REVIEW: BLACKBERRY BOLD 9000

It was written by Azif (my darling dear..)

Well after 7 months of usage, here it is my personal review of Blackberry Bold 9000, a simple one.

Overview
I’m too lazy to copy and paste. Please go here.

What I like?
Body is quite bulky but it fits my palm easily so no problem bout that. ☺ Buttons’ size is decent enough to use, luckily I have normal sized fingers. The best thing is the leather finish on the back, giving it luxury, stylish touch.

Audio
The audio is okay, although not at the same par as SE or Nokia. Someone did compare the sound quality between Bold and E71, and the latter is better.

Display
The Bold screen is absolutely the best display on smartphone yet. It is very vivid, bright and clear, even under bright sunlight. The display also dims automatically according to environment brightness.

Camera
Decent enough just to take picture but the quality is okay for daylight outdoor. Worse, noise is more visible in low light condition.

Internet
I haven’t installed any other browser other than the pre-installed Internet Browser. Currently that is the browser that I use, and I’m satisfied with it. Maybe I will try using Opera after this.
The only thing that bothers is the use of trackball for scrolling. Sometimes it requires a lot of scrolling through a large page. However u can use space bar as a secondary method to scroll up and down.

Applications
Phone is bundled with apps like Document To Go (WordToGo, SheetToGo, SlideshowToGo, PDFToGo) enabling you to open DOC, XLS, PPT and PDF files from emails etc.
There’s a lot of apps that can installed but I just installed Facebook 1.6, Google Talk, YM. No Fring for Berry.

GPS
GPS is built in preloaded with BB Maps. I prefer using Google Maps for GPS navigation, really helpful if you are lost or have no sense of direction (me sometimes lol). And as usual, using GPS drain the battery life fast.

Holster
The bundled holster is okay but quite hard to use, you have to use one hand to hold the holster and the other to pinch the phone out. Just imagine when you were eating (and not using the cutlery) and the phone rang, quite a pickle isn’t it?

Alert
There are 3 ways to personalize your alert (for calls, message, email etc); Tone, Vibrate or Vibrate+Tone. If you choose Vibrate+Tone, then the phone will vibrate first (you can choose up to 3 vibrates), then the ring tone will come in. Means that when the phone started ringing, you are already late for picking up the phone and somebody on the other line is thinking to put down the phone already. I miss the time when the phone vibrate and ring at the same time ☺

No video call.

To sum up
Despite all the flaws that I bitch about above, this is a great smartphone. From display, keyboard, UI, sound, etc; it’s all good. My best phone ever. I give it 8 over 10. ☺

That’s it. I did say simple rite?

I found quite interesting comparison of Bold and IPhone 3G here and also here