BlackBerry Bold 9000 Sim Free Unlocked Mobile Phone (Black)

First blackberry i've owned and i'm impressed. Very easy to setup to sync mail from personal and work accounts. Easy to use menu system with nice icons and a good screen. Battery life is also excellent. Very good looking phone, not too big. Camera is ok (but not really it's main selling point). Connectivity is also very good and the browser is easy to use. Media capabilities are also good for a BlackBerry. Highly recommended for those who want a good work biased phone with some media friendly features.

This phone is awesome! It beats the N96 hands down! The screen quality is brilliant, crystal clear. Email is push so you get them in real time, and its easy to setup. The interface is intuitive, and as with all modern bb's it has a nav wheel thats easy, and feels good to use. Because it has a full qwerty, its real quick to write messages. The quality of sound from the speakers is much better than my old n95.
The satnav is quality, I have it on Voda and I get 18 months free satnav.
The camera has less pixels than most modern phones but don't let that fool you!, the quality is brilliant, you can even upload then straight to facebook, and even geotag them.
Even the games that come in the handset are good, block breaker is very addictive.
The battery life is really good, with no noticeable difference with windows live messenger left running.
I had this on release and had no problems, just call your network and have the blackberry service provisioned, and away you go!

This is an e-mail terminal with an excellent display and a poor camera. It's also a good media player for music and video, but it's let down by many software bugs with new ones appearing as old ones are fixed.
When I got the phone in Feb 09 it crashed regularly, until it had major software updates. The update process is scary, taking 30~60 minutes during which time you wonder if the phone will be turned into a "brick".
Roxio media manager, supplied with Blackberry Desktop Manager for transfer of pictures and music between the the phone and a PC, is slow and a resource hog. The update manager which comes with Roxio has caused slow boot problems on many PCs I've seen. Use MSConfig to disable start-up of ISUSPM to cure this problem. Set the phone into Mass Storage Mode so it appears as an extra disc drive when connected to your PC, and you don't need Roxio.
Be careful when picking it up: if you grip it "top to bottom" the back cover comes off - it has very fragile looking clips to hold it in place. When removing it from the holster you cannot help but press on the LCD, leaving a distorted region on the display for a few seconds - does this help the display lifetime?
Sept 09: now with the latest software v4.6.0.301. It is much more stable, but has a new problem. The time to scan the media card and display image thumbnails is very long. I have an 8Gb card in the phone, with only 100~200 stored photos. If the phone has been connected to a PC via USB, the media card scan takes ~5 mins before you can view any stored pictures. If it's been rebooted from a battery pull expect 20+ minutes before it's completed scanning the card. Scrolling through thumbnails of stored pictures is painful as the update rate is so slow - no flicking through dozens of pictures iPhone style on this thing.

Yes this is the creme of all the blackberry's, yes its a little on the larger side however this is soon forgotten as you realise why this is top spec, it plays divx, wmv, and all the other media types you can think offm with ease. It has the mp3 player function, 3g and hsdpa and the processer of the chip is the fastest in the range. So the applications and menu system is as fast as ever. The keyboard is better then the curve as has ridged edges is larger spread and by far is the easiest of the range to type with (however you find yourself sending 6/6 sms in one go so easily!) speakerphone is adequate though many other users as me say the sound on other end us up and down, something you expect bb to have sorted with this. The batterylife is amazing and last for days, this is me who uses his phone every other minuite on the pretence im a high flying business man, when really i just like the phone! Apps are getting better, however got to admit the iphone takes the biscuit on that one. The organiser and calender functions are amazing and once you learn the shortcuts youl wonder how you will ever wean yourself back to a normal phone, get yourself to a chemist and ask for a blackberry patch, im not kidding! Would I buy this phone again? no becasue for an extra 10pounds id buy the 9700 same spec all in all, but its smaller and has a 3.2 autofocus, flash camera, talk about having a hot younger sister, perfect.

First off I would just like to say this is the first Blackberry I have owned so I was going in to buying it with my eyes closed.

On recieving my phone it was packaged surprisingly small from what older phones I had. On first looks of the phone I couldn't take my eyes off it.

People have commented on how the software is buggy and that you have to pay to upgrade the software? I must say I have never had a problem with the software on my Blackberry and I have never had to pay to upgrade the software on mine.

The Blackberry is a very simple phone to use. All you have to do is take a few minutes to look through the menus and get used to how it works. The same as every phone.

The phone has a very bright vibrant screen and with the excellent trackball function, scrolling through menus and internet pages is made very easy.

It plays audio the best I have heard on a phone. Also having its own 3.5mm jack means you can finally use your own earphones and none of the ones provided by the phone companys. On that note I must say I have never tried the earphones provided with the Blackberry and just opted to use my own from the start.

The phone comes with some very nice applications also. Including Blackberry Maps if you need to know where to get to. Applications can be installed easily by downloading from sites and the phone will install them for you or you can download/install via computer.

The BB Bold takes a step up from the Curve and is the fastst BB on the market. It comes with 3G+ provided you are in the correct areas. The internet access is incredible matching some home broadband. Also with the ability to connect via WiFi you inevitably have the option to remain on the internet 24/7. The only time I have lost a connection so far is being in the wilderness or going through a tunnel.

The last thing I would like to comment on and the single down point about the phone is the battery life. Although this can be extended drastically if your not using your phone 24 hours a day like myself. If your not using GPS/Internet/WiFi/Bluetooth you can easily get a good few days battery life.

All in all an excellent phone and one which really makes me think I will be staying with the Blackberry brand for a long time.