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Blackberry Bold Overview & Review

2008-11-19
hey guys jon rettinger with john for lakers calm with a review and overview for you of the blackberry bold for AT&T so before i go into my thoughts and reactions to the device i want to walk you through it so you can see what device looks like i don't hope you give her a better sense of where i'm coming from when i talk about the review so let's get started alright guys so here is the blackberry bold for AT&T service give you guys a nice overview of it here so the front of 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 websites give a back button and you have a hang-up 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 so actually has a very nice feel the keys are not actually spaced apart but there's ridges on each key which makes it actually very easy to type and move your finger to the next key I had no issue typing and I was able to compose message very very quickly and very easily on the bottom there are in your typical blackberry shortcuts for caps locks and text up and text down and you've got some alt function keys all on there for your punctuation 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 mini USB a soft button you can use whatever you'd like and a microSD expansion card slot which is actually hot swappable pop it right in there bottom of the device there's your microphone and your back release to release this fake leather backing on the right side device you've got a volume up and down toggle another soft key concepts whatever you like and that's it top of the device you've got a ringer set volume button a ringer button now the back of the vice is made of this kind of fake leather stuff here if you can see it there does have a nice feel and doesn't make it feel slick in the hand so when you're holding it you don't feel like you're going to drop it what does I know a complaint a lot of people had what the curve that the phone is replacing size-wise it looks much bigger than it actually is when you hold the device in your hand definitely feels like it adds some heft to it so let me show you a size wise compared to some devices 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 tapered edges but what I was surprised to find is there are actually almost identical sizes and from the side as well really almost identical so I guess it gives credit to Apple for making the device feel actually smaller than it is so one of devices most people might be replacing their bold width is the blackberry curve so here it is with the curb notice the curve has a space in between the keys or as a bold does not and the bolt certainly has a much larger screen which I'll talk about in a minute so just for size comparisons can see the bold is a little bit bigger see the sliver on the side it's also a little bit thicker but not much so another device you might be thinking about if you're with AT&T is the samsung epix so i'll show you guys comparison with that similar form backers qwerty keyboards screens on top although the epics is running windows mobile and touchscreen just for size comparisons I'll let you see so pretty close to the same size looks like the epics might be yep a little bit smaller than the blackberry but not much and thickness the epics is just a little bit thicker I'm go ahead and move all those devices out to the side now the bowl gets its name from its gorgeous half vga screen so I turned down the brightness here as far as I could hopefully be able to see the screen I know this video won't do it justice 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 get a better look here okay so you're greeted with typical blackberry home screen but the icons actually just a little bit different now it's got curve a neon look when you scroll across to them it's a very nice look that rim has added to their newer devices the blackberry button that same theme put this down maybe a little better that same theme kind of carries out through it looks like neon wiring almost free to the icons so paramount to me for mobile device aside from call quality is browser and the browser on the blackberry bold it's not as good as I was expecting it to be let me go ahead and give you guys a real quick example of that okay so we're on a local Wi-Fi network here I'll go ahead and load John for lakers calm they're just booting up Mishon should tell you this is a full 3g capable device meaning it's fast broadband like data which is very nice I don't have a sim card in there currently but 3g speeds are compatible as any other 3g phone i've seen particularly the iphone now blackberries in the past notably the curve and the pearl had awful browsers rim was not known for their internet capabilities on their phones they're really trying to change that with the blackberry bold so i give you an example of what typical internet looks like on the bold and tell you some of the positive and negatives about it first it is definitely the best browser that's research in motion also known as rim has put out is capable of rendering full HTML web pages which essentially means you see the pages on your phone as you would on a computer which is very nice and the first time it really been able to do that so we move this over here so there's a full john for liquors i don't know if you guys can be able to see that up the text is very small and the scroll ball right there actually served as a little bit of a mouse and you can move it around you have to navigate left and right with it and the text is way too small to read to 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 which is a bit on the unfortunate side keep going down so the browser while it does display full HTML pages is not perfect certainly text wrapping would be a nice feature they do have it but it has not been perfected and I think an easier navigation and zoom method would certainly be a welcome addition to the bold but that being said it is certainly the most capable blackberry browser to date that research in motion has put out at least the most that I've seen so certainly kudos to rim for that let's go back to the home screen here it is capable of playing pictures and videos there's no YouTube player on it right now so that's certainly a downside video plays fantastic on it's nice and smooth and looks beautiful on the screen although again in the video really won't do the screen justice does have a full built-in assisted gps 3g and it's a quad-band phone meeting it'll work with 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 ringtone profiles and of course you get that fantastic blackberry push email which really has been untouched by any other company Microsoft and Apple included rims email is absolutely fantastic so that you guys have had a chance to see the device let me talk to you about it let you know what I think so first and foremost with using a mobile device you're concerned about call quality and I'm very happy to admit that call quality on the bold was fantastic I did some rigorous testing on 3g and edge networks and I made a transition from 3g to edge and handled everything perfectly collars on the other ends did not say they hear any hissing I'm hearing hissing no background noises everybody said it was perfectly clear which was very nice transition from 3g to edge didn't drop 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 and could always be better but as you saw in the unboxing the battery in this thing is huge and I was able to get about four hours of talk time out of it which is pretty nice and again I put it through some heart tests using the internet for say 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 look at you through an entire day but we'll have to charge it every night which is really the most i can ask for you go to bed you have an outlet by you plug the phone in you shouldn't have much of a trouble getting 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 switched over to the iphone i had many room devices you can see in my first iphone unboxing I was replacing a blackberry pearl had a curve at 8700 before that I fat 8800 so I really do like Blackburn this is definitely the best full qwerty keyboard that rim has put out today I have not seen the blackberry storm yet so I can't comment on that but at least for the gsm networks this is hands down the best blackberry if you're a corporate user and you need push email eat a full keyboard and you really want reliability of rim the blackberry bold is definitely for you if you're a heavy texter and you like a full keyboard it's a great way to go as well screen is gorgeous and it just it's a great phone all around how you recommend it on a one out of five scale i give the bold four-and-a-half only lacking because of some of the browser shortcomings that's really hit so guys jon rettinger with john for lakers calm it's been a review of the blackberry bold for AT&T sure to check out the website w john for lakers calm and if you like to be a writer for its all user generated content sure hit the apply button in the bottom right hand corner if you want some exclusive content sure to follow me on twitter ww twitter.com / down for lakers up the links to both up in the sidebar hope you guys enjoy it and i will see you in the next video bye bye
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