Blackberry Bold - Review

Hey guys Jon Rettinger with jon4lakerds.com with a review and overview for you of the BlackBerry Bold for AT&T. so before into my thoughts and reactions of the device. I want to walk you through it so you can see what the device looks like. And help you give her a better sense of where it coming from when I talk about the review. So, let’s get started. Alright guys and here is the BlackBerry Bold for AT&T service. Give you guys the nice overview over here. So the front of the device looks typical blackberry it’s got send key, your BlackBerry menu button, scroll ball which serves as a d-pad and also helps with navigation for web sites. You have a back button and you have a hang off, and power off button. You’ve got a full QWERTY keyboard here and the keys do feel very nice. There's a lot of throw to them. It’s actually has a very nice feel, The keys are not actually spaced apart but there’re ridges on each key which makes it actually easy to type and move your finger to the next key I had no issue typing and I was able to. Compose messages very, very quickly and very easily. On the bottom there are your typical blackberry shortcuts for caps locks and text up and text down and you’ve got some old funct5ion keys along there for your punctuation. It’s a very typical Blackberry. Along the left side of the device you’ve got a three and a half millimeter headset jack which is very nice. A mini USB, a soft button you can use whatever you like and a micro SD expansion card slot which is actually hot swappable. Pop it right in there. On the bottom of the device there’s your microphone and you’re back release to release this fake leather backing. On the right side of the device you’ve got a volume up and down toggle, another soft key you can set what ever you like and that’s it. On top of the device you’ve got a ringer set, or a ringer button. And the back of the device is made up of this kind of fake leather stuff here as you can see it there. It does have a nice feel and does not feel slick in the hand so when you are holding it you don’t feel that you’re going to drop it. Because I know the complaints a lot of people had with the Curve that the phone is replacing. Size wise, it looks much bigger than an actually is. When you hold the device in your hand it definitely feels like it has a heft top it. So let me show you size wise compared to some device you might be familiar with here, Here it is with the iPhone and when you hold both in your hands the iPhone feels so much smaller because of its tapered edges. But what I was surprise to find is they’re almost identical sizes. Really almost identical so I guess that gets credits apple making the device feel actually smaller than it is. So one of devices most people might replace in their Bold with is the BlackBerry Curve. So here it is with the Curve. Notice the Curve has a spacing between the keys where as the Bold does not. And the Bold rally has a much larger screen. That we’ll talk about on a minute. So just for size comparison, you can see Bold is a little bit bigger. Do you see this lever on the side? It’s also a little bit thicker but not much. So other device you might be thinking about if you are with AT&T is the Samsung EPIX. So I’ll show you guys a comparison with that similar form packs QWERTY keyboards. Screens on the top although the EPIX is running Windows Mobile and touch screen just for size comparisons I’ll let you see it. So pretty close to the same size looks like the EPIX might be a little bit smaller than the BlackBerry but not much. And thickness the EPIX is just a little bit thicker. Now the Bold gets its name from its gorgeous half of VGA screen. So I turn down the brightness here as far as I could so hopefully you will be able to see the screen. I now this video on it just is but it is an absolutely gorgeous screen. One of the best I’ve seen on a mobile device. Let me zoom in so you guys can see a better look here. Okay, so are greeted with a typical BlackBerry home screen but the icons actually is a little bit different now. It’s got Curve and Neon look when you scroll across to it. It’s a very nice look that Rim has added to newer devices. The Blackberry button that same theme kind of carries out looks like Neon wiring almost free to the icons. So paramount to me for a mobile device aside from call quality is browser and the browser on the BlackBerry Bold is not as good as I was expecting it to be. So I’m going ahead to give you guys a real quick example of that. Okay so were on a local WiFi network here I’ll go ahead and load jon4lakers.com and there it is booting up. I should tell you this is a full 3G capable device meaning its fast broadband like data which is very nice. I don’t even have a sim card currently but 3G speeds are compatible as any other 3G phone I’ve seen particularly the iPhone. The Blackberry’s in the past. Noticeably the Curve and the Pearl had awful browsers. Rim was not known for their internet capabilities on their phones. They are really trying to change that with the Blackberry Bold. So I’ll give you an example of what typical internet looks like on the Bold and tell some of the positive and negatives about it. At first is definitely the best browser that research in motion also known as Rim has put out. It’s keen full of rendering full HD mail web pages which sensually means that you see the pages on your phone s you would on a computer which is very nice. And the first time a really it will be able to that. So I’ll move this over here so there's a full jon4lakers, I don’t know if you guys can be able to see that but the text is very small and the scroll bar right there actually serves a little bit of a mouse and you can move it around and you have to navigate left and right with it. And the text is way too small to read so you have to keep zooming in to view the text. As you zoom in you have to keep scrolling left and scrolling right to really see anything just a bit on the unfortunate side. Keep going down so the browser wall does display full HD web pages it’s not perfect certainly text wrapping would be a nice feature. It really do have it but it has not been perfected and I think an easier navigation and zoom method which certainly be a welcome addition to the Bold but that being said is certainly the most capable of blackberry browser to date that we search in motion has put out at least the most that I’ve seen. So certainly could those to Rim for that. Let's go back to the home screen here. It is capable of playing pictures and videos. There e is no YouTube player on it right now so that’s really a down side. The video plays fantastic on it it’s nice and smooth and looks beautiful on the screen although the video I won’t really do the screen adjust is. Its have a full built in assisted GPS, 3G and it’s a quad band Phone meaning it will work into any network in the world which is very nice. Go back to the home screen here. You can customize the background. You can set your ring tone profile ad of course you get that fantastic BlackBerry push email which is really been untouched by any other company, Microsoft’s and Apple included, Rims email is absolutely fantastic. So now that you had a chance to see the device, let me talk to you about it to let you know what I think. So first and foremost we’ll be using a mobile device if you’re concerned about call quality. And I’m very happy to admit that call quality on the Bold was fantastic. I did some regular testing on 3G and engine that works and I made a transition from 3G to edge and handled everything perfectly calls on the other end did not say they hear any hissing. I’m here and you guys seeing no background noises. Everybody said it was perfectly clear it was very nice. A transition from 3G to edge then dropped calls; user at the other end didn’t hear any static. It was a nice smooth transition which again is very nice for a 3G device. Battery life is again could always be better but as you saw me unboxing the battery of this thing is huge and I was able to get it of four hours of talk time out of it. it’s pretty nice and again I’d put it through some hard test using the internet for two to three hours a day which is quite a lot and maybe an hour and a half of phone calls it will last the entire day. It will get you through an entire day you’ll have to charge it every night which is the really most I can ask for. You go to bed and you have an outlet by you to plug the phone in. You shouldn’t have much of trouble getting it through a full day of use. Overall I really like the BlackBerry. I’ve been a real big BlackBerry fan for a while before I switch over to the iPhone. I had many room devices you can see in my first iPhone unboxing. I was replacing a BlackBerry Pearl at a Curve and 8700 before that I’ve got an 8800 so I really do like BlackBerry. This is definitely the best full QWERTY keyboard that the Rim has put out to date. I’ve not seen a BlackBerry Storm yet so I can’t comment on that. But alt least for the GSM networks this is hands down and the best BlackBerry. If you are a corporate user and you need push email and need a full keyboard and you really want reliability of Rim. The BlackBerry bold is definitely for you. If you are a heavy texter and you like a full keyboard, it’s a great way to go as well. Screen is gorgeous and it’s a great fun all around. I highly recommend it. On a one out of five scale, I’ll give the Bold four and a half only lacking because of some of the browser short comings that’s really it. So guys I’m Jon Rettinger with www.jon4lakers.com. It’s been a review of BlackBerry Bold for AT&T. be sure to check out the web site www.john4lakers.com and if you like to be a writer for It’s all user generated content be sure to hit the apply button at the bottom right hand corner and if you want some exclusive content be sure to follow me on twitter www.twitter.com/jon4lakers. I’ll put that links to both in the sidebar hope you guys enjoy it and I will see you in the next video. Bye