I disagree. I'm not the most familiar with smartphone navigation since I do not own one, but I picked up and toyed with phones with all five major OS flavours. iOS was, for obvious reasons, the fastest and easiest to use. Close second was Windows Phone 7. WebOS cam in a more distant third, but it was still leaps more intuitive than TouchWiz or Sense Android. At the very bottom is RIM's BB OS. Both 6 and its predecessor gave me trouble when navigating, and not because of lag.
Unless this is just the first of a new lineup, RIM needs a true multimedia phone. Assuming this will lead to a Storm 3, but they need LTE for tethering.... especially with playback pairing.
Why bother with putting touch on such a tiny screen?
Seriously RIM, make a phone like the Dell Venue Pro. Big 4" high-res touchscreen, slide out Torch-style keyboard, QNX OS instead of BB OS, with the same MSM8x55 SoC...
I think the new BlackBerry Bold Touch has a lot of potential. I'd like to see / use the device first to see if the email client (rendering emails) and browser are in fact significantly faster. I had a Bold 9700 and loved the device, but the browser was pretty bad and the emails took forever to fully render. I loved everything about the phone except the performance. I have a handful of Apps that I actually need on a mobile device, the most important is Browser, Email, and GPS. I left BlackBerry for a Samsung Focus (WP7) and love the phone, but miss having a physical keyboard - ALOT. So much that I'm considering getting this device. I love WP7 as an OS, but they don't have a portrait qwerty phone and I really enjoy using a real keyboard. I like the look of the new BlackBerry Bold, and if the OS is fast and smooth, I'd go back in a heartbeat.
You said: "I love WP7 as an OS, but they don't have a portrait qwerty phone"
If that's really what you want, check out the Dell Venue Pro. It has a portrait QWERTY keyboard and WP7 and is available direct from Dell. Ebaying your old phone can help defer some of the cost.
You know, I checked out the DVP and really wanted to get the device. I went to the Microsoft store several times and used it when it first came out, and every time I went there it was sold out. Then I started seeing a bunch of issues crop up online that people were having with it: Bluetooth, engineering sample batteries shipping with devices, camera taking horrible shots in anything but full day light, headphone jack not fitting most headphones, not being able to connect to any secure wireless networks... just to mention a few. I realize that these issues were eventually rectified, but in the mean time, a lot of people were stuck with phones that had issues. Some people got replacement devices that was supposed to fix the issues and the replacement devices bricked . It took a long time for Dell to resolve the issues, and reading all the bad experiences that others had and seeing how Dell responded to these issues scared me away from the DVP:( I really wanted that phone, but went with the Focus.
As a BB owner, I am excited because it solves my biggest complaint. Performance. I have to problems with the UI or intuitiveness of the OS. I am a big fan of the qwerty candybar format they have. The touchscreen will be moderately useful, but the performance looks very promising.
We would love to hear more perspective from current and former BlackBerry owners. While there are some features that RIM is just not likely to become competitive in any time soon (App and Media ecosystems), lots of complaints have been pretty straightforward, performance. So do you users think that this hardware push alone could help level the playing field? Will a strong browser, strong hardware, strong (if dated) form factor and, arguably, the best e-mail and messaging experience available, be enough to bring RIM back to contention? Let us know.
when i had my iphone i used it for work email and rarely used my free work issued BB. since exchange on android is crappola i have to use my BB again. but it's such a PITA that i try to use my ipad 2 as much as possible
I would say yes. This is coming from a BlackBerry 9700 Bold user. Love the BlackBerry experience as a whole but as you stated, the performance was the issue for me. One which seems a bit dated is the whole design that content from the web gets filtered down through BB servers, which compress / cache the content (I'm not sure of the details here, it was covered in an Anandtech review of a recent BlackBerry - Torch maybe) before it reaches your device. The net result is extra hops before you get your data and a slower experience. I hope they improved (or killed) this architecture. Also, the way it deals with hotmail email. To be clear - this could entirely be my own fault for missing some setting or setting up my hotmail account incorrectly, but with my hotmail account my blackberry (9700) would poll its server (BB server) to retrieve the content at set intervals even though hotmail had push available. There wasn't a way for me to use the hotmail push service directly, it had to go through BB servers, which forced polling, yuck. It also did a horrible job of rendering Email. I'd open the email, fetch the image content, wait for a long time, and then have to scroll around to see the email, and it would often render incorrectly. Hopefully this changed with OS 6 / 7.
As far as the apps go - for me i need only a few - good IM client, a movie app (Flixster), Facebook, and a few games. I use these regularly. The rest of the crap in the App store gets installed and never used. I just don't care that much about the whole Apps angle. To me its much more important that the OS provide the majority of functionality that I actually need to use on a daily basis (email, browsing, gps, etc). And shortcomings in these areas led me to WP7 because they were simply too bad to deal with compared to every other platform.
I love the physical phone, the way the OS navigates, the keyboard / texting / sending emails experience, but everything else needed a major uplift. And from some of the videos I'v seen on Crackberry featuring the new bold and OS improvements, it looks very promising.
I had an AT&T Bold 9000 and loved that phone. What BB does better than the Verizon DroidX is email. I had four accounts on the BB and it worked flawlessly: separate notifications, no issues. On the DroidX, Yahoo has stopped pushing, GMail started pushing after NOT pushing (go figure!) and do not get me started on Android and Exchange server. My best solution so far is to forward to Hotmail but I Cannot reply. PITA!!! The only redeeming feature of the DroidX is the GPS/Maps/Navigation.
The weaklinks of my Bold were memory leaks (Facebook, etc) requiring battery pulls and the trackball.
I am waiting for the Storm 3, Torch or other new large screen to become available and I am switching back to BB (I have to use Verizon. All those who claim Verizon is better than AT&T are wrong). Email is too important for me.
Never tried iPhone. Maybe I should check out the Dell VP
Touchscreen, plus keyboard, and a small form factor... Love it. A desperately needed speed boost and a touchscreen were the only things missing from the current Bold line. This pretty much gives you the perfect phone. What are you going to do with a million of the dumbest apps imaginable??? I got somewhere between 5-10 apps. Any more and I am probably neglecting one or I am spending way to much time on my phone. The fanboy rage fest in the smartphone arena I think has finally eclipsed both the AMD/Nvidia and AMD/Intel combined.
RIM still has the business, govt, and healthcare industries in their camp. I will continue to deploy BB at our firm because it is the only platform that allows for truly end to end IT management of the devices and it is totally robust compare to all the shitty Android device management. The iPhone is getting close but still not close enough.
An employee loses a BB device, I can easily remote wipe the data and render the device "UNUSABLE."
You can remote wipe with Android and iPhone but you cannot remote kill the device.
OS 7 is GREAT, I loved playing around with it on Playbook, and some of the new features are pretty good and it sure will be a smooth, fast BB. HOWEVER, the screen is SIMPLY TOO SMALL!!! There is SO MUCH WASTED ROOM all around the phone, they could have EASILY made it 3" screen, even if they had to make the phone a bit longer... such a small screen is just NOT acceptable these days! I know there's BB Torch, but they could totally make Bold usable as web device if they enlarged the screen a bit more.
Its not a miss genius. They are bringing the playbook out in two more sizes. One larger and one smaller than the current Playbook. Keep your panties on kiddo.
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i hope that blk berry makes better moves coming to the end of the year. All these new phones having cameras back and front with so much apps. they should note that the serious working class ppl that is blk berry, also like to play after 5pm. Its also pointless to have a bold thats touch screen. the screen is too small. i blk berry makes a mistake they will have set them selves up for a major blow! i am a blk berry fan and dont want to change but temptation has bin more than so, friends also feeling the same way. just lost 4 bbm contacts to iphone. come on!
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26 Comments
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von Krupp - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link
I await some reviews. Smoothness means nothing if the UI paradigms are still lacking in intuitiveness.asmoma - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - link
As long as moving your fingur up means scrolling down, then 60 fps is alfa omega.von Krupp - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - link
I disagree. I'm not the most familiar with smartphone navigation since I do not own one, but I picked up and toyed with phones with all five major OS flavours. iOS was, for obvious reasons, the fastest and easiest to use. Close second was Windows Phone 7. WebOS cam in a more distant third, but it was still leaps more intuitive than TouchWiz or Sense Android. At the very bottom is RIM's BB OS. Both 6 and its predecessor gave me trouble when navigating, and not because of lag.Lord 666 - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link
Unless this is just the first of a new lineup, RIM needs a true multimedia phone. Assuming this will lead to a Storm 3, but they need LTE for tethering.... especially with playback pairing.Stuka87 - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link
When I first heard that version 7 would not run on older phones, I figured "Oh good, they are finally moving QNX to the handhelds."But NoooOOOooo... Its the same old broken, dead end OS.
The hardware may very well be fine, but the best hardware in the world is worthless without a good OS.
synaesthetic - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - link
Why bother with putting touch on such a tiny screen?Seriously RIM, make a phone like the Dell Venue Pro. Big 4" high-res touchscreen, slide out Torch-style keyboard, QNX OS instead of BB OS, with the same MSM8x55 SoC...
People would eat them up!
alent1234 - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - link
a 2.8" screen on a $200 phone in 2011?a housewife i know bought a blackberry as a first smartphone last year. the uncoolness of BB's is well under way
earle36 - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - link
I think the new BlackBerry Bold Touch has a lot of potential. I'd like to see / use the device first to see if the email client (rendering emails) and browser are in fact significantly faster. I had a Bold 9700 and loved the device, but the browser was pretty bad and the emails took forever to fully render. I loved everything about the phone except the performance. I have a handful of Apps that I actually need on a mobile device, the most important is Browser, Email, and GPS. I left BlackBerry for a Samsung Focus (WP7) and love the phone, but miss having a physical keyboard - ALOT. So much that I'm considering getting this device. I love WP7 as an OS, but they don't have a portrait qwerty phone and I really enjoy using a real keyboard. I like the look of the new BlackBerry Bold, and if the OS is fast and smooth, I'd go back in a heartbeat.TrackSmart - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - link
You said: "I love WP7 as an OS, but they don't have a portrait qwerty phone"If that's really what you want, check out the Dell Venue Pro. It has a portrait QWERTY keyboard and WP7 and is available direct from Dell. Ebaying your old phone can help defer some of the cost.
earle36 - Wednesday, May 4, 2011 - link
You know, I checked out the DVP and really wanted to get the device. I went to the Microsoft store several times and used it when it first came out, and every time I went there it was sold out. Then I started seeing a bunch of issues crop up online that people were having with it: Bluetooth, engineering sample batteries shipping with devices, camera taking horrible shots in anything but full day light, headphone jack not fitting most headphones, not being able to connect to any secure wireless networks... just to mention a few. I realize that these issues were eventually rectified, but in the mean time, a lot of people were stuck with phones that had issues. Some people got replacement devices that was supposed to fix the issues and the replacement devices bricked . It took a long time for Dell to resolve the issues, and reading all the bad experiences that others had and seeing how Dell responded to these issues scared me away from the DVP:( I really wanted that phone, but went with the Focus.GruntboyX - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - link
As a BB owner, I am excited because it solves my biggest complaint. Performance. I have to problems with the UI or intuitiveness of the OS. I am a big fan of the qwerty candybar format they have. The touchscreen will be moderately useful, but the performance looks very promising.JasonInofuentes - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - link
We would love to hear more perspective from current and former BlackBerry owners. While there are some features that RIM is just not likely to become competitive in any time soon (App and Media ecosystems), lots of complaints have been pretty straightforward, performance. So do you users think that this hardware push alone could help level the playing field? Will a strong browser, strong hardware, strong (if dated) form factor and, arguably, the best e-mail and messaging experience available, be enough to bring RIM back to contention? Let us know.alent1234 - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - link
nowhen i had my iphone i used it for work email and rarely used my free work issued BB. since exchange on android is crappola i have to use my BB again. but it's such a PITA that i try to use my ipad 2 as much as possible
earle36 - Wednesday, May 4, 2011 - link
I would say yes. This is coming from a BlackBerry 9700 Bold user. Love the BlackBerry experience as a whole but as you stated, the performance was the issue for me. One which seems a bit dated is the whole design that content from the web gets filtered down through BB servers, which compress / cache the content (I'm not sure of the details here, it was covered in an Anandtech review of a recent BlackBerry - Torch maybe) before it reaches your device. The net result is extra hops before you get your data and a slower experience. I hope they improved (or killed) this architecture. Also, the way it deals with hotmail email. To be clear - this could entirely be my own fault for missing some setting or setting up my hotmail account incorrectly, but with my hotmail account my blackberry (9700) would poll its server (BB server) to retrieve the content at set intervals even though hotmail had push available. There wasn't a way for me to use the hotmail push service directly, it had to go through BB servers, which forced polling, yuck. It also did a horrible job of rendering Email. I'd open the email, fetch the image content, wait for a long time, and then have to scroll around to see the email, and it would often render incorrectly. Hopefully this changed with OS 6 / 7.As far as the apps go - for me i need only a few - good IM client, a movie app (Flixster), Facebook, and a few games. I use these regularly. The rest of the crap in the App store gets installed and never used. I just don't care that much about the whole Apps angle. To me its much more important that the OS provide the majority of functionality that I actually need to use on a daily basis (email, browsing, gps, etc). And shortcomings in these areas led me to WP7 because they were simply too bad to deal with compared to every other platform.
I love the physical phone, the way the OS navigates, the keyboard / texting / sending emails experience, but everything else needed a major uplift. And from some of the videos I'v seen on Crackberry featuring the new bold and OS improvements, it looks very promising.
jcbenten - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
I had an AT&T Bold 9000 and loved that phone. What BB does better than the Verizon DroidX is email. I had four accounts on the BB and it worked flawlessly: separate notifications, no issues. On the DroidX, Yahoo has stopped pushing, GMail started pushing after NOT pushing (go figure!) and do not get me started on Android and Exchange server. My best solution so far is to forward to Hotmail but I Cannot reply. PITA!!! The only redeeming feature of the DroidX is the GPS/Maps/Navigation.The weaklinks of my Bold were memory leaks (Facebook, etc) requiring battery pulls and the trackball.
I am waiting for the Storm 3, Torch or other new large screen to become available and I am switching back to BB (I have to use Verizon. All those who claim Verizon is better than AT&T are wrong). Email is too important for me.
Never tried iPhone. Maybe I should check out the Dell VP
SandmanWN - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
Touchscreen, plus keyboard, and a small form factor... Love it. A desperately needed speed boost and a touchscreen were the only things missing from the current Bold line. This pretty much gives you the perfect phone. What are you going to do with a million of the dumbest apps imaginable??? I got somewhere between 5-10 apps. Any more and I am probably neglecting one or I am spending way to much time on my phone. The fanboy rage fest in the smartphone arena I think has finally eclipsed both the AMD/Nvidia and AMD/Intel combined.vision33r - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - link
RIM still has the business, govt, and healthcare industries in their camp. I will continue to deploy BB at our firm because it is the only platform that allows for truly end to end IT management of the devices and it is totally robust compare to all the shitty Android device management. The iPhone is getting close but still not close enough.An employee loses a BB device, I can easily remote wipe the data and render the device "UNUSABLE."
You can remote wipe with Android and iPhone but you cannot remote kill the device.
Pessimism - Wednesday, May 4, 2011 - link
If only the capabilities you speak of extended to the offending employees themselves...kakfjak - Thursday, May 5, 2011 - link
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alexb1 - Sunday, May 8, 2011 - link
I seriously think RIM has lost touch!OS 7 is GREAT, I loved playing around with it on Playbook, and some of the new features are pretty good and it sure will be a smooth, fast BB. HOWEVER, the screen is SIMPLY TOO SMALL!!! There is SO MUCH WASTED ROOM all around the phone, they could have EASILY made it 3" screen, even if they had to make the phone a bit longer... such a small screen is just NOT acceptable these days! I know there's BB Torch, but they could totally make Bold usable as web device if they enlarged the screen a bit more.
BIG MISS!
SandmanWN - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
Its not a miss genius. They are bringing the playbook out in two more sizes. One larger and one smaller than the current Playbook. Keep your panties on kiddo.Pirks - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
yeah, right, you played with OS 7 on Playbook. really? when Playbook actually runs QNX? stop smoking that shit NOW!flyvog6 - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - link
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flyvog6 - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - link
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Our main product list is as follows:
aa0101bb - Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - link
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islandbood1 - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link
i hope that blk berry makes better moves coming to the end of the year. All these new phones having cameras back and front with so much apps. they should note that the serious working class ppl that is blk berry, also like to play after 5pm. Its also pointless to have a bold thats touch screen. the screen is too small. i blk berry makes a mistake they will have set them selves up for a major blow! i am a blk berry fan and dont want to change but temptation has bin more than so, friends also feeling the same way. just lost 4 bbm contacts to iphone. come on!