finite.style

It's finally arrived! After a lot of yelling at Rogers for the month long delay in shipping my new Bold to me, I received my Bold just before heading home for the holidays. With a few weeks with my new toy it's time to write a review.

Pros

• the display is nothing short of stunning; if screen resolution is a major selling point for you, then the Bold should be at the top of your list of products to consider
  
  
• the new Blackberry O/S is a pleasure to use; it's intuitive, aestetically pleasing, and very user friendly. Everything about it makes sense, I have only had to consult the manual once since I first turned it on.


• there are some great pre-loaded apps; Blackberry Maps (which interfaces with the on-board GPS), weather forecast app, and a folder which allows for very easy download and installation of Live Messenger, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and other common applications.
  


• mail and messaging; this is RIMs bread and butter and it shows. Mail is extremely easy to set up, and texts are saved as conversations (a la Gmail), which to someone who texts as much as I do, is a fantastic feature. The keyboard is also a breeze to use, keys have a perfect feel and are just the right size

Cons

To be honest, there isn't anything about the Bold that would give me pause when recommending it to someone. The camera isn't the greatest, it's never been a focus of RIMs and it clearly shows. My Nokia e61i took much better photos and that came out two years ago. There's a lot of complaints about the Roxio media manager, and it definitely isn't iTunes. Other then these two minor things though I honestly don't have any complaints, however small, about the Bold.

Conclusion

This is a fantastic device and I couldn't be happier with my purchase. Would I rather have it over an iPhone? That's hard to say. I've spent a lot of time with both devices now and in the end they're not really occupying the same market space. Choosing one over the other would be like asking whether you'd rather have an SUV or a 2 seater sports car. Both would be great, but they're really not direct competitors. In the end though RIM didn't set out to make a smartphone that takes great photos and has an awesome media interface. It's goal was to make a smartphone that plays to it's key demographic, business users, with enough other great features to appeal to a broader audience. And after spending 2 weeks now with this phone, I'd have to say it's hit a home run.