Review Everything!

Cell phones blackberry, Cell phones, cellphone, rim, storm, verizon

Cell phones blackberry, Cell phones, cellphone, rim

Cell phones blackberry, Cell phones, cellphone, rim, storm

Cnet.com

Product summary

The good: The RIM BlackBerry Storm features an innovative touch screen that provides tactile feedback to confirm your selection. The Storm offers dual-mode functionality for world-roaming capabilities as well as EV-DO Rev. A and UMTS/HSDPA support. Other highlights include GPS and a 3.2-megapixel camera.

The bad: The Storm’s SurePress touch-screen takes some acclimation and the onscreen keyboard is a bit cramped. The smartphone can be sluggish and buggy even after the firmware update.. Speakerphone quality was a bit choppy

The bottom line: The RIM BlackBerry Storm may blow in a frenzy for Verizon Wireless subscribers wanting a touch screen similar to the Apple iPhone. However, there are bugs and performance issues that prevent the Storm from delivering its full potential.

Specifications: OS provided: BlackBerry Handheld Software; Installed RAM: 128 MB; Band / mode: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (Quadband) / UMTS 2100 / CDMA 800/1900 (Dual Band);

Price range: $199.99

CNET editors’ review

Editors’ note: We have updated the review since its original publish date to include changes to performance after installing the official firmware update for the BlackBerry Storm released by Verizon Wireless on December 5, 2008.

The RIM BlackBerry Storm brewed up a lot of hype and excitement as the first touch-screen BlackBerry. The touch capabilities were news enough alone but add to that Research in Motion’s SurePress functionality (the technology that makes the screen clickable), an impressive feature list, and the competitive $199.99 pricing, and there were a lot of expectations for the BlackBerry Storm to succeed. However, when the Storm finally blew into town, it was a definite letdown because of the phone’s sluggish performance and bugginess.

Verizon Wireless has since released a firmware update that improves some of the issues but not completely. The Storm is a faster, better device after the upgrade, including the responsiveness of the accelerometer, and improved battery life. However, the phone still has various bugs and just doesn’t feel quite like final product. There may be subsequent updates that resolve all the problems, but we would have preferred RIM and Verizon waited a while longer to make sure the BlackBerry Storm was stable and solid before releasing the device, even if it meant missing the holiday rush.

Design
In terms of form factor, the RIM BlackBerry Storm doesn’t stray far from the other full touch-screen smartphones on the market today, including the Samsung Omnia and Apple iPhone. Sporting a black casing with silver accents, the handset is a bit blocky and heavy at 4.4 inches tall by 2.4 inches wide by 0.5 inch deep and weighs 5.6 ounces, so it feels a bit wide when you hold it in your hand and it’ll make for a tight fit in a pants pocket. That said, the Storm is a well-constructed smartphone. It has a nice, solid feel and the edges have a soft-touch finish to provide a better grip.

While the Storm’s design might not be the most inspiring, the smartphone’s display is another story. Obviously, the fact that the Storm is the first touch-screen BlackBerry is news enough, but its 3.25-inch VGA glass display also demands attention for its sharpness and brightness, showing 65,000 colors at a crisp 480×360-pixel resolution. We weren’t as impressed with the Storm’s screen as the BlackBerry Bold, but it’s still beautiful. You can also adjust the backlighting, font size, and type. The Storm is also equipped with an accelerometer, so the screen orientation will switch from portrait to landscape mode when you rotate the phone from a vertical position to a horizontal one, left or right.

Moving onto the touch-screen capabilities, the BlackBerry Storm uses SurePress, so that when you select an application or enter text, you actually push the screen down like you would any other tactile button. You can see a bit of a gap at the top and bottom of the screen, which but makes the phone. In terms of text extry, the BlackBerry Storm features a SureType keyboard when the smartphone is in portrait mode and then switches to a full QWERTY keyboard in landscape mode (See Performance section for more information). When using the keyboard or selecting applications, you do a simple finger touch over the item until it’s highlighted and then you press down on the screen to register the action.

In addition to the SurePress technology, you can also use a number of finger taps or swipes to perform certain actions. For example, you can tap on the screen twice to zoom in on a Web page or map, or do quick finger swipes to scroll though a page. Also, to copy/paste text, you just touch the screen at the start of the text and then with a second finger, touch the end of the block of text you want to copy. You can adjust the tap interval, hover point, and swipe sensitivity in the Options > Screen/Keyboard menu.

While the SurePress technology is cool, it definitely takes some acclimation. It’s not a natural feeling to physically push down on the screen, and we often found ourselves forgetting to actually press down; instead just tapping or double tapping on the letter button or link. You do get used to it after a while though, but as far as e-mail creation or text messages, we missed having a tactile keyboard. We couldn’t comfortably type long messages as fast as we wanted and when we tried, the message was riddled with errors. The keyboard buttons are just a bit too small and cramped. If I had problems with my small hands, I can only imagine it would be worse for users with larger thumbs.

Below the display, you do get a set of tactile navigation controls that consists of Talk and End/Power buttons, a Menu key, and a clear button. Unlike other BlackBerry models, there is no trackball navigator and we have to admit that we missed it. It may be that we’re just used to having the trackball, and often we found our thumb automatically looking for the control while trying to scroll through pages and menus. However, even beyond that, we think it wouldn’t hurt to have a trackball navigator since it allows for easier one-handed operation. Also, you wouldn’t always have to rely on the touch screen and it would be useful for certain operations like for selecting links on a Web page.

On the left side, there’s a user-programmable shortcut key and a micro USB port, while the right spine has a 3.5mm headphone jack, a volume rocker, and another customizable button, which is set as the camera activation/capture key by default. The camera lens and flash are located on the backside, and behind the battery cover, you’ll find the microSD/SDHC card holder and SIM card slot. Finally, though not readily apparent, there is a device lock and mute button on the top edge of the Storm.

Verizon Wireless packages the RIM BlackBerry Strom with healthy set of accessories, including a travel charger with various adapters, a USB cable, an 8GB microSD card, a SIM card, a wired headset, a software CD, and reference material. For more add-ons, please check our cell phone accessories, ringtones, and help page.

Features
While the RIM BlackBerry Storm might be the first touch screen for Research in Motion, the company wanted to make sure the smartphone offered the same feel and functionality of previous and current BlackBerrys. The Storm runs the latest BlackBerry OS 4.7, bringing an updated user interface much like the BlackBerry Bold and the BlackBerry Pearl Flip. You now get DataViz Documents To Go Standard Edition, so you can now edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files as well. If you want the capability to create new documents, you will have to upgrade to the Premium Edition. We had no problems opening and working on Word and Excel documents, but we can’t imagine doing more than minor edits on the Bold or any other smartphone for that matter. Other PIM applications include a Calendar, a task list, a memo pad, a voice recorder, a calculator, a password keeper, and more.

The BlackBerry Storm also has the new BlackBerry Application Center where you can download more programs and utilities to your device. The full store is anticipated to launch in Sprint 2009 (though developers can submit their applications in December for approval), but there are eight applications currently available, including Facebook, Flickr, and various instant messaging clients.

For e-mail, the Storm can sync with your company’s BlackBerry Enterprise server, with support for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell GroupWise, to deliver corporate e-mail in real time. You can also access up to 10 personal/business POP3 or IMAP4 e-mail accounts via the BlackBerry Internet Service. Like all recent BlackBerry models, the Storm has a spell-check feature that will look for errors in e-mails and memos, but not text messages. There’s also an attachment viewer for opening Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Corel WordPerfect, PDF, JPEG, GIF, and more.

As a phone, the BlackBerry Storm offers dual-mode functionality, so the phone switches automatically between CDMA and GSM networks to offer seamless international roaming–all while keeping the same phone number. (Note that the phone does not support domestic GSM bands.) In all, you get voice coverage in 157 countries (22 of those on CDMA) and e-mail coverage in 62 countries. Just be aware that you’ll still incur roaming rates, which range from $0.69 to $2.49 a minute. Verizon also offers technical support if you need help while overseas. First, there’s a 24-hour Global Help Desk that’s open seven days a week. In addition, you get a calling card for free support calls while traveling outside of the United States from any landline phone to technical support your BlackBerry Storm is lost, broken, or stolen.

The address book is only limited by the available memory with room in each entry multiple phone numbers, e-mail addresses, work and home address, job title, and more. For caller ID purposes, you can assign a photo, group category, or one of 32 polyphonic ringtones. Other voice features include a speakerphone, voice-activated dialing, smart dialing, conference calling, speed dial, and text and multimedia messaging. You can also download Visual Voice mail from the BlackBerry Application Center. Bluetooth 2.0 is onboard with support for a mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets, serial port profile, phone book access, and dial-up networking. To use the Storm as a wireless modem for your laptop, you will need a subscription to one of Verizon’s BroadbandAccess plans, which start at $15 per month.

The BlackBerry Storm runs on Verizon’s EV-DO Rev. A network, which allows for faster Web browsing, e-mail, and downloads. The Rev. A offers an extra boost over regular EV-DO, bringing download speeds up to the 450Kbps-to-800Kbps range versus 400Kbps-to-700Kbps, while upload speeds will average around 300Kpbs to 400Kpbs (compared with EV-DO’s 50Kpbs to 70Kbps). Of course, this is all dependent if you live in a coverage area (you can find a coverage map from Verizon’s Web site. The smartphone also offers support for the 2,100MHz UMTS/HSDPA, so you can get 3G support while overseas. Unfortunately, there’s no integrated Wi-Fi, which we find disappointing. We realize and understand the argument that the 3G radios does away with the need for Wi-Fi, but we still like having that option, especially if you drop out of range or don’t live in a coverage area.

The BlackBerry Storm has a full HTML Web browser that you can view in Internet Explorer or Firefox mode, depending on your preference. You can check out sites in page view or column view, and navigate via pan mode or cursor mode. In pan mode, you can move around pages simply by dragging your finger and then double-tapping the screen to zoom in. To select a hyperlink, you just highlight the link and then click. Meanwhile, in cursor mode, you can just place the cursor over the link and click or use the onscreen magnifying glass to zoom in. There’s also a collapsible toolbar along the bottom that lets you go to new sites, change views, and more. There is support for streaming media, including YouTube’s mobile site. As we’ve said before, the BlackBerry browser has greatly improved over the years, but it’s still not as easy to use as the iPhone and its multitouch screen.

Last but not least of the wireless radios is integrated GPS. You can use the BlackBerry Storm as a handheld navigator, but to get real-time turn-by-turn directions, traffic data, and more , you will need to subscribe to Verizon’s VZ Navigator location-based service, which costs $9.99 per month or $2.99 per day.

Moving onto multimedia features, the BlackBerry Storm is equipped with a 3.2-megapixel camera with video recording capabilities, as well a flash, auto focus, 2x zoom, and image stabilization. In camera mode, you get a choice of three picture sizes and three picture qualities. There are white balance settings, and you can add various effects to your photos, such as black and white, and sepia. With the built-in GPS, you can also geotag photos. As usual, options are more limited in camcorder mode as you only get a choice of two video formats (normal and MMS) and three color effects. The volume rocker can be used to zoom in and out in both camera and video mode.

Picture quality was subpar. While we could identify objects in the picture, they looked a bit soft and the colors were completely washed out. Video quality, on the other hand, was pretty impressive with good light and better image quality than other smartphones we’ve tested.

The Storm’s built-in media player can play various music and video formats, including MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, and MIDI music files, and MPEG4, WMV, DivX4, XviD (partial support), and H.263 video clips. There’s a search function, playlist creation, shuffle and repeat, and you get a full-screen mode for video playback. The included software CD also contains a copy of Roxio Easy Media Creator, so you can create MP3s from CDs and add audio tags. Like the latest BlackBerrys, the Storm also works with the BlackBerry Media Sync application so you can load your iTunes library. There’s 1GB of onboard memory and 128MB of flash memory onboard, while the microSD/SDHC expansion slot can accept up to 16GB cards. Unfortunately, for now, it looks like the BlackBerry Storm will not support Verizon’s V Cast music and video services.

Performance
We tested the RIM BlackBerry Storm in San Francisco using Verizon Wireless service, and call quality was quite good. We enjoyed clear audio with no noticeable background noise or voice distortion, and we didn’t experience any dropped calls during our test period. There were also no problems using an airline’s voice automated response system. On the other end, our friends reported similarly positive results and said they had no problems hearing us. Unfortunately, the speakerphone didn’t fare as well. Both sides experienced choppy call quality as words occasionally were cut off. There was also some slight voice distortion on our end. Overall, we were able to carry on full conversations and volume was not a problem, but we definitely had to ask our callers to repeat themselves on more than one occasion. Finally, we successfully paired the Storm with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset and the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.

The firmware update definitely improved performance, but there are still multiple issues. We downloaded the software upgrade using the desktop manager, and the entire process went smoothly with no problems. The biggest improvement we noticed was the improvement in the accelerometer. The Storm was much faster to change the screen orientation when we rotated the phone. However, page redraws are still on the slow side and there’s continued bugginess. For example, while checking out a Web page, we turned the phone to check it out in landscape mode and the screen went on the fritz for a couple of seconds and went completely blank, though eventually the site came back up. Also, when we were listening to music, we changed orientation and the player controls started to flicker. Launching and using multimedia applications like the camera and multimedia player were definitely better, however, with faster response times and the problems with the inconsistent camera toolbar looks to be resolved.

Music playback through the phone’s speakers sounded blown out, though there was plenty of volume. Thankfully, the built-in 3.5mm headphone jack so should allow you to enjoy better sound quality. Video performance wasn’t quite as dazzling as the BlackBerry Bold’s. There was a bit more pixilation, but we still enjoyed smooth playback. Web browsing was pleasantly swift thanks to Verizon’s EV-DO Rev. A network. It took about 25 seconds to 30 seconds for graphics-intensive sites such as CNET to fully load, while the mobile sites for CNN and ESPN loaded in about 10 seconds.

The Storm’s GPS capabilities were great. It took the smartphone only about two minutes to get a fix on our location, and we used VZ Navigator to plot a course from the Marina District of San Francisco to CNET’s downtown headquarters. Route creation was quick and it was able to get us back on course in a timely matter after we purposely missed several turns. That said, the voice-guided directions sounded blown out at the medium-high level and too soft at the medium level, so that was a bit of a struggle.

The BlackBerry Storm comes with a 1,400mAh lithium ion battery with a rated talk time of 5.5 hours and up to 15 days of standby time. In our battery drain tests, the Storm offered 7 hours of continuous talk time on a single charge. The battery performance in day-to-day usage was better. Before the firmware update, the battery would already be at 50 percent after just a couple hours of using the phone, Web, and multimedia applications, but after the update, it would only be drained about 25 percent. One thing we noticed, however, after a period of use the phone gets a bit warm where the battery is located on the back.

Cell phones blackberry, Cell phones, cellphone, rim, verizon

(Source: cnet.com)

Product summary

CNET editors’ review

• Reviewed by: Bonnie Cha
• Reviewed on: 10/30/2008
• Released on: 11/04/2008

It’s been a good six months since Research in Motion first announced the RIM BlackBerry Bold (aka RIM BlackBerry 9000). Originally slated for a summer release on AT&T, the launch date kept getting pushed back…and back. Frustrated with the delays and wooed by other new smartphone releases, we moved on (and so did many of you) and nearly gave up on the Bold. However, now that we finally have it hand, the love affair has begun all over again.

The BlackBerry Bold delivers on a number of fronts. Its half-VGA display is one of the sharpest screens we’ve seen on a smartphone, which, combined with the stereo speakers, really boosts the multimedia experience. The Bold also ships with the latest BlackBerry operating system, new productivity applications, and support for HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth. This is on top of all the great messaging capabilities. Of course, it’s not perfect. The smartphone isn’t the sleekest device on the block, and the Web browser could use more work. It’s also not going to have the mass appeal of an Apple iPhone 3G, nor would we recommend it to the general consumer. With its feature set and strong e-mailing capabilities, the BlackBerry Bold is very much a business-centric smartphone, but what is offers mobile professionals is a premium device that can handle work and play. The RIM BlackBerry Bold will be available November 4 for a slightly pricey $299.99 with a two-year contract and after rebates and discounts.

Design
When you first lay eyes on the RIM BlackBerry Bold, the words “sleek,” “sexy,” and “cool” don’t exactly to come to mind. At 4.5 inches high by 2.6 inches wide by 0.6 inch deep and 4.8 ounces, the Bold is bulky and wide, making for a bit of a tight fit in a pants pocket. It doesn’t exactly take your breath away like the iPhone 3G, but that’s not to say it’s a bad-looking phone. The black chassis and silver trim are attractive enough and the rounded edges give the handset a streamlined design. Plus, if you turn the phone over, you’ll notice that the back has a leatherette texture (no more slick plastic), providing a sophisticated look. If you want to customize your device a bit, RIM will sell replaceable backplates in different colors, including blue, gray, and red, for $29.99 each, which is a little pricey in our opinion.

Now while the overall design isn’t particularly flashy, the true beauty of the Bold lies in the display. The smartphone boasts a 2.75-inch half-VGA, non-touch screen that shows off 65,000 colors at a crisp 480×320-pixel resolution. It’s quite possibly the best-looking screen we’ve seen on a smartphone to date. The iPhone and HTC Touch Diamond come close, but we did a quick comparison between the iPhone and Bold and found that pictures on the Bold looked slightly smoother and crisper. Colors pop on the screen and video playback was truly impressive (more in the Performance section).

With such a beautiful screen, we’re glad to see that the BlackBerry Bold features an updated user interface, much like the RIM BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220. Some of the new icons are a bit difficult to identify at a glance (e.g., downloads, applications, and settings), but as you scroll over, each item is identified by name along the bottom. As usual, you can customize the home screen with various themes, background images, font size and type, and backlight brightness and time out.

Below the display, you get the standard navigation controls, which include Talk and End/power keys, a menu shortcut, a back button, and a trackball navigator. The one benefit of the phone’s wider size is that these buttons are plenty large and easy to press. The BlackBerry Bold has a QWERTY keyboard that RIM likened to a modernized Curve keyboard, but it reminded us more of the BlackBerry 8830. We know some 8800 series users had issues with the keyboard, but we didn’t have any problems with the Bold. The keyboard buttons are of a good size and have a nice tactile feel to them. We were able to compose e-mails and text messages with minimal errors. They’re also backlit for easy typing in darker environments.

On the left spine, you will find a 3.5mm headphone jack, a mini USB port, a customizable shortcut key, and a microSD/SDHC expansion slot. The right side holds the volume rocker and another user-programmable convenience key. There’s a mute button on top of the handset, and the camera and flash are located on the back.

AT&T packages the RIM BlackBerry Bold with an AC adapter, a USB cable, a wired headset, a software CD, and reference material. For more add-ons, please check our cell phone accessories, ringtones, and help page.

Features
The RIM BlackBerry Bold isn’t just bold in looks but also in the features department as well. To start, it’s the first HSDPA handset for the company, bringing you data speeds of up to network for a broadband-like connection on your mobile device. There are multiple factors that affect 3G speeds, such as where you live and how many people are on the network at one time, but you can expect speeds around 400Kbps to 700Kbps (with the potential to hit up to 2Mbps). The Bold supports the 850/1900/2100 HSDPA/UMTS bands, so you’ll be able to get 3G coverage in other parts of the world, including Europe and Asia.

Just of note, RIM said the reason why it waited so long to bring an HSDPA device to the market is that it wanted to make sure that battery life wouldn’t be sacrificed at the expense of including the 3.5G technology. The company also attributed part of the launch delay to rigorous 3G testing in order to avoid the problems that affected the iPhone 3G. So far we haven’t had any problems with 3G coverage, but we’ll continue to test the phone over the next few weeks (more on this in the Performance section section as well).

Other phone features of the Bold include quad-band world roaming, a speakerphone, conference calling, voice-activated dialing, speed dial, and text and multimedia messaging. The mobile also has background noise cancellation technology to help call quality, and you have the option to boost the bass or treble levels when on a call. The address book is limited only by the available memory (the SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts) with room in each entry for multiple phone numbers, e-mail addresses, work and home addresses, job title, and more. For caller ID purposes, you can assign a photo to a contact as well a group category–business or personal–or one of 32 polyphonic ringtones. Bluetooth 2.0 is onboard for use with mono and stereo headsets and hands-free kits. There’s also support for the serial port profile and dial-up networking.

Wi-Fi and GPS are also onboard. The integrated Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g) provides an alternative method for surfing the Net so you don’t always have to rely on 3G. You can manually add a network or the smartphone can automatically scan for available networks; our review unit had no problem finding and connecting to our wireless network. There are also Wi-Fi tools, such as diagnostics, DNS lookup, and site survey. The BlackBerry browser has always lagged behind the competition with poor navigation, but there have been improvements over the year. The Bold has a full HTML Web browser, and you can choose from various two views, such as Page View or Column View. In addition to zoom in/out functions, there’s also an onscreen cursor that you can move in any direction and place on any part of the page where you can click a link. It’s still not an ideal situation and the Web browsing experience is nowhere near the iPhone’s, but it’s better than previous BlackBerrys.

The GPS is both autonomous and assisted, using both satellites and cellular triangulation to find your position. You can get maps and text-based, turn-by-turn driving directions with apps like BlackBerry Maps and Google Maps for Mobile, but if you want any real-time tracking and voice-guided instructions, you’ll have to use a location-based service. The BlackBerry Bold is set up to work with AT&T Navigator and AT&T Navigator Global Edition. Currently, you can get a 30-day free trial of the service; afterward, it will cost you $9.99 per month for unlimited access or $2.99 for one day. Also be aware that data charges apply for route information.

The BlackBerry Bold ships with the latest BlackBerry OS 4.6, bringing the aforementioned updated user interface as well as new functionality. E-mail, of course, remains the strongpoint of the BlackBerry Bold. It can sync with your company’s BlackBerry Enterprise server, with support for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell GroupWise, to deliver corporate e-mail in real time. With BlackBerry Internet Service, you can also access up to 10 personal/business POP3 or IMAP4 e-mail accounts. Like all recent BlackBerry models, the Bold has a spell-check feature that will look for errors in e-mails and memos, but not text messages. There’s also an attachment viewer for opening Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Corel WordPerfect, PDF, JPEG, GIF, and more.

Given the business focus of the Bold, it’s good to see that the smartphone now comes preloaded with DataViz Documents To Go Standard Edition, so you can now edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files as well. If you want the ability to create new documents, you will have to upgrade to the Premium Edition. We had no problems opening and working on Word and Excel documents, but we can’t imagine doing more than minor edits on the Bold or any other smartphone for that matter. Other PIM applications include a Calendar, a task list, a memo pad, a voice recorder, a calculator, a password keeper, and more.

The BlackBerry Bold has plenty of multimedia options, and with the smartphone’s brilliant display and awesome speaker, we think it’s one of the main highlights of the phone. The built-in media player can play various music and video formats, including MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, and MIDI music files, and MPEG4, WMV, DivX4, XviD (partial support), and H.263 video clips. There’s a search function, playlist creation, shuffle and repeat, and you get a full-screen mode for video playback. The included software CD also contains a copy of Roxio Easy Media Creator, so you can create MP3s from CDs and add audio tags. The Bold also works with the BlackBerry Media Sync application so you can load your iTunes library. The Bold has 1GB of onboard memory and 128MB of flash memory onboard, while the expansion slot can accept up to 16GB cards.

The BlackBerry is equipped with a 2-megapixel camera with flash, 5x zoom, and video recording. For still images, you have your choice of three picture sizes and three picture qualities. There are white balance settings and color effects that you can add to the image. Thanks to the built-in GPS, you can also geotag your photos. In video mode, your options are limited as you only get three color effects and two video formats (normal and MMS).

Picture quality was decent. Images looked sharp and clear, but colors were a bit pale and washed out. Unfortunately, video quality wasn’t so great. There was quite a bit of pixelation (enough to be distracting) which was disappointing since other videos looked amazing on the Bold. This, of course, has more to do with the camera than anything else.

Performance
We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; UMTS/HSDPA 850/1900/2000) RIM BlackBerry Bold in San Francisco using AT&T service and call quality was good. Voices sounded clear on our end with very little background noise, and we had no problems using an airline’s voice automated response system. Our friends reported similarly positive results with no major complaints. The speakerphone was decent. The sound quality diminished a bit, but we were still able to carry on conversations just fine. We didn’t experience any reception problems or dropped calls during our review period, but we’ll continue to test the phone and report any issues that come up. We successfully paired the Bold with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset and the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.

The RIM BlackBerry Bold is equipped with a 624MHz Intel PXA270 processor, whereas previous BlackBerrys had 312MHz processors, so technically, you should enjoy smoother and faster performance. During our test period, we found this to be mostly true. There were just a couple of slight delays; for example, the smartphone had to think a bit before starting a slide show. However, for the most part, the response times were fast, whether we were working on a Word document or launching the media player.

Web browsing is probably the one area that could stand for some improvement. While the page load speeds were good, whether on 3G or Wi-Fi, the browser left much to be desired. There’s a lot of switching views and zooming in and out to get to the right section of a page, so it’s not as seamless of an experience.

The multimedia performance on the BlackBerry Bold is amazing. We were blown away (literally) by the amazing sound that came out of the phone’s dual stereo speakers. We haven’t heard such full sound from any smartphone before, offering a nice balance of treble and bass, and there’s plenty of volume. Of course, we’re delighted there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack built in and you also get 11 equalizer settings to enhance the sound. Watching videos on the Bold is incredible, thanks to the half-VGA display. Playback was incredibly smooth with barely any blurriness.

The RIM BlackBerry Bold features a 1,500mAh lithium-ion battery with a rated talk time of 4.3 hours and up to 10.5 days of standby time. The Bold blew the rated talk time out of the water in our battery drain tests, lasting a total of 7 hours on a single charge.

CNET editors’ rating: 4.0 stars Excellent
Detailed editors’ rating
Design: 8.0
Features: 8.0
Performance: 8.0
Overall score: 8.0 (4.0 stars)
• Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 52 reviews
• See all user reviews

Cell phones blackberry, cellphone, rim