Mini-Review of the Blackberry Bold

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. 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. 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 model. 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.


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.