tOMPSON’s blog

Looks like the Storm is the step of RIM trying to hit the consumer market.

On Saturday I finally got my BlackBerry Bold. On Wednesday last week, while I was in Croatia on vacation, I got a call from the Mobilkom shop telling me that it had arrived. I bought a 8GB micro SD card and updated the OS to 4.6.0.150 - now the Bold is ready to serve me.

After using the Bold now for three days I am really impressed:

• the screen is great - crisp, bright and sharp
• WiFi is works perfect - best for watching youtube vids
• The camera is better than the one of the curve, even with the same resolution
• Battery Life is good. First load on Saturday morning and now (three days later) it seems I will have to load it again overnight. This is quite good for playing around a lot with the gadget.

Now I have to fill my SD card with music and videos and test the entertainment qualities of the device.

It seems that RIM changed the behavior of their BIS servers. Today I read on BlackBerryNews that they are experiencing their BIS mails getting to them with less latency.

I wondered yesterday about the same fact and after reading their post I tested my mail server. The email came to my BlackBerry within seconds. I looks like finally RIM uses the IMAP IDLE command for push email instead of polling the IMAP server every five minutes. I am really happy about that! BIS users had to wait a long time for that.

Now my BIS account is working better than my BlackBerry Professional account because it brings in the mails with the same speed and shows HTML rendering. For my Professional server there is still no update available that allows to activate HTML rendering.

As RIMarkable and BlackBerryCool say the Bold is now available on the T-Mobile Germany site. Interesting. I registered for an update per email as soon as the device is available but I did not get any information. There is also an article saying T-Mobile Austria launches BlackBerry Bold but it is not available in the online shop until now.

I am wondering how long it will take until I see the first Bold live in action and even more when it will be sold by Mobilkom Austria. I hope it will be earlier than the internal date 1st September.

A lot of BlackBerry sites already predicted it today: The BlackBerry Media Sync application allows to sync BlackBerry devices with iTunes. The 30 Megs download is available here. My download is already running and I am curios about how good this stuff works - will it sync PodCasts?

This week Boy Genius had tow great new posts about the BlackBerry Bold:

• BlackBerry Bold review: we’ve been rockin’ it for a month
• BlackBerry Bold vs. iPhone 3G: yeah, we definitely went there

So if you got some minutes take the time and read through those two. They have to some some very different things:

At first glance, the first thing you’ll see is obviously the gorgeous screen on the 9000. We can safely say that this is the best screen we’ve ever seen on a mobile device. Hands down.

Contra:

It’s now July 15th, and even running the latest 4.6.0.93 build, we’re still pulling the battery out a good 10 times a day. Why? Between the constant java errors, and the BlackBerry completely losing service and informing us it’s “Searching for Network…”. That’s why.

Seems RIM has to do some major improvements to the software of the device! Whereas this sounds good to me:

With the latest software version, we can safely say we’re getting as good or better battery life than we did with our Curve. Yes. Isn’t that awesome? Thanks to 1500mAh battery and a crap load of engineering on RIM’s part, they’ve finally got it nailed down.

I am still wondering when the first Bold will be selled officially.

Release dates of the BlackBerry Bold pop up around the world: Rogers release may happen on 25th of June and Vodafone’s current date is 30th July and has they have the Bold already up on their UK website. Lets see what this means for my carrier the Mobilkom Austria which is a partner of Vodafone.

It seems like HTML email for BlackBerry devices is just around the corner. The new version 2.5. of BlackBerry Internet Service allows it and if the device is on OS version 4.5 it will render HTML. See this official RIM document for detailed information. Now it is just a question of how quick the carriers will update their BlackBerry Internet Service.

Meanwhile Vodafone Germany released OS 4.5 for all their devices. Now I hope it is just a matter of time until the corresponding versions of BlackBerry Enterprise Server and Professional services to enable the features of the new OS.

A lot new information for us BlackBerry fans while the WES is going on. While the BlackBerry Bold was officially announced on the first day:

BG wrote about another BlackBerry device coming out this year: The BlackBerry touchscreen device (codename Thunder) many rumors this year already talked about. Although I am quite sure I would prefer the Bold against the Thunder I am very curious about how the Thunder will look and feel like.

Meanwhile the first “sepcial customers” get the Bold while rumors predict that the Bold will be available some when between October and December this year. This seems way to far away - I need one now!

Another two interesting things from the WES: There will be multiple battery covers for the BlackBerry Bold in different colors feeling like some sort of leather. Unify4Life shows some interesting kind of software for the BlackBerry that allows to control your home entertainment system.

Something funny at the end: I think this video of the RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie shows that he has a lot of humor:

Tonight the BlackBerry Bold (formerly know as BlackBerry 9000) was officially announced by RIM. Go here for the official press release and check out the new dedicated site. Previously the hard specs already were around on the web:

• Size - Length: 144mm, Width: 66mm, Thickness: 14mm
• Weight (with battery) - 133g (same as the 88xx series)
• Memory - 1GB on-board plus 128 MB Flash
• Battery - 1500mAhr lithium cell
• Est. Battery Life - Standby: 13 days, Talk Time: 5 hours
• Network Support - UMTS: 2100 / 1900 / 850MHz, GSM: 1900 / 1800 / 900 / 850 MHz, GPRS, EDGE and HDSPA networks
• Wi-Fi - 803.11a/b/g enabled
• Display - HVGA, 480 x 320 pixels, Transmissive TFT LCD, supports over 65k colors
• Media Player, Video Support - DivX 4, DivX 5 & 6 are partially supported, XviD is partially supported, H.263, H.264 and WMV3
• Media Player, Audio Support - .3gp, MP3, WMA9 (.wma/.asf), WMA9 Pro/WMA 10, MIDI, AMR-NB, Professional AAC/AAC+/eAAC+
• Media Player, Audio - BlackBerry Media Sync allows you to transfer your desktop iTunes music to your BlackBerry
• Camera - 2.0MP, 5 x digital zoom (with flash of course)
• GPS - internal GPS with extended ephemeris, BB Maps is standard
• Bluetooth - Bluetooth v2.0, all the normal stuff and Bluetooth Stereo Audio via A2DP and AVCRP
• USB Port - Enables charging and high-speed data synchronizations via USB “A” to mini-USB “B” cable
• Browser - HTML browsing, View Movies/Clips from websites built for mobile streaming, RSS feed support

My favorite features? Definitely the internal memory upgrade to 1GB, the new screen resolution and the possibility to synchronize iTunes with the BlackBerry (I am thinking about podcasts on my BlackBerry!).