On a scale from 1 to 10, the Blackberry Bold is the sweetest blackberry ever. (Do you get the double entendre? Cause a blackberry is also a fruit. A sweet fruit. Clever huh?)
It’s no secret that I’ve had an iPhone for a long time. Sol and I waited in line at the Capitola Mall when the first iPhone launched in June of 2007. We were even featured in the Santa Cruz Sentinel because we were wacky enough to do so (and we projected Star Wars onto the ceiling of the mall while we waited.) I’ve enjoyed the iPhone tremendously for almost 2 years straight. As I am notoriously hard on my gadgets, this is a minor miracle. When the 3G iPhone came out, I decided that I would stick it out with my old-school Gen. 1 iPhone. It works great. Until a couple of weeks ago.
In Vegas for a soccer tournament, my iPhone spontaneously developed a huge issue: the top half of the touch screen stopped working. It’s pretty hard to use a touch-screen phone when the screen won’t respond to touching. This left me without a way to communicate for several hours, and more importantly, left me with a device void.
As much as I enjoy the design, form factor, and user experience of the iPhone, there have always been some things that bother me. For instance, the email function. The push and pull are slow and sometimes unreliable (at least in my experience.) Sometimes emails don’t make it out at all, or they come in much later than they should. Before I got my iPhone, I had a Blackberry 8700c, the last one with the scroll wheel on the side. It worked great. RIM has it nailed when it comes to mobile email, and I’ve missed the steady reliability of Blackberry email.
Ever since it came out 4 or 5 months ago, the Blackberry Bold (the 9000) has caught my eye. With a defunct iPhone, and an AT&T account already setup, I thought this was a good chance to try it out. Worst case, I always have 30 days to return it. So Monday morning I went to the AT&T store here in SF to check out the Bold.
First thing I discovered, the thing is expensive. Even with a 2 year re-commitment, I still had to shell out $400 with a $100 mail-in rebate. Second thing I noticed? It’s probably worth it. It is a beautiful device from the gorgeous screen to the cool leather backing. Drool.
The keyboard is crisp and easy to use, and even though I’ve never liked the nipple / nubbin / pearl / trackball thingy, I found that’s not that hard to get used to. Email setup and functionality are easy and work like a dream. One thing I was concerned about was my address book – the iPhone syncs so darn well with my Mac Address Book (and everything else on my Mac.) I read a bunch of different blog posts, and found very mixed reviews on all the software product. Luca Filigheddu.com had the best solution I could find: Google Sync. I exported my Mac Address Book, uploaded it to my Gmail, downloaded Google Sync for Blackberry, and voila everything is where it should be. Now I have a phone, an amazing mobile email device, and something that is functional for media playback (video, music, etc.) It’s not as good as the iPhone, but it’s functional.
Now, there’ve been hundreds of reviews of the Bold already, and I don’t need to add yet more detritus to the review world in that sense. So I’m sticking to the theme of replacing my iPhone with a Blackberry Bold, as opposed to an outright review of an already thoroughly reviewed device.
Unsurprisingly, there are some things I seriously miss about the iPhone. Media playback is one. It’s not clean or intuitive on the Bold. The memory card (I got an 8GB Micros SD for $20 at Buy.com) was easy to insert and load, a lot of the file types supported by the iPhone won’t play on the Bold. The screen is crisp and beautiful, but it’s a little smaller than the iPhone, and I’ve had a hard time finding things that will play. This is annoying when I have multiple 1/2 hour commutes on the Caltrain that cry out for entertainment.
In general, I’d say that the overall user experience (form factor, software aesthetics, heft and polish, etc.) are just not as good on the Blackberry. My wife put it well – the Blackberry is a performance device, it gets the job done. The Bold is a beautiful phone, but it’s just not an iPhone.
Having used the Blackberry Bold for 3 weeks straight, I’ve come to a decision. I like having an iPhone. I love Blackberries – but it just ain’t the same. Conveniently for me, Apple announced the iPhone 3Gs just this past Tuesday, well within my 30 days tryout period. So I’ve returned the Bold. I am waiting it out with my old-skool 8700c for another 8 days, and then it’s back to the iPhone.
If I were forced to give the Blackberry Bold (as a replacement for my iPhone) a numeric rating between 1 and 10, I’d call it a 6. It’s an amazing device, and if I were going to keep with the Blackberry, I would’t own any other. But it doesn’t replace the iPhone. It really doesn’t come close.
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