Hands-on with the BlackBerry 9000 ‘Bold’

RIM has lifted the covers off the long-awaited BlackBerry 9000, now officially branded as the 'BlackBerry Bold'.

That marketing moniker is perhaps the least appealing part of the BlackBerry 9000 – it simply doesn’t sound as ‘sexy’ as the Pearl or Curve, nor is it all that accurate. There’s nothing particularly bold, brave or daring about the 9000: RIM simply threw in everything they had, which means just about everything that most BlackBerry fans could wish for, while still keeping their feet planted on the terra firma of their mobile email expertise.

So the BlackBerry 9000 certainly isn’t intended as an ‘iPhone killer’ (although that won’t stop hundreds of lazy pundits reaching for such an easy click-whoring headline). It is, however, the ultimate BlackBerry.

HSDPA, at last

As predicted, the 9000 series will include a 3G HSDPA model (we’re yet to confirm what speed it’s rated at, although we suspect HSDPA 3.6). This is tipped to touchdown on Australian shores in June, and we’d expect longtime RIM partner Vodafone and newcomer Three jostling to be first out of the gate.

The 9000’s support for 3G on 850MHz as well as the conventional 2100MHz band means we could also be looking at the Telstra’s first Next G BlackBerry. (850MHz and 1900MHz are both used in North America to provide 3G services, so those bands are offered as 3G or ‘UMTS’ on the BlackBerry 9000 along with the quad-band GSM on 850/900/1800/1900MHz with GPRS and EDGE).

In addition to working as a native HSDPA device the 9000 can be connected via USB to a notebook for use as a mobile broadband modem. This feature relies on the appropriate OS drivers being made available and our information is that this currently applies only to Windows Vista, XP and 2000 (as is the case with the 3G 8707g, which offers the same 'tethered modem' functionality).

3G, especially when coupled with HSDPA, is notorious for hastening battery drain, and that’s clearly a prime concern for RIM because exceptional battery life has long been a hallmark of the BlackBerry fleet. The 9000 is fitted with a high capacity 1500mAh cell. This is slightly up on the 1400mAh tank of the 8800 (the first BlackBerry equipped with battery-sucking Wi-Fi and GPS, both of which which also appear in the 9000) and well over the 1000mAh of the Curve and 8700 series, and the 900mAh battery of the Pearl.

The 9000’s spec sheet cites a ‘target talk time’ of five hours and a ‘target standby time’ of 13 days. Buyers are naturally wise to take any vendor’s claims with a dash of salt, especially when they’re prefaced by a rather nebulous and hopeful word like ‘target’, although high-speed Web browsing, Wi-Fi and GPS navigation are obviously going to vastly increase your daily usage of the device beyond mere phone calls and a quick ping for push email.

The 9000 is also noticeably ‘snappier’ all around, from basic functions to performance-intensive tasks, no doubt thanks to RIM’s choice of Marvell's 624MHz ARM-based XScale processor over the 312MHz XScale engine of the Curve and 8800. There’s none of the response lag to which we’ve grown accustomed on the Curve. As we noted in our preview last week, Marvell gained Intel's XScale processor line in mid-2006 when Intel opted to develop a pint-sized family of x86 chips now known as the Atom. While Intel clearly has designs on the small device space, ARM currently remains the dominant processor platform of the smartphone world (the iPhone also uses a 620MHz ARM processor).

A little bigger, a lot better

As to the unit’s physical form, it seems fractionally larger than the 8800 series and thus noticeably beefier than the svelte Curve, although it’s got the right ratio of size and weight to ‘heft’ so it feels natural in the hand. The design takes cues from both the 8800 and the Curve and is finish is black with dark red accents for secondary key function and a subtle soft chrome-look (albeit plastic) strip around the chassis – a classic designer’s trick that draws your attention to the inner black bulk of the device to make the unit look slightly smaller.

While the larger size of the 9000 is dictated by cramming so much technology under the hood, RIM has also increased the screen size and resolution. The display panel is identical in height to the Curve but slightly wider, while the resolution leaps from the 320 x 240 of the Curve and 8800 to 480 x 320, or ‘half VGA’.

And it’s brilliant: not just bigger but brighter and sharper than we’ve ever seen on a BlackBerry. RIM have used this to best effect by facelifting the OS with new icons, application UIs, a slick ‘Precision’ theme and subtle graphics effects such as transparency.

We’ll delve more into the OS once we’ve had a chance to dig deeper, but it’s worth noting that the 9000 comes preloaded with the Documents To Go mobile suite. Popularised on the Palm, Docs to Go supports native viewing and editing of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, although we’re told that this first edition doesn’t support Office 2007’s XML-based formats.

The OS and core applications are loaded in 128MB of flash memory (paving the way for future updates), with 1GB of RAM for data, user files (such as documents, photos and music) and third-party software. There’s also a microSDHC card slot which is thankfully located on the left side of the 9000’s chassis rather than buried inside the rear cover and beneath the battery, as has been the case in most previous BlackBerry models.

Also situated on the left side panel is a 3.5mm stereo jack so you can plug in your favourite pair of headphones. This is one sign that RIM wants the 9000 to be seen as a smartphone with serious multimedia street cred – many other phones resort to a 2.5mm jack which requires a cumbersome 3.5mm adaptor or, worse still, a proprietary connector which works only with a bundled and usually second-rate headset. We also noted that RIM reckons the 9000’s desktop BlackBerry Media Sync tool allows synchronisation of non-DRM music between iTunes and the Bold if you’re using Windows XP or Vista. The digital camera is the same as introduced in the second-gen Pearl 8120: a 2.0 megapixel lens with flash and 5x digital zoom.

But for most of the mobile email crowd, the keyboard remains the dealbreaker. That’s an area which RIM has largely aced in each successive BlackBerry, and few other smartphone manufacturers have been able to equal (although Motorola’s Moto Q 9h comes close). That said, this writer prefers the Curve to the 8800 because the Curve’s keys have more pronounced spacing.

Our first glance at the 9000’s tight-fit keyboard drew cause for concern – would this be the Bold’s fatal flaw? Bearing in mind that these are very early impressions, we think we’d still prefer the Curve but would have little difficulty adapting to the 9000 – RIM’s designers seem to have finessed the underlying layout of the 8800 and even the camber of the keys themselves. Again, we’ll be able to make a firmer call once we’ve spent serious time with our paws on the plastic, and hopefully that’ll be in the next few days. In the meantime, you can read more at RIM’s just-launched www.blackberrybold.com site.

David Flynn is attending WES in Orlando, Florida as a guest of RIM.