Business - Blackberry aims to stay step ahead

David Pogue

Thursday, October 30, 2008
Boy, oh boy. The bunch who brought you the BlackBerry has been a band of busy beavers.

With do-everything devices like the iPhone and the Google phone breathing down the BlackBerry's neck, its status as the best-selling smartphone isn't guaranteed forever. So this autumn, Research In Motion is introducing three radically different BlackBerry models, running all of them up the flagpole at once to see who salutes.

First, there's the Pearl Flip 8820, the first folding, clamshell BlackBerry. Second, there's the Bold 9000, a luxury-tinged design statement that screams, "Apple isn't the only one who can do gorgeous!"

Finally, there's the Storm, the first BlackBerry with a touch screen. That phone isn't ready for review yet; evidently, that Storm is still brewing.

But the Flip and the Bold are here, and they are very, very nice indeed.

Both phones feature new software, loaded with useful programs (like a very slick Clock/Stopwatch application) and white line-drawing icons against a jet-black background. As on the BlackBerry Pearl and the Curve, you navigate by turning a tiny, clickable trackball.

As usual, the strength of these BlackBerrys is e-mail, either individual or corporate. The new software offers fully formatted e-mail - fonts, bold, italic and so on - and pictures embedded right in the message. Word, Excel and PowerPoint attachments open right up, ready for simple edits.

Since these are BlackBerrys, they have physical, illuminated thumb keyboards. (Take that, iPhone!)

A hundred ingenious shortcuts save you time. Hit Space twice to get a period, a space and a capped next word. Hit Space when you're typing an e-mail address to get the @ symbol. Apostrophes appear in contractions automatically. And so on.

The much-improved Web browser is still not as nice as the iPhone's; you can't rotate the screen for ease in reading wide columns, for example. And there is no touch screen, so you can't pinch or spread your fingertips to zoom in and out. Instead, Web pages appear in miniature; you click the trackball to zoom in. It works well enough.

Both phones are sharp-looking, shiny and black, with bright, crisp screens (320 x 240 pixels on the Flip, 480 x 320 on the Bold). The headphone jack accommodates any headphones - or you can listen over Bluetooth stereo wireless headphones, a delicious and underhyped option. Removable battery, physical volume and camera keys, and a MicroSD memory-card slot are all standard on the two phones.

The Flip and the Bold can both hop onto wireless hot spots for speedy Web browsing and e-mail downloads. Each has a two-megapixel camera, with a tiny flash, that can also record video. Frankly, the photos and videos both look pretty lame - a rare exception to the "top-tier" mantra for these phones.

In other words, a rock-solid, corporate-dependable, e-mail-centric heart still beats inside these flashier, catchier BlackBerry models. Yet the Flip and the Bold are actually aimed at opposite ends of the audience spectrum.

The Flip, intended for the consuming masses, works great as a clamshell; the outer screen identifies incoming calls, notifies you of new e-mail and even lets you see the first couple lines of your messages. (Why doesn't it act as a self-portrait screen when you're using the camera, though?) And, of course, it's handy to be able to answer a call just by opening the hinge, and hang up by snapping it shut.

Still, the Flip costs half as much as the Bold, and that's no accident. It's thickish, and it feels insubstantial. Worse, it's slow; you sometimes wait several seconds for the response after you have pressed a button, and if you aren't using a third-generation mobile network, the wait for Web pages to load is agonizing. The software has a few bugs to be ironed out, too.

Like the BlackBerry Pearl, the Flip has only 14 keys to represent the whole alphabet. They're huge, so they're easy targets, but there are two letters painted on each key. The software generally figures out what word you are typing, but fussy manual intervention is sometimes required - when you're typing in some oddball last name, for example, or when more than one word could come from the same combination.

On the flip side (ha!), the primary buttons below the screen are in two rows - Call and Hang Up above, Menu and Back below - which is easier to learn and feel than the Bold's single row of four buttons.

And get this: In the United States, a client who pays an additional $10 a month can make unlimited phone calls from any Wi-Fi hot spot. That is a revolutionary feature that lets you avoid using regular cellular minutes, so you can sign up for a less expensive calling plan. Man, is that cool.

The Bold, on the other hand, costs a jaw-dropping $300 in the United States, even with a two-year AT&T contract. It's not svelte by any means - it's much wider than an iPhone, for example, thanks to that broad thumb keyboard - but it looks like a million bucks. Like the iPhone, the front is black with a silver bezel, but the back panel is bold indeed: it's "pleather." Yes, that's right: crinkled vinyl.

On technology blogs, much has been made of the fake leather, but hey - it's on the back. You don't really see it or even feel it much. But at least it's smudgeproof, unlike (ahem) certain other popular smartphones.

The Bold is a very fast little computer, responding instantly to every touch. A gigabyte of storage is built in. The Web and e-mail messages are speedy when you are in a 3G network area. And the Bold is quad-band, meaning that it will work in almost any country, if you can afford the roaming fees.

Phone calls are unbelievably crisp and clear, and there is enough power in the built-in speaker to fill your office like a tabletop radio.

The Bold also has GPS capability with turn-by-turn directions - everything but a windshield suction cup. And like most BlackBerrys, you can charge it from any computer with any USB cable. (The Flip, alas, abandons this tradition and requires a special cable.)

You should note, however, that although the BlackBerry platform is now mature, it's showing some cracks; with great features comes great complexity.

Both phones make you look in three different places for a certain program: on the Home screen, where you can park five favorite icons; in the "expanded Home screen," which lists a full panoply of icons; and in the Applications folder, which lists still more. This problem will only get worse when the online BlackBerry Applications Store - like the ones for the iPhone and Google phones - opens in March.

There are two different Web browsers, two different e-mail programs, two different chat programs. Confusingly, there is no unified design from one add-on program to the next. The Bold even comes with unsolicited trialware programs, just as on new Windows PCs. Is this what the cellphone is coming to? Yuck.

Keep in mind, too, that a BlackBerry is not an iPod. There's a music player, and in the United States, AT&T has a downloadable music store, but the offerings feel like afterthoughts. Music and video are nowhere close to being highlights of the machine, as they are on the iPhone.

Even so, Research In Motion is firing on all cylinders these days. If e-mail figures in your mobile life more prominently than entertainment, then you'll be very happy with either one of these phones.

Or, put another way: The BlackBerry brigade is bursting with boasts about both of these beautiful bad boys. But do they bring benefits? Are they best-of-breed?

You betcha.