Product Listing

BlackBerry Bold - Dare to be Different

By Seow Tein Hee - 14 Sep 2008

Features

Berry Feature-Packed

The Bold, as one might expect, has a plethora of features that makes it one of the most updated BlackBerry device to-date. On the connection front, the Bold comes equipped with all things necessary to make it a powerhouse device capable of empowering you for both your business and personal needs. But what we'll be focusing on now, is its updated operating system to BlackBerry OS 4.6, along with its attractive looking interface.

With the Bold on its standby mode, you'll probably notice the clock that's splashed on the main screen. Viewing this as a screensaver of sorts, you will probably be more interested in entering the Home screen of the Bold, and accessing the myriad of features within. Once you've hit the Home screen, you'll notice that the shortcut icons are now no longer positioned as a column on the left, but in a straight row at the bottom of the Home screen. The Bold understands the basic needs of a busy business executive who wants immediate access to his emails via the Blackberry Enterprise Server, and would like to have the option to enjoy a bout of entertainment on those long haul flights. Thus, starting from the left, you'll find the Messages and Email shortcuts first, followed by your Contacts, Calendar, Browser and finally, the Media shortcut.

During Standby, you'll have the analog clock (which can be changed to other forms such as digital or LED clock) as the screensaver, and upon pressing the Menu button, you'll be able to switch amongst various applications.

First impressions do matter, and the Bold definitely made a good one on us when it greeted us with this snazzy new Home screen interface.

Going one level deeper, the main menu within the Bold is also just as well designed, giving the Bold a sleek feel for both its exterior and interior.

Whilst there have been no major changes when it comes to the Messaging, Email, Contacts and Calendar features, the real improvement comes from its Browser and Media features. With its half VGA screen, web pages were rendered with sufficient sharpness and clarity, and was definitely pleasing on the eyes. For multimedia functions, the Bold won't be the first to feature music and video playback (with the BlackBerry Pearl being the first RIM device to jump onto the multimedia bandwagon) but likewise, we were quite impressed with the image quality that we got on the 480 x 320 screen.

The Bold's multimedia features, especially its Video player, will be very well complemented by the half VGA 2.6-inch screen. Whether there'll be noticeable lag and frame loss in its video playbacks, we'll give you the assessment in the next page.

To give you an estimate of how well rendered the images are on its 480 x 320 screen, here's a screenshot of the Bold displaying one of the sample images. However, we feel that you should really see the Bold for yourself to know what we mean.

There's more to explore within the Bold, as you'll see with the suite of applications available for your use. For work purposes, you'll have the series of Word To Go, Sheet To Go, Slide To Go and various other office-centric applications. But, it's not all work and no play. The Bold is after all designed to give you 24/7 connectivity, and adding on to its BES work solution, there are personal messaging protocols such as Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger and recently added into the pool, a Facebook application for BlackBerry. As one can see, the Bold has gotten all grounds covered with ease.

Synonymous with its BlackBerry reputation, the Bold comes with a suite of applications designed to assist you with work, but when it comes to entertainment on the go...

...there's also Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk and even Facebook to keep you connected 24/7 on a personal level.

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