Review By: Latha Jayaprakash Review Date: 20 Nov 2008
Even when BlackBerry was the undisputed king of mobile world, the lack of 3G in its devices was beginning to look very obvious. Now here comes one Blackberry with full support for HSDPA-enabled 3G, making fast data transfer, no waiting while email attachments are being sent!
The BlackBerry 9000 Bold gets the best of everything that BlackBerry had plus 3G. Its also the biggest and heaviest BlackBerry, so is suitable only for heavy duty users. Weighing 136g, its very slightly heavier and thicker than the BlackBerry 8820, which it replaces but you cant tell the difference, with its shiny black and silver finish, and some nice curves to (literally) take the edge off its bulk.
The benefit of having such a large device is that theres plenty of room for a full QWERTY keypad, so there are no compromises here when it comes to the ease of text entry. BlackBerry have increased the resolution of the display to 480 x 320 pixels on the Bold. With a 65,000 colour transmissive TFT LCD and user-selectable font sizes, this gives the Bold one of the best displays available.
The advanced phone features include a speakerphone, conference calling, voice activated dialling and a Bluetooth headset, its capable of fully handsfree operation.
Email is BlackBerrys forte, and the Bold fully supports all email standards: Push email (messages are delivered automatically to your smartphone and you can be notified as soon as they arrive, Works with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for Microsoft® Exchange, Works with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for IBM® Lotus® Domino®, Works with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for Novell® GroupWise®, Integrates with an existing enterprise email account, Integrates with existing personal email account, Integrates with optional new device account, Web-Based Email Access (AOL Mail, Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo! Mail).
You can view attachments in the following formats: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, WordPerfect, HTML, zip. WordToGo and SlideshowToGo let you edit Word and PowerPoint files. Security is given full attention, with password protection and a keyboard lock, plus full support for encryption when using BlackBerry Enterprise Server to access data.
The Bold does not rule out fun, when all the work is going on, as it has in particular the camera and media player. The camera is just 2 megapixels, it can take snaps and video clips. The media player offers light relief between meetings by playing music and videos. Software is provided for syncing your PC with your mobile. Theres a 3.5mm headset jack, so you can plug in any third party stereo headphones - a featurenot to be seen at all in the mobiles. GPS navigation is another feature and works with Blackberry Maps.
BlackBerry Bold comes with a a full 1 GB of built-in memory, plus 128 MB of flash memory and the ability to expand this further by adding a microSD memory card. This gives plenty of space for storing and working with data, and is what is required from these type of mobiles.
The battery life is not that good but it will not create any issue provided that you charge the phone regularly, and condition the battery properly at the start.
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| Sound Reception: | | | Ease of Use: | | | Features: | | | Reliability & Durability: | | | Style & Design: | | | Value for Money : | |
Good: work and leisure at the sametime
Bad: ..
Recommend: Yes
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