| Mini-Review of the Blackberry Bold |
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The Bold is the new top-of-the-line Blackberry, offering all of the
expected Blackberry features in one package with a high-resolution
display. The Blackberry Bold is available through Rogers. Last Updated: 13-Sep-2008 |
Before reading this review, please read Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
Each reviewed feature is given a grade (on a scale of E- to A+), which appears in parenthesis after the feature title. If a feature hasn't been rated, it is because I was unable to test it (which occurs most commonly in mini-reviews). These ratings are purely subject and are meant only to give you a quick reference of what I thought about that particular aspect of the phone. This review is the first time this rating concept has been used.
This is a mini-review because I was only able to look at the phone for a short period of time and I wasn’t able to take one home with me. However, I actually had the opportunity of testing 3 Bolds at once. This didn’t result in a better review, but it was a unique opportunity to find out if a flaw existed on all of the test subjects. I’ve previously noted that getting to test only one of a particular model can result in a poor review if I ended up with a lemon. As it turned out however, there were no problems of that nature in this batch of 3 Bolds.
RF Performance
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
RF Sensitivity: (A+)
During the tests of the Bold’s RF sensitivity it was suggested to me that this
category is becoming increasingly irrelevant. The RF sensitivity of most phones
I’ve tested in the last little while have been almost identical, and they all
have been excellent. It seems therefore that phone designs may well have reached
the pinnacle of this performance aspect and can go no further (or if they can,
only marginally so). The Bold is certainly no exception here, because it can
work just as far into the depths of Square One as the
Nokia N95, which was been compared with
other recent models including the iPhone,
and many Nokia models.
Over-the-road Performance:
(N/A) Because this was a mini-review, I was unable to perform
over-the-road tests on the phone. However, as I’ve noted in previous reviews of
UMTS models, this aspect of performance (for UMTS phones
at any rate) has also become rather irrelevant. All of the UMTS phones I’ve
tested up to this point have demonstrated that when on-the-move there is
virtually no difference to when standing still.
Audio Performance
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, and how to interpret it.
Tonal Balance:
(A-) I first tried the Bold I was rather taken
aback by the tininess of the sound. However, it was quickly pointed out to me
that the Bold included a feature that provided a crude equalizer for incoming
audio, and so we changed the setting to provide more bass. That cleaned up the
tininess quite nicely and the balance sounded much more natural.
However, the sound had a harshness to it that was present regardless of the
equalizer setting. This isn’t to say that the Bold’s sound was annoying, but it
did have an edge to it that made the sound a little less comfortable to listen
to than it could have been. This surprised me because in the past Blackberries
have often been one of the better-sounding models on the market.
Sound Reproduction: (A+)
Aside from the harshness mentioned above, the overall sound reproduction on the
Bold was reasonably smooth. However, I never had a chance to hear it in truly
quiet environment, and so I wasn’t able to listen carefully for distortion that
might have been masked by the background noise in the areas I was testing. I was
able to listen to it in a reasonably noise-free environment however, and I
couldn’t hear any oddities that might take away from giving it top marks for
this category.
Earpiece Volume:
(A+) The bold certainly lived up to its name here,
providing plenty of earpiece volume that was the equal of the N95 with its
volume-boost feature kicked in. Even in the noisy food court I was able to turn
down the volume a notch or two and still have no trouble hearing my caller.
Outgoing Audio: (C+)
This aspect of the phone was about average for cell phones in general. It
provided fairly clean-sounding audio with good tonal balance, but it also picked
up background a bit too well. I wasn’t able to test it on the highway however,
and so like the N95, it might have been better at blocking out highway noise
than it was at blocking out the din present at the Square One food court.
Speakerphone: (A-)
Because this was a mini-review, I was only able to make limited tests of the
speakerphone feature, but what I heard sounded very promising. The speakerphone
produced a fair amount of volume that was just a hair softer than the N95,
though I’d have to say that the differences were too small to be of any
consequence. Overall quality and tonal balance of the sound was also on par with
the N95, which I ranked as having an excellent speakerphone feature.
Support Features
Ringer Volume:
(B-) To make the test of the ringer volume fair, I
sent over a copy of my Loud Ring.mp3 file to
the Bold and that was used to compare the ringer to that of the N95. The Bold
certainly had a louder-than-average ring, but its maximum volume fell noticeable
short of the N95, which in turn was a bit softer than a typical iDEN phone. It
produced a fairly audible ring, but it could have been so much louder.
Keypad Design:
(A-) I’m not personally a fan of cramped QWERTY
Smartphone keypads, but the one provided on the Bold was of fairly high quality.
The keys, despite their extremely small size and closeness, were fairly easy to
find and press once I got the hang of it. Unfortunately I had no other QWERTY
keypads to compare to, and my experience with them is rather limited.
Cursor movement is provided via a trackball-style nib similar to that originally
introduced on the Blackberry Pearl. The ball rolled very smoothly, and it
provided very stable and predictable motion. Selection of items was achieved by
pressing the ball. The overall feel of that press seemed to vary somewhat from
phone to phone, since I was able to compare the three Bolds on hand during my
tests.
If you like QWERTY-style keypads on your Smartphones however, you’ll probably be
very happy with the one provided on the Bold. The keys all press with a goodly
amount of tactile feedback and they seem to resist mis-pressing, despite their
close proximity.
Display: (A+) The
display resolution on the Bold is 480 x 320, which is the same as the Apple
iPhone. However, the screen is markedly smaller than that of the iPhone, and so
the display makes everything look much smaller. To its credit however,
Blackberry does an excellent job of providing fonts and icons that are
well-suited to the screen’s resolution and size. The immensely tiny pixels of
the display mean that anything you did see looks sharper and clearer than on a
lower-resolution screen that is physically larger (such as the one on the N95).
The screen was quite bright, but unfortunately it was not sunny on the day I
tested the Bold. Subsequently I wasn’t able to see how well the display coped
with direct sunlight. Outdoors in overcast conditions however, the brightness
compensated well and the screen was quite visible under those circumstances.
Icing on the
Cake
Camera:
(B+) The camera in the Bold offers a resolution of
3 megapixels and it takes fairly decent photographs. However, it suffers from a
high degree of digital noise that is visible even under moderately bright
lighting conditions. This can result in fuzzy fringes around sharp objects and
it’s very similar to a problem I experience with the Sony-Ericsson K850. When
viewed at typical resolutions however, the fuzziness isn’t particularly
noticeable and the results look quite nice. Color and contrast balance are very
good. However, the camera is a long way from matching the one on the N95. Rating
B+.
Video Capture: (C-)
The Bold also captures video, but its highest resolution is 480 x 320 at 15
frames-per-second (vs 640 x 480 at 30 fps on the N95). The videos are also
subjected to a very high degree compression, which results in rather low-quality
images that are full of visible compression blocks. Now granted this is not a
multi-media phone and its primary goal in life is to be a business tool.
However, if they’re going to provide a video recording function, they should
have at least bothered to give it one that had quality in keeping with the
Bold’s price point and station in life.
GPS: (N/A) The Bold
comes with a GPS receiver that is accessible to 3rd party applets. I tried it
out with Google Maps when I was in a location where satellite reception was
possible. Unfortunately I was unable to test the overall sensitivity and
stability of the GPS feature.
Conclusions
I’m not personally a fan of the Blackberry way of doing things and the Bold didn’t bring me any closer to joining the fold. However, the Bold seems to have everything that a Blackberry fan could ever wish for and a screen that will be the envy of all other Blackberry owners. There’s nothing seriously wrong with the Bold, though it does have a few issues that garnered low grades for slightly harsh sound quality, lackluster video capture capabilities, and slightly-less-than dazzling still photography.
By the same token, the Bold is not the ultimate phone either. It’s a great Blackberry, but it offers little that would put it clearly above its competition. Like the iPhone, it seems to be surrounded by more hype than it can truly live up to. But also like the iPhone, it’s a still a good model once you strip away the hype.
