The BlackBerry Bold is not, as some have hyped, an attempt by Research In Motion to respond to perceived threats from Apple’s iPhone 3G, nor is it an attempt to reinvent the cellphone or its role in the industry, but rather an effort to create the best BlackBerry possible, to take the design and concept that we are all very familiar with and produce a model with the best possible components, materials, and features. It’s a phone that could easily have been launched as part of an anniversary, to serve as a reminder of the company’s legacy, and will no doubt leave their engineers free to create the more experimental and risky designs needed to meet the industry’s current changes moving forward.

Design

The Bold is a larger, wider, and slightly heavier phone, enough to take most BlackBerry users by surprise, but necessary in order to house a larger screen. Today’s cellphones are driven towards big displays not just because of the growing popularity of mobile videos, but because it allows for a better layout of menu options, web pages, and applications. RIM has had to find a balance between serving that need and still keeping their physical keyboard. Give the Bold a few days of use and the value of that balance will become clear.

The QWERTY keyboard is wider as a result and will make it harder for those with small hands to type one-handed, not that it’s designed for that anyway. The keys are indented so that your thumbs will catch them as you run them from the middle outward, but will practically disappear as you run your thumbs back inwards, making it so you can quickly glide in and then find the keys you need. Instead of the usual plastic shell, the Bold has been given a black faux leather backing that’s comfortable and feels supportive for its two-handed typing purpose.

Display

RIM came up with the name “Bold” after focus groups repeatedly chose the phone’s screen as its most impressive feature. To say that it is a half-VGA screen with a 480 x 320 resolution somehow under serves its effect. Vibrant, with excellent contrast, the little screen offers a picture quality that matches many flat panel televisions and will surely convert a few die-hards who believe that a mobile screen could never be used to watch a movie into recanting. Since spending time with the Bold, I find that when I go back to using an iPhone, what was once black on Apple’s screen is now a weak charcoal by comparison.

Interface

The Bold introduces a new interface, one comprised of larger icons arranged to offer more of a comfortable desktop feel than the usual cellphone grid. The new icons are amongst the most attractive I’ve seen, offering neon accents over dark hues, they remind me of the dashboard of a high-end automobile, driving at night. The changes are mostly on the surface, there isn’t a new operating system, it’s just that the phone can support higher resolution graphics and so some applications have been changed to match. Many, such as messaging and systems settings still operate the same when you slip past the fancy home icons, but others such as the analog clock display and Brickbreaker game appear as new versions for the Bold. Whether RIM will carry the interface forward to their next models, remains to be seen, but already there are several companies making applications with the Bold’s new interface in mind.

Going hand-in-hand with the new system theme are a set of music cues composed by The Police drummer and noted soundtrack composer Stewart Copeland, who has done an impressive job with his contribution of a system theme, alarm, and selection of ringtones. His start-up tune is more sophisticated than you’d expect, while still catchy and friendly.

E-mail And Messaging

One area that hasn’t changed is the Blackberry communications. E-mail, messaging, the address book and calendar are all identical in use as on other BlackBerry models and uses the same version of the BlackBerry Desktop Manager to synchronize appointments and contacts with a Mac or PC. E-mails and messages have always been instantaneous in their arrival on the BlackBerry so the addition of HSPDA data speeds doesn’t make much of a difference other than with attachments. The only improvement, and none is needed really, is that the fonts are cleaner and the text better spread out and presented.

Web Browsing

The web browser offers a full, HTML view and displays pages at their full resolution. The Bold’s screen isn’t quite large enough to make fine text legible, so users are given a magnification tool as a default. The main view allows you to pick the area you are interested in and then you can zoom in to read it. There are many pages the browser has trouble with (our own CTV.ca being one of them) and its common to have columns stacked on top of each other. It also effects the speed of the browser which seems to struggle to resolve certain page layouts and so the browsing experience tends to be the same whether the phone is running in its 3G or Wi-Fi mode.

GPS Navigation

BlackBerry maps uses vector-based images, which are not as attractive nor as quick to load as Google Maps, but offers the same options. You can search for local services, look up an address, and even get directions both in text format for sending to others or as a 2D map view where a highlighted path marks out the route. The built-in GPS sensor is very accurate, the blip representing your car moves in near-synchronization with it, but altogether the experience still doesn’t add up as a solution for your car dashboard, but rather a resource for when you’re pulled over or for use by a passenger.

Camera

By default the 2 Megapixel camera shoots in a windowed view, which I found odd at first, but the settings menu allows you to change that to full screen. With a built-in flash, three levels of zoom (using the trackball) and support both for video recording and geo-tagging using the GPS, the camera offers value for more than just remembering where you parked, but for snapshots too.

Media Player

The external speakers are so loud and rich that you’ll forget that the Bold also supports a regular set of headphones. It comes with 1 GB of available system memory plus supports micro memory cards for up to an additional 4GB of storage. There are two media manager programs you can use for the Bold, Media Sync which transfers music files and playlists directly from Apple’s iTunes which works quickly and perfectly, and Roxio Media Manager to help copy music, pictures, and video files from your desktop to your BlackBerry, with the ability to convert files formats where needed. Troublesome and sluggish, the Roxio Media Manager uses a primitive interface and constantly monitors your computer’s file folders. It’s conversion process works for most video formats, including DivX, but the task can take so long and the software can crash so easily, that you’re better off simply using your own software and using the Bold’s USB connection to drag-and-drop the files through Windows Explorer instead.

Battery Life

Even with both Wi-Fi and 3G modes turned on and constant web browsing and video playing, the Bold’s battery has lasted me over a day and a half. This is surprising considering how bright the display is. Of course, should the battery no longer function one day, it can be easily removed and replaced.

Connections

The Bold features Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, EDGE, and Rogers’ HSPDA (3G) data connections, although only the last two are turned on by default. 3G and EDGE connections have been fast although hampered in part by the Bold’s browser which isn’t as fast at loading web pages as it could be. Wi-Fi has to be turned on and, just as on a laptop, requires that you run a set-up wizard for each wireless basestation you wish to connect to. The Bold is fairly quick to switch over to 3G if it thinks that a wireless signal is getting weak, so much so that it refused to remain connected to the wireless basestation in our Canada AM studio, making it the first device I’ve brought onto the show that wouldn’t work with it. Fortunately, the Bold offers a complete set of connection settings, allowing you to turn off any and all connections. You can turn off the 3G signal or EDGE or both.

As A Phone

Of course the Bold is also a phone and offers excellent reception and signal quality. The BlackBerry form isn’t the most ergonomically designed when it comes to holding it up to your ear to use, and in this case the larger, wider size makes it even harder to align your ear to the speaker. Hands-free is probably the way to go, but, with its high quality external speakers, the speakerphone mode may be the best option.

The Bold Legacy

The Bold is one of RIM’s finest BlackBerries and very much a culmination of the best features they have developed and lessons they have learned over the past decade. It is an expensive handset, a premium version of their BlackBerry concept and so hardly the model to use as the basis for a company’s mobile fleet, but rather a small luxury for those in the market for a personal reward. Much was made at the Bold’s launch about it being a hybrid device, a handset that can be marketed to both consumers and enterprise workers, which is true in the case of its media features, but more so in its style and design which has an elegance that allows it to be cool and serious at the same time. It’s one of the best handsets on the market today and I look forward to RIM’s more experimental BlackBerry models coming in the near future.