The arrival of the latest Blackberry has been eagerly anticipated for several months: how can yet another smartphone compete on an increasingly competitive market where even more phones seem to be aimed at an ever wider audience?

The Bold should have no reason to feel inferior up against the iPhone--both are very different products, after all--but where does it stand in relation to Nokia's growing collection of handsets?

Wherever RIM are trying to pitch the new Bold on the market, it's certain that this new handset comes with a stack of a new features: a refined OS, a quality screen (480 x 320 pixels) and better battery life than some of its competitors.

There's also a pretty complete set of connectivity options: GSM, GPRS, EDGE, 3G, 3G+, Bluetooth and Wifi.

First Look

Getting your hands on it for the first time is surprising: the Bold, true to its name, is a thick, chunky handset, and current trends for handset styling seem to have completely passed it by.

Despite this, though, it still manages to be reasonably light, and there's enough room on the front for the classic Blackberry combination of a screen and backlit QWERTY keyboard, which is comfortable and easy to use for writing emails and even longer documents.


The whole thing is encased in a metal trim, and the back is covered with a layer of leather, that, quite frankly, we could do without out.

All in all though, the handset's styling is a modest success, with the refined results rewarding RIM's efforts to mix its traditional professional look with some slightly more up-to-date touches.
Along the sides of the handset are buttons that control the 2 Megapixel camera, a slider that changes the volume in calls and zooms in and out of photos and a micro SD card slot.

In its default configuration, the Bold ships with 128 MB of flash memory and a 1 GB micro SD card, but you can expand this all the way up to 16 GB if you need to.

The micro SD card slot is quite fiddly, because it shares its space on the side of the Bold with a headphone port, a mini USB slot for charging the phone on a computer and a shortcut that takes you straight to the main menu.

Updated Browser

Most new phones can connect to the Internet, but few manage to provide as an attractive an interface as that of the iPhone, but the Bold comes close.

Pages are rendered quickly, and the scroll *wheel/ball is a great way to navigate around pages.

It also allows you to zoom in and out of websites, which are shown at full size, rather than being reduced for display on a phone as with most other mobile browsers.

Familiar keyboard shortcuts also speed up navigation.

The top quality screen is the crowning glory, and allows you to enjoy RSS feeds and rich Ajax content, but, not, for the time being, Flash.

Connectivity and GPS

The Bold passes seamlessly from 3G to WiFi depending on the connectivity available in a given location, but it's also easy to customize which protocols are used.

A maps applications allows you to see where you are on Google Maps.

Instant Messaging

Thanks to an agreement signed with Microsoft, Blackberrys now ship preloaded with a mobile version of Windows Live Messenger. 

It's easy to use and requires virtually no configuration--all you have to do is provide your username and password and away you go.

Multimedia Features

Using the phone's multimedia features can prove a little tricky thanks to a confusing set of menus.

Once you work out how to get to them, the Bold has a fairly solid grip on multimedia.

The  camera's 2 Megapixels come with a built-in flash and a 5x digital zoom, although there is no image stabiliazation.

More or less satisfactory, shots are taken at a maximum resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels and is perfectly fine for taking a snap every now and again rather than everyday use.

It's certainly not ready to replace even the most simple entry level digicam.

As for sound, we once again can't help but compare the Bold's speakers to those on the iPhone, and, again, Apple's device wins out.  ??

We're loath to fall back to comparing the Bold to the iPhone 3G, but Apple's flagship product really is better at handling most multimedia content, which is probably where the two handsets are must easily distinguishable.  

If you're really torn, the distinction is simple: the Bold is clearly aimed at professional users, while the iPhone handles entertainment better.

To be fair, both manufacturers are trying to bridge the gap, with the Bold featuring more multimedia options than ever before to tempt the consumer market while the iPhone opens the door to the enterprise market with support for Microsoft Exchange.

Nevertheless, both products remain better suited for distinct segments of the market, even if the distinctions between the two are less and less clear.