The media player is just okay.  The phone has a microSD slot, meaning you can load it up with music and videos.  While the interface isn’t exactly stellar, it is certainly capable.  You’ll be able to play music and videos, you just won’t want to abandon your iPod.

Pros:
-Great for text input
-Scroll wheel great for menus
-Some games are better without a touchscreen
-Wi-Fi
-Camera w/flash
-Phone boot times
-MMS messaging

Cons:
-Browser is not mobile Safari
-App store is not iPhone level

Just Okay:
-Media player

Untested:
-GPS navigation
-Photo geotagging (Though it looks like a very cool feature)

Pricing:

The Bold has a base price of $549.99 but can be had for less ($299.99) if you sign a contract and mail in the rebates.

For more detailed information on checkout the product listing on AT&T’s page.

Have questions about something? Post a comment or email me at matt(dot)schuler(at)woodtv(dot)com. And for more, shorter updates, check out my Twitter by clicking on twitter.com/mattschuler.