BlackBerry Bold 9000

BlackBerry Bold 9000
(Review)

The sophisticated BlackBerry Bold 9000 offers total connectivity, a wonderful display, the best keyboard and a host of assets to please the top executives who are only interested in serious business.

Display:
The phone is equipped with a very sharp and bright 2.6" TFT display of 480x320 pixel resolution. The legibility is not at all compromised even in direct sunlight. Landscape orientation of the screen is very convenient while working.

Keyboard:
Full four-row QWERTY keyboard is amazing. The num-pad is also accommodated on the left. The unique shape of the keys make them very comfortable and enhance typing speed.

Operating System:
The BlackBerry Bold 9000 runs on the proprietary BlackBerry OS v4.6. The main menu has simple and clear icons. The looks of the user interface can be customized to suit your aesthetics but most of the sub-menus are text-only. The home screen is well organized with 6 shortcut buttons at the bottom and all status icons at the top. The responsiveness of BlackBerry Bold is great.

Unfortunately, the phonebook is also text-only reminding you of the older times but virtually unlimited capacity and good organization makes up for the looks. You can put your contacts in one of two groups - personal and business. One contact can belong to both groups also.

Telephony:
Sound quality of BlackBerry Bold 9000 is satisfactory while Smart dialing is an asset which predicts the number while you are entering. Voice dialing is also supported.

Messaging:
Messaging with BlackBerry Bold 9000 is a great fun speacially with full QWERTY keyboard at hand. All types of messages, SMS, MMS and email are supported. It also has the BlackBerry Messenger and Google Talk IM clients preinstalled. Emailing has a good set of customizable options too. But the BlackBerry Internet Service email accounts has to be set up first.

Internet:
The web browser is excellent, rendering pages exactly as on computer. High resolution display allows more content to fit on the screen. Trackball and the virtual mouse cursor are great enablers. Pages open to fit the display with the virtual cursor in the shape of a magnifying glass. Click on the part you would like to read and it gets zoomed in. One minus point of the browser is that it does not supports flash properly.

Connectivity:
Full network connectivity options include quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support along with 3G compatibility for high speed internet wherever available. Wi-Fi along with Wi-Fi manager takes care of all possible hot-spot connections. Bluetooth with A2DP support completes wireless connectivity options. For inter device connectivity you have miniUSB port also using which you can synchronize data as well as your iTunes collection. The phone can be used as modem too.

The Organizer:
BlackBerry Bold 9000 is packed with excellent time and work management applications. The calendar has monthly, weekly and daily views along with customized events. Mobile office enables you to open and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files but no PDF viewer. The calculator comes with a built-in unit-converter. Then there is Clock, Alarm, Stopwatch and a timer. The Notes application and To-do manager helps you to organize your tasks.

GPS:
BlackBerry Bold 9000 has built-in GPS receiver and it comes with A-GPS support. BlackBerry Maps are preinstalled but work only with BlackBerry internet plan activated. It includes voice-guided navigation. BlackBerry Maps also allow you to send your location to anyone via email or SMS.

Music:
As it is supposed to be a business device, entertainment components are given a back seat. Although the audio quality of the music player is excellent. The music library is automatically arranged by artist, album and genre and you can search your tracks by gradual typing. You can also create your own playlists. Album art is also supported, but there are no equalizer presets. The player can also be minimized to play in background.

Camera:
The phone has a 2 megapixel fixed focus camera with LED flash which is very disappointing on such an expensive device that also when 8 megapixel is the buzz around. But still it can store your precious moments. Although it supports geotagging, white balance, color effects and image stabilization. The image quality at this level of camera is not that bad.

Video:
Viewing videos on the BlackBerry Bold 9000 is a delight because of the large landscape full screen display and great picture quality. Also it supports most of the popular codecs including DivX and XviD. Video recording is supported but is good enough to be sent as mms or playing on phone, gets pixilated on bigger screens like on computer.

Games:
Adding to some entertainment quotient few games are embedded. You can play the popular Bricks game, Word Mole, Texas Hold'em King 2, Sudoku or Klondike solitaire.

Features at a glance:

Network	2G - GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 3G - HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100
Dimensions and Weight	114 x 66 x 14 mm 133 g
Display	2.6 inches, landscape view, 480 x 320 pixels, 65K colors Wallpapers Trackball navigation
Keyboard	Full QWERTY keyboard
Processor	624 MHz processor
Operating System	BlackBerry OS
Memory	Internal -1 GB storage, 128 MB RAM microSD (TransFlash), microSDHC, up to 8 GB
Sound & Music	Downloadable polyphonic, MP3 ringtones, Vibra alert, Speakerphone 3.5 mm stereo headset jack Media player MP3/WMA/AAC+
Messaging	SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
Connecivity	Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP USB, v2.0
Internet	GPRS - Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps EDGE - Class 10, 236.8 kbps 3G - HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g HTML browser
Camera	2 MP, 1600x1200 pixels, LED flash, Video recording Video player DivX/WMV/XviD/3gp
GPS	with A-GPS support, BlackBerry Maps
more features	Java Document editor (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) Organizer Voice dial / memo
Battery	Li-Ion 1500 mAh Standby Time - Up to 310 h Talk Time - Up to 5 h
Games	Yes + downloadable

Disadvantages:

No email support without BlackBerry Internet Service account
Below average 2 megapixel camera
No FM radio
No video-call camera
uncomfortable card slot
Third party applications not supported

Advantages:

2.6" landscape display with 480 x 320 pixels resolution
Very convenient full QWERTY keyboard
Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G with HSDPA
Wi-Fi
Built-in GPS with BlackBerry maps
624 MHz CPU, 128 MB RAM
BlackBerry OS v4.6
Hot-swap microSD card slot (up to 8GB)
DivX and XviD video support
Office document editor
3.5 mm audio jack
Good audio quality

BlackBerry Bold 9000 is the ultimate business device for the big bosses.

Display: The phone is equipped with a very sharp and bright 2.6" TFT display of 480x320 pixel resolution. The legibility is not at all compromised even in direct sunlight. Landscape orientation of the screen is very convenient while working.

Keyboard: Full four-row QWERTY keyboard is amazing. The num-pad is also accommodated on the left. The unique shape of the keys make them very comfortable and enhance typing speed.

Display:
The phone is equipped with a very sharp and bright 2.6" TFT display of 480x320 pixel resolution. The legibility is not at all compromised even in direct sunlight. Landscape orientation of the screen is very convenient while working.

Keyboard:
Full four-row QWERTY keyboard is amazing. The num-pad is also accommodated on the left. The unique shape of the keys make them very comfortable and enhance typing speed.