After recently getting the Blackberry Bold I thought I'd share my thoughts about it.

Looking at the phone from the outside it certainly looks very good. On the front you are presented with a full QWERTY keyboard which is sized very nicely and makes writing a doodle. Above that are the standard call, end call, menu and back buttons. In between these buttons is the trackball that you use to manoeuvre your way around the phone. This is very easy to use and works well. Simply scroll which ever way you need to in order to reach your desired destination and click the ball to choose the option. The screen is one of the most delightful things about the BB however, it is big, it is bright, and it is vibrant. Turning the phone round and looking at the back, the back cover is made of leather which makes it feel very nice indeed. The leather back also covers the 2 Megapixel camera.

Email & Browser

Onto the internet browser next. I was very impressed with this. I had heard a few bad things about the browser but found none of them to be true. The browser is very easy to use with your homepage being like a general page with a space to type a specific address, a search bar, a list of your favourites and a list of your recent history. It has essentially got everything that you may need. When you get onto your specific page then the page is very often zoomed out quite far and you need to use the specific zoom in and zoom out keys ("I" and "O" respectively). The zoom function is good but it can be a bit frustrating at times having to zoom at the present amounts. Navigation of a webpage is done using the trackball and is also very easy. As with a normal PC, all the keyboard shortcuts seem to apply, such as pressing backspace to go back, and these all make browsing the internet a real doodle. It is worth mentioning that the browser doesn't actually support flash animations which can sometimes be a hindrance.

The applications list for the BB just goes on and on. I guess the first place to start would be with the standard applications. For the business minded out there, the BB includes things like WordToGo and PwerpointToGo which are programs which lets you open and edit specific items on these programs. Of course there are also the usual list of applications such as calendar, alarm clock, calculator and code memo. As well as these, the BB also comes with its own map system called Blackberry Maps. This is a fairly standard map system which tells you where you are and gives you directions to a specific destination if required. While it was fairly simple, I found that Blackberry Maps was a bit of a pain to use and could be quite slow at times to find your location. There is also the ability to download specific applications to use online. These include such things as Windows Messenger, Facebook for Blackberry and Google Maps.

I'll be the first to admit that I was quite shocked at the media capabilities of the BB. I was expecting it to be a fairly average but was pleasantly surprised. The BB is able to play movies and music and it does it well. I put a few DivX videos on the BB to try it out and it came out well. Picture quality was very good and it sounded good aswell. Apparently certain versions of DivX videos are not fully supported but I found there to be no such problems.

The phone also comes with 1GB of internal memory should you should have plenty of space for your favourite songs

I had heard lots of good things about the battery of the BB before I got it so was looking forward to trying this baby out! I was, however, quite disappointed at it. I received the phone at around 1pm and it already had some charge. I decided to charge it full though and at about 4pm it was all done. After the usual playing around and experimenting that you do with a new phone as well as having 3G and Wi-Fi constantly on I found that the battery was at less than 15% after only 24 hours. Needless to say I was not happy and after a fair bit of research on the net, found that by lowering screen brightness, turning Wi-Fi off, and only using 2G I managed to get the battery to last closer to about 50 hours. Bear in mind that I only make about an hours worth of calls each day and send no more than about 10 emails and 10 texts a day. One very good feature was that the BB puts itself into power saving mode as the battery gets very low in order to give you just a little bit longer before you need to get to a charger. As I said I was disappointed by the battery, why have such features as 3G and Wi-Fi if it means charging the phone every day?

As previously mentioned, the camera is an uninspiring 2 Megapixels. While this may seem to be quite low at a time when most other phones are ranging from camera's with a minimum of 3 Megapixels ranging all the way upto 8 Megapixels, the camera on the BB is sufficient to put it nicely. Don't get me wrong, it takes a good picture but you'd hope for something a little bit better considering what it is up against in the market.

No problems to report here. I found that calls very crystal clear even when I was in busy areas. Apparently the microphone is also very good as the phone I was speaking to all had no trouble hearing me.

As you would expect the phone also supports mp3 ringtones and message tones. These are all put onto the phone using the provided software and connecting it up via USB. The USB cable is also used as a charging device which can come in very handy.
One thing that did annoy me is the fact that there is no way to make the device ring and vibrate at the same time. You have the option to vibrate then ring, or just ring of just vibrate but the two together is not possible. Surely nowadays this kind of thing should be one of the more basic features especially on a handset of this calibre?
Reliability was never an issue with the phone. Not once did it freeze or cause any kind of problem in that sense. The one frustrating feature was that startup would take a good couple of minutes before you could do anything. I have been told though that "real" Blackberry users don't ever turn their Blackberry off. Clearly I'm not a "real" user!

So, all in all it is a very good phone. So would you be surprised to hear that after only a week of use I sent the phone back? Well so am I to be honest as there is no good reason for it. It looks good and it works well so why on earth would I send it back you may ask? Simple, there was something about it that wasn't right. Maybe it was the fact that this is ultimately a business phone that is trying to force its way into a market which it has previously not ventured into, or maybe it was just that I felt that, as a non business user, this wasn't the phone for me and I should stick with my Nokia, or maybe I just didn't understand how such a capable phone could lack the basic ring and vibrate feature and have such a poor battery life. Whatever the reason is, I do know that the phone itself is very attractive and would certainly urge you to get your hands on one and have a go for yourself. Whether you're a business user or not, this is certainly a phone to have a good look at.