Today I got the grand opportunity to play with the anticipated AT&T Bold set to launch this next Tuesday on Election day. Let me tell you it was everything I had hoped for and more. Right when I got in I was eyeing the entire room looking for the Bold. Took two freaking hours before I even got to touch the maginificent beauty. Trust me it was well worth the wait. The Bold I got to play with was a evaluation unit direct from RIM, that had the stickers on the back that stated just that and being property of RIM itself.
SOUND
First off to test was the speaker quality. I made a few test calls here and there and everyone I talked to was amazed at the clear cut quality of the call. Better than the 8820 I’m currently using now. Next up was making a few calls via bluetooth to see if they quality went down or improved. I noticed that the calls was a little bit louder than on the handset itself, but I’ve noticed that with many handsets when using it in connection with a bluetooth device. Third, but not last was to play a song. Wow!! Lets just say that was some great music coming from the speakers of the Bold. Don’t know how many of you out there have ever played with a Sony Ericsson phone, but those phones are pretty much music players. Well I got hear them side by side and lets just say it beat the Sony out of the water.
VIDEO
I went ahead and played a couple of short clips from AT&T’s Cellular Video application. The screen quality of the videos were quite good. I saw a buffer once throughout testing the different videos that I played on it. I compared it with a iPhone 3G on Youtube. I saw the same buffer on both devices at the exact same point. No difference there and saw about the same quality of both devices. So far hand in hand.
BROWSING
Here comes the best part!! I loaded 4 websites on 3 devices; Bold, iPhone 3G, & Sony Ericsson 760A. I will list them in quickness to loading.
BOLD: ThemeUrBB, BRS & PinStack and last was CrackBerry (Probably due to the high amount of embedded script in their website)
iPHONE 3G: ThemeUrBB, PinStack, BRS, CrackBerry
SONY 760A: CrackBerry (picked up its wap site), ThemeUrBB, BRS, & PinStack.
Bold seems to win those tests hands down. It does give you the desktop like experience that RIM proclaims it does. No doubt in that. I tried several other sites and was not let down at all. CrackBerry was slow of course cause it has so much java, takes forever on my laptop too, LOL. Screen resolution is amazing, really does go step by step in high quality of the iphone’s screen resolution.
KEYBOARD
This is for my pal Archer who is very borderline because of the keyboard feel with him. I have used both the Curve and the 8820, don’t get me wrong I love both keyboards especially the feel of the Curves. But the 8820 I can type quicker than I ever did on the Curve. This was the case with the Bold. I sent out a few emails and sms messages here and there and noticed no slowdown at all. The keyboard doesn’t make that hard click when you use the Curve or the 8820’s, but yet a gentle one. I noticed no lag between the keys being pressed and them actually showing on the screen itself. They have a smooth feel and nice texture to them. I can see myself transitioning over quite well without looking back.
All in all I give the Bold a 10 out of 10 and will be looking forward to calling it my own soon.
Let me know if you all have any questions at all that I didn’t address.