Hardware Review: BlackBerry Bold 9000 (Part 1)

After going through a total of FIVE BlackBerry phones with AT&T I’ve landed on a good one that isn’t falling apart. But don’t think this is going to be a bad review about the Bold just because I had to make four separate visits to the AT&T store… that’s over 75 miles away from where I work. No, In fact part of this doesn’t really have anything to do with the BlackBerry Bold, 3 of the phones I rejected were BlackBerry Curve 8310’s, all of which had serious defects.

The first 8310 was literately falling apart, the plastic face plate was falling off, the LCD screen was screwed up to where menus that were supposed to be gray in color were pink, and photos looked all jacked up. The first “new” 8310 I received was garbage, keep in mind that all of these phones are “new” from various AT&T stores. I returned the first phone and they replaced it no questions asked. So the body of the 2nd phone was perfect, but when I was playing with the phone in the dark I noticed 2 bright white specs, dead pixels in the LCD screen. Great. I returned the 2nd blackberry for a 3rd, sure enough I was back to having loose plastic molding and a jammed in ‘Talk’ button that was barely usable, I brought it back to the store minutes after activating it on my account. I was sick of the shotty quality of the BlackBerry Curve so I paid an additional $340.00 and upgraded to the BlackBerry Bold 9000.

Un-boxing the Bold was a trip, what an amazing phone with its beautiful screen and upgraded OS. It was awesome. But after I got into playing with it at home I noticed something, the backlight behind the track ball and keyboard would flicker, like a florescent light about to fail. When I would use the Wi-Fi it would flicker more, violently, almost if the radio(s) in the phone were causing some sort of short. I was ticked off, I called AT&T and they said the only thing I can do is return the phone. By now the employees of the 2 local AT&T stores think I’ve completely lost it, I’ve gone through 4 phones in 5 days and I’m about to return another for a 5th. But whatever, if I’m paying full retail price, $400.00 plus a $20 re-stocking fee, for a freakin’ cell phone - it better be PERFECT. Plus, they don’t have a choice.

So here I am, typing this review on my 5th BlackBerry phone with AT&T, I sent in the rebate paperwork this afternoon, I have everything set up the way I like it so there’s no going back now (That and I have a feeling that if I do return to the store again, I may be arrested.)

With all of that said I’m going to break this ‘review’ of sorts into 3 parts - The 1st you just read, basically four paragraphs of me ranting about BlackBerry’s sub-par build quality, the 2nd will be my actual review of the phone and it’s features, and the 3rd part will focus on a serious security flaw with AT&T’s BlackBerry email activation process that caused me and my uncle in New York a lot of headaches. Stay Tuned.