Five minutes to assess the Bold: yeah, it can be done!
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 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)