Blackberry Bold Sim Card Views
At this point I realized I did not have my SIM card yet installed in the 9000. I rebooted and to my relief quickly discovered my BlackBerry 9000 was in fact completely and fully usable (I had a feeling that since the eBay auction was pulled maybe the device would be remotely locked out somehow). With SIM card installed,the device Registered on the Rogers Network. I logged into my BIS account online where it detected the new PIN and asked me if I wanted to switch to this device. I did, sent the Service Books and was up and running. Last thing left to do was sync my contacts over (yup, BlackBerry Desktop Manager 4.3 seemed to work fine for me with the 9000) and insert my Media Card into the externally accessible slot. The BlackBerry 9000 is officially now my daily driver!
Other phone features of the Bold include quad-band world roaming, a speakerphone, conference calling, voice-activated dialing, speed dial, and text and multimedia messaging. The mobile also has background noise cancellation technology to help call quality, and you have the option to boost the bass or treble levels when on a call. The address book is limited only by the available memory (the SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts) with room in each entry for multiple phone numbers, e-mail addresses, work and home addresses, job title, and more. For caller ID purposes, you can assign a photo to a contact as well a group category--business or personal--or one of 32 polyphonic ringtones. Bluetooth 2.0 is onboard for use with mono and stereo headsets and hands-free kits. There's also support for the serial port profile and dial-up networking.
The BlackBerry Bold has plenty of multimedia options, and with the smartphone's brilliant display and awesome speaker, we think it's one of the main highlights of the phone. The built-in media player can play various music and video formats, including MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, and MIDI music files, and MPEG4, WMV, DivX4, XviD (partial support), and H.263 video clips. There's a search function, playlist creation, shuffle and repeat, and you get a full-screen mode for video playback. The included software CD also contains a copy of Roxio Easy Media Creator, so you can create MP3s from CDs and add audio tags. The Bold also works with the BlackBerry Media Sync application so you can load your iTunes library. The Bold has 1GB of onboard memory and 128MB of flash memory onboard, while the expansion slot can accept up to 16GB cards.
Performance We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; UMTS/HSDPA 850/1900/2000) RIM BlackBerry Bold in San Francisco using ATeT service and call quality was good. Voices sounded clear on our end with very little background noise, and we had no problems using an airline's voice automated response system. Our friends reported similarly positive results with no major complaints. The speakerphone was decent. The sound quality diminished a bit, but we were still able to carry on conversations just fine. We didn't experience any reception problems or dropped calls during our review period, but we'll continue to test the phone and report any issues that come up. We successfully paired the Bold with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset and the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.
Blackberry Bold Sim Card Images
