BlackBerry Bold: the five-minute fiddle

You may have seen my other posts on my five-minute fiddles with the Nokia N96 and Sony Ericsson C905 – well today, I did really have 5 mins with the Blackberry (NSDQ: RIMM) Bold to check it out – headlines below (read the other posts here and here)….

By the way, just to recap on the point of the five-minute fiddle – I’d estimate this the average time that someone who is browsing/buying a phone in a shop might have to evaluate a phone before they make a decision on it. It cold of course equal be that a friend lends them their phone to try out – but overall, limited time to form an impression on whether it be gooood, or it be baaaaaad. That’s baaaaaaaad, just in case you were wondering on the spelling

So for the Bold:

• build quality – felt VERY good in the hand – solid, yet light, nice tactile keys
• key layout – come on, it’s a BlackBerry – excellent, naturally
• O/S ease of use – top-level menus good, but spotted the bad old list menus have barely changed. Disappointed. RIM, you have work to do here….
• option-finding complexity – high – due to those list menus!
  Email handling – well, the person I borrowed the phone off said they had had NO email delivered all morning – most unlike a BBerry to have push email issues, and I REALLY hope that isn’t a sign…
• media handling –no time to check
• progression of BBerry series with this device: I’d say between good to excellent!

So in summary, I walked away impressed with the Bold – I’m sure the push email delivery problem was a config issue, and the Bold is at least competent in each area – and now it’s a little more consumer-friendly. Roll on the Storm for me to have a five-minute fiddle with please!

Overall rating: Good – I’d seriously consider one

Grade: A (solid performance)