Behold, the BlackBerry Bold

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Thursday, 15 May 2008

Page 1 of 2 ! The BlackBerry Bold, along with a US $150m software development fund (trumping the iPhone software fund by US $50m), is RIM’s attempt to deflect some attention away from the upcoming 3G iPhone by focusing squarely back on BlackBerry’s enterprise strengths, while highlighting RIM’s ability to create snazzy looking devices of their own. Also known as the BlackBerry 9000, the Bold features a tri-band HSDPA chip (2100MHz, 1900MHz and 850Mhz but not 900MHz), EDGE, 802.11 a/b/g Wi-Fi, inbuilt GPS (which also includes AGPS), a 480x320 screen (of unspecified size in inches) and the redesigned BlackBerry keyboard. Also included is a “next-gen” 624 Mhz mobile processor, making operation faster, 128MB of built-in Flash memory and 1GB of internal storage, which can be boosted through the included Micro SD HC card slot that can take Micro SD cards up to 16GB in size – with the slot accessible from a “side door” – not stuck under the battery or in some other difficult to access spot. Although it’s a 3G device, there is no front mounted camera, therefore it has no video calling capability. On the back is a 2 megapixel camera, an LED flash and it has a 5x digital zoom – while the now classic and very popular BlackBerry trackball is there, as expected. Telstra will be launching the BlackBerry Bold on the Next G network, with Ross Fielding, Executive Director, Telstra Product Management saying that: "The BlackBerry has built up a strong following since Telstra first launched it in Australia back in 2002. We are working closely with RIM to add a Next G BlackBerry to the suite of seven Next G PDAs already on offer. Telstra looks forward to bringing the Next G BlackBerry to customers in coming months.” Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO of RIM was also happy to state that: “The new BlackBerry Bold represents a tremendous step forward in business-grade smartphones and lives up to its name with incredible speed, power and functionality, all wrapped in a beautiful and confident design”. One of the standout new features, aside from the upgraded design, the improved keyboard and the faster processor is a new “desktop style web browser”. While the BlackBerry’s screen still isn’t anywhere near as large as that found on the Apple iPhone, it’s still very bright and sharp, displaying web pages in a “page view” or a “column view”, letting you zoom into specific parts of a page. You can also easily tell the browser to switch between telling websites to display pages as though they were being seen on a desktop computer browser, or to display sites in their mobile versions, which is quite handy. The browser can also handle streaming media, which is another welcome addition. Please read onto page 2. << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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