Here at phonewreck, we’ve found our audience is interested in both phones and other related consumer electronic devices. We’ve been humming and hawing about new devices that we’d really like to play with when the BlackBerry Presenter pretty much landed on our laps.

In the realm of Bluetooth accessories,  this thing is by far one of the most complicated we’ve seen to date. With a ~$200 price-tag, we thought it would be nice to take it through it’s paces and rip it apart to see what makes it beat.

Review after the jump! Make sure to follow @DrWreck on twitter.

Our first impression of the BlackBerry presenter is: Glorius. VGA peripherals are often too light and the heavy guage cable can make it difficult to place them on the desk (pico projector’s etc.). RIM has done a wonderful job of co-designing a hefty device that won’t suffer from this plight. In true BlackBerry form, this device ships with a fantastic faux leather case – complete with magnetic flap. Pulling this baby out at a conference or small presentation is sure to raise some questions – it’s a fairly clever application.

Moving around the back of the device, we can see the VGA, S-video and microUSB ports as well as a NTSC/PAL switch.

Once again, things are solid, minimal and the spacing between ports won’t cause any issues.

The hardware is great – it looks sexy and makes sense. Now, how about it’s functionality!

Boom. Roasted.

This particular device barely worked. In fact, the team only saw it display a presentation once (in about 15 tries) and we were too disappointed in the quality to take photos. The highest native resolution is 1024×768 – missing out on wide-screen supported resolutions seems like an over-sight. That said, most .ppt’s are developed in a 4:3 aspect ratio so it does make sense.

The process of getting this thing working should be simple:

1. Plug it into a VGA or S-video display

2. Plug it into the wall

3. Download the BlackBerry app via some obscure URL you must manually input into your device

4. Load said .ppt onto your BlackBerry

5. Connect to the BlackBerry Presenter via Bluetooth (passkey is on the bottom of the device and displayed on-screen)

6. Launch BB app

7. Select Presentation

8. Click your ball/pad  and select “present”

9. Receive a connection Error

10. Reconnect Via bluetooth

11. Receive Error

12. Unplug everything

13. Receive Error

14. Reinstall Everything

15. Works, yay!

16. Receive Error

17. Wonder why you didn’t buy a netbook to “display” your .ppt’s natively using Powerpoint.

………

17 steps! Yikes, I have a feeling we’ve got a lemon here. To it’s credit it makes for a perfectly sized skipping stone.  Once, it even displayed our ppt long enough for full-navigation. Unfortunately the font was not recognized and our slide transitions were choppy. Any gradiated colours look washed out and grainy – we’re pretty sure it only displays 256 colours.

You can also manually load a .ppt to the device while it is connected via USB. It has 8MB of internal memory. Luckily the device won’t display video’s or any other rich media within your presentation so 8MB should be good for about 30 slides with images.

Unfortunately, you can’t navigate the presentations without a BlackBerry. There are no nav buttons on the device itself. Can’t get your BB to connect? You’re out of luck.

Now, don’t get us wrong. We’ve seen this device work and we really do like the application. Our impression of the functionality is that the BlackBerry App converts the .ppt to a low quality jpeg, and sends it OTA via Bluetooth to the presenter which cache’s the content and then displays it. In a way, it seems like an unnecessary step – why can’t we just connect our BlackBerry straight to a presentation device (monitor or projector)? BlackBerry Devices are first and foremost professional grade smart-phones designed for business related applications. Forking out an additional ~$200 bucks for “video-out capabilities” seems overly redundant. Is there an IC that would allow this transaction? Let us know!

In summary, the device looks great but doesn’t work very well. Thankfully (as mentioned before) it’s hefty. It makes a really cool-looking and solid paperweight.

Dr.Wreck’s score: 3 perfectly sized skipping stones out of 10

Now to take it apart!

The underside of the device has a rubber pad. The 4, T7 hex screws holding it together can be found there. Peel it away.

Once these screws are out, the upper portion of the chassis will pull away from the base-plate and logic board.

Don’t pry on the PCB – it’s secured in place via the VGA port. Use pliers or a very small (5mm) wrench to loosen the “screws”.

That’s it! The PCB should fall into your lap! Let’s take a look at what’s on it.

Texas Instruments literally has a monopoly on this PCB. The Digital Media System on a Chip (DMSoC) is a derivative of the historical and popular TMS320 device (DSP). This particular device also known as the DaVinci Video Processor, has a single ARM9 core, 32KB of RAM a hardware accelerator and co-processor. We estimate it’s running at ~220MHz.

The external video ports runs through a TV Encoder manufactured by FOCUS enhancements. This particular device, part of the FS45x family takes digital video or computer graphics and converts to high quality analog video. These devices exist in products that deliver really high quality content – it makes us wonder what the problem was here with the BlackBerry Presenter. Our thoughts are that the images were scaled and compressed to make Bluetooth transmission faster and more seamless. Output resolutions of 480P to 1080i can be achieved with these devices.

The PMIC is also designed by Texas Instruments – the device is actually designed for Lithium Ion Powered Systems but RIM (or it’s 3rd party designer) found an application in this device.

The flash win went to STMicroelectronics and Numonyx/Micron with an MCP (Multi-Chip package) that includes both memory and RAM. By the looks of it, this is a a 1GBit NAND with 512Mbit of DRAM – only 8MB of storage is made available to the user.

Lastly we move onto the most interesting part of the board, the Bluetooth IC. Look like a product from the well-known Bluetooth IC provider CSR. The BC6450A, a member of the BlueCore family has a -90dBm receiver sensitivity and comes in a very small 3.49×3.21 WLCSP (wafter level chip scale package).

That’s it, that’s all! If you have any questions, make sure to contact us!

@DrWreck

So here it is, the much awaited Palm Pre.   Dr. Phone and Dr. Wreck have been following the handset industry from the days of the so cool Zack Morris brick phone (which we were happy to see once again appear on a recent episode of Jimmy Fallon) to the astronomically popular Motorola Razr, all the way through the Apple iPhone.  Its not even hyperbole to say that at no time ever has one single phone meant more to a company than the Pre does to Palm.  With the Research In Motion branded Blackberry redefining the smart phone by its Pearl, Curve, Bold and Storm entries, and Apple setting the gold standard for all smart phones by its introduction into the market with the iPhone, the Sunnyvale, CA based Palm had become a distant afterthought.  For years the company struggled along rumors of being bought out or broken apart culminating with the stock price reaching an all time low of $1.42 in December of 2008.   But then, with the announcement and demo of the Pre at the January 2009 CES in Las Vegas, the company built back enough momentum to inject energy into the Palm brand.   The phoneWreck team has been waiting anxiously to review the Pre and promises to break down every nook and cranny of this monumental phone.  As always, we will call it like we see it, and promise to pull no punches so enough of this nostalgia already and in the words of the immortal Michael Buffer, “LETS GET READY TO RUMBBBBBLE!!”  Ding. Ding.

Palm Pre Review

We pay homage to the great Clint Eastwood in this review by going through “Il buono, Il brutto, Il cattivo” for those of you who don’t parlarano italiano that means “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”

This phone was filled with plenty of Goods but also some Bad’s and Ugly’s. At times while reviewing the phone it almost seemed like a phone that didn’t have too much middle ground.

The Goods

Oh where to start?

First lets start with the looks and form factor of the phone.  Image is everything and this phone does not disappoint.  The phone has very sleek curved lines and a glossy look to it.  Mrs. Phone also pointed out that the backside when slid up has a nice little mirror for taking pictures, or doing your hair while talking on the speaker phone and driving!!! (and some of you wonder how we got the name phoneWreck, sigh).  Dr. Phone always likes to judge how good a phone looks by how many double takes he gets when walking into a club while pretending to talk on his brand new phone, and of course Mrs. Phone isn’t around.

Double-Take Rating**: 8 Double Takes Out of 10!!*

* Note this number may vary based on alcohol consumption, lighting, and other factors.

**Scale – Dr. Phone normally gets 0 double takes from 10 women so this is purely the phone and only the phone

Mrs. Phone's favourite phone mirror!

Additionally, as stated in the hardware review, the phone fits into your hand nicely, both its weight and width make it easy to slide into your pocket.

So the thing that was most surprising to the team at phoneWreck was the Touch Screen.

Most other models we have reviewed or torn apart (Omnia, HTC Touch Pro, Krave) use “resistive touch” which means you physically have to press on the screen in order for it to recognize your finger.  Other phones we reviewed like the Storm or iPhone use capacitive sensing algorithms which sense when your finger actually touches the screen and are much easier to use.   Still, as we mentioned in the Storm review we found the touch to be slow, the touch sensitivity not accurate, and no capabilities to press on multiple points in the screen at the same time.  The Palm AMAZED us with its accurate and easy to use multi-touch ability.  Kudos to them for getting it right finally!  We are not saying this is the holy grail of touch screens but is a 10x improvement over Storm/iPhone and 100x over Omnia and resistive touch.

Without showing a video of some of the very cool things you can do with the touch like expanding, condensing photos (or even maps on Google, or web pages) with two finger gesturing, you will not be able to fully grasp how cool this feature is!  Below are charts from the instruction manual on the gesturing just so you have an idea:

Touch-Screen Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Screen Review:

This is a difficult one to review.  The Bold, Storm, iPhone, Pre all have very comparable HVGA (320×480) HVGA 24-bit color screens.  The Pre screen size is at a very decent 3.1 inches and is made by Sony.  The screen looks amazing, and backlight is very bright so the image really shines off of the phone.  Dr. Phone is not a videophile but likes this screen a lot.

Screen Rating: 9 out of 10

Other cool features:

The internal accelerometer senses when you flip the screen to panorama, and 180 degrees so it changes the images in photo, web browser, main screen, etc….   Seeing that the movie Bruno is coming out very soon starring Sacha Baron Cohen, we thought we’d do a little Borat and say VERY NICE!!!

The phone when connected through USB is recognized automatically by iTunes so if this is your method of choice to transfer music (its not ours) you can use this utility.

Cut and Paste!!! (Apple took almost 2 years to release this for iPhone).

3.5mm headphone jack, it sounds cheesy but some phones don’t even support a standard headphone jack but its good to see has one does without doing some proprietary headphone rip-off scheme.

Internet Browser:

The Blackberry browser has been much maligned in reviews, but we chose to use the Blackberry Bold browser since it was easy to configure in WiFi and Over the Air in both Java and non-Java modes. We hear that the Palm browser is based off Webkit which also powers the Safari browser on the iPhone and on PCs.  Aesthetically speaking the Palm browser formatted images much better and pages looked far superior to that of the Bold.  In addition the brilliant touch adds a lot of pros here by being able to scroll much easier and zoom in and out with ease.  The quick refresh and back button are a nice feature and in order to enter in your next address you begin typing on the keyboard and that’s it.   Unlike the iPhone, you get to see the entire screen while you are typing in the next webpage.   Palm has really made a nice browser here.

Lets take a look at the speeds using three of the phoneWreck’s team favorite sites and each companies respective sites.

Browser Loading Benchmarking:

Bold Browser: 4.6.0.167

Pre Browser: 1.0.2

Using WiFi:

Clearly the WiFi browsing on the Palm Pre is not only better looking but faster as well.   Java scripts are running much better on the Palm Pre.

Network Browsing:

Okay so this one we know that the browser on the Pre is faster but we wanted to see how the Sprint EV-DO Rev. A (DORA) network stacked up against the AT&T 3G WCDMA Network:

The above numbers tell an interesting story.  It seems that the Sprint DORA network is slowing down the loading of pages on Pre, but by very little margin over the WiFi which means it is closely matching the internet speed at the phoneWreck lab.  On the other hand the Bold WiFi numbers closely match the numbers of the AT&T 3G network which indicates the browser formatting is probably what is the bottleneck in loading pages, not data acquisition.

This round goes to the Pre without question!!!  The inaugural phoneWreck Kelly Slater internet surfing trophy goes to the Palm Pre.  Surfs up bro.

Internet Surfing Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Camera Review:

Its hard to really compare against some of the super high-end camera phones that are coming out with 8.1 MP cameras but it should be fair to compare against similar type phone like Bold/Storm/iPhone.  The Pre (1520×2032) is capable of higher resolution pictures than the Bold (1200×1600) and is roughly similar to that of the Storm (1536×2048).

Below is a comparison of images between the Bold and Pre:

BlackBerry Bold

Palm Pre

BlackBerry Bold

PalmPre

The above pictures really show the Pre having a more colorful, vibrant and sharper image.  The good thing about the Bold is the fact that it allows you to choose between resolutions, effects, and specific types of flash modes, where as the Pre only gives you control over the flash.   The Pre however makes you feel like you can take pictures as fast as your finger presses the button, which is a great feature and a testament to how fast the image processing is working on the Pre..

Camera Rating:  8.5 out of 10

Operating System Review:

The much talked about webOS!  This operating system is unique and yet probably the closest thing you will see to a PC’s operating system in the sense that it lets you keep as many applications open as the Operating System can handle and as many web browsers as you’d like.  The people at Palm call an open application a “card” for the cool way that it appears on the main screen.  We tried to push the Palm Pre to the limit to see how many cards (applications) we could have open at the same time without slowing down the OS.  We got up 16 (1 YouTube,1 Google Maps, 2 Telephone Prompts, 3 Webpages, 1 video camera mode, 2 camera modes, 1 calculator, 1 notepad, 1 task taker, 1 world clock, 1 calendar, and 1 e-mail) before we quit because the OS still did not slow down.  Very impressive! The ease of switching between the apps is the swipe of a finger left or right, and the ability to close an app is about as simple as swiping your finger up, to fling the app off the screen!!  The webOS is perfect for multitasking is probably the single largest advancement over ANY phone in the market today. Superb job of really understanding how to make an OS easy to use, and to allow users to flip between their favorite applications rather than closing one down and having to open another.   The OS from our time playing with it seemed to be very stable and bug free.

webOS Rating:  10 out of 10!!!!

The Bads

There are so many items on this phone that show that Palm really took their time, with prepared, well thought out features that it was surprising to see so many things that made the phoneWreck team scratch their head.  This phone really appeals to the consumer market and we understand that, but Palm’s core audience has always been the business user as well, which we think they may have turned off with a couple of key features.

The slider button on the top of the phone for muting for instance, is something that is hard to slide especially in the middle of a conference call or in a split instance if you need to talk to someone else.  Why not use a simple push button like the Blackberries.

The speaker, and speaker phone are sub-par.   The Bold really became the phone to beat here, but the Pre doesn’t compete against a Curve, or even and iPhone with its speaker phone.   Not to mention the speaker design on the back looks like its straight out of an 1980’s tape player.

We commend Palm for putting a keyboard on the Pre unlike the iPhone.  The touch screen is so good you could easily get away with using a touch keyboard on the Pre, however it would take away from the ability of viewing the entire screen.  Having said that, the keyboard is way below average comparing it to other keyboards on the market.  Once again Blackberries set the bar high on keyboards, but Palm’s choice to keep their old Centro/Treo keyboard was not a wise move.  The keys feel really slippery, don’t depress much and are very close together.  A nightmare for Dr. Phone who suffers from FFS, and no that’s not a fatal disease, its Fat Finger Syndrome!

Its U.S Open time for Golf so we wanted to type the following sentence in both the Bold and Pre and compare time and errors:

“Unlike Thursday, Friday offered no rain. And by the time the first 78 players had finished the first round, the sun came out and offered up a nice day on a still-saturated course, Tiger Woods who played seven holes of the first round in Thursday’s rain and shot an opening-round 74, tried to downplay the effect of the tee times. But it was clear afterward that those in his predicament got the worst of the situation.”

The above was typed three times on each device and an average was calculated.   The above contains multiple numbers, capitalizations and punctuations which also needed to be correct, as if I was a business user typing an important e-mail to a CEO.

In addition to making over two times the amount of errors Dr. Phone typed almost two times slower.  The keyboard could certainly be easier to use.

Keyboard Rating:  6 out of 10 (we give credit for at least having one)

The Uglys

USB Sideloading

The phoneWreck readers are very intelligent, but we believe everything on the Pre phone should be consistent with its OS and Web Browsing and simple to use.  That’s why we were surprised to plug in the phone to the USB port on our computer (note without iTunes) and see the below:

Luckily, because of Dr. Wreck’s teardown review we now realize the OMAP 3430 is handling the High-Speed USB (hardly fast as you will see).  The average user might go cross-eyed seeing the above.  We expected to plug in the phone and have it look like a thumb drive.  The Bold phone does this and were surprised not to see this easy option on the Pre right away.  Okay so we eventually figured out that we needed to download the “Palm Data Transfer Assistant” to move our music and movie files in “USB Drive” mode.  We think this should have been plug n’ play but we can let that go aside.  The next thing that took us by surprise is that you cannot use the phone while you transfer your movies and music files to the Pre!!!!!  The phone turns off and shows that you are in USB mode.  Neither the Bold, iPhone or Storm do this, why the Pre?!    In addition, we decided to transfer one large 1.4 GB movie file to the Pre and found that it took nearly 12 minutes.   So, before I travel I always transfer at least two movie files onto my Bold so I can play them on my plane ride.  This would take nearly 25 minutes, and 25 minutes which I can’t talk or text to my friends.  Dr. Phone’s 16 year old nephew is texting and talking constantly, he would go nuts if he couldn’t use his phone for 25 minutes, as I practically did..  Here is a side by side comparison of the Pre vs. Bold on Sideloading:

The Bold would take 3 minutes to transfer 2 movies versus 24 minutes for the Pre and You can talk on the phone and transfers files fast at the same time with the Bold, this is the way it supposed to be, a definite oversight on the Pre, especially as a multimedia smart phone!

USB Sideloading Rating: 3 out of 10 (At least it has HSUSB, that’s all we can say)

Mechanical Design

The slider mechanism is not very stable, and looks as if it could be very easily broken.  When we were first trying to get our hands on the Pre we went by several Sprint stores who had to remove the Pre displays because people and we quote “Slid the phone too much and  broke the slider.”  This is a very expensive phone, it is almost inexcusable to not have a tight sliding mechanism like the T-Mobile G1, or the Sony Xperia.  The USB mini A/B port cover also fell off Dr. Phone’s Pre after using it three times.  Mechanical design must be more robust!!

Durability Rating (as mentioned in Review Part 2):  5 out of 10

Battery Charging

Battery charging from a dead battery situation is a nightmare.  I pity anyone who is on an important call and their battery goes 100% dead because it took us almost 10-15 minutes to get this thing back from a dead battery using the wall charger.  It charges relatively quickly when the battery is not dead, and standby battery life is not to shabby at all, but the dead battery situation is a catastrophe.

Battery Charger Rating: 4 out of 10

Summary:

The phoneWreck team prides themselves on testing every phone to their limits and not giving “soft reviews” We really took this thing to the limit and we believe it actually lives up to its hype which is a hard thing to do!  This phone took several major steps forward both with the brilliant touch screen and the amazing webOS.  There was some drawbacks that like we said made us scratch our head, like the keyboard, speaker phone, USB sideloading, and mechanical design.  You’d think for a phone that holds the companies fate in their hands they would try their best to get everything perfect and not make simple correctable errors.   They spent so much time on the OS, and other features why not go out of the way to build in a nice keyboard, better audio codecs, faster USB, robust mechnical design and battery charging. Some of these items could turn off one of Palm’s core demographics – business users. We absolutely don’t want to let these negatives get in the way of an absolutely revolutionary phone.   Our numerous positives far outweigh the negatives. If you get the chance to get one on the Sprint Network please do it!! You won’t regret any dime you spent and you will love this phone.  Great work Palm, and we think your company will be fine!

Thanks for reading the review, we appreciate your support everyone, please feel free to  leave a comment.

Keep on Wrecking phone lovers!!!

Overall Rating:  9 “Pre cards” out of 10

Make sure to check out the other Palm Pre Reviews! Also, subscribe to our RSS and follow Dr.Wreck’s twitter!

As promised, we’re coming at you with the second part of our analysis of the Palm Pre from Sprint. This time, we’ll be talking about the specifics of the form-factor design. What we like, what we don’t like and what is merely – satisfactory.

This review will be a good compliment to what ifixit has already done. Also, make sure an checkout our hardware analysis and UI Review!

So without further ado, we present you the Palm Pre Design Analysis!

Overall

The Palm Pre feels good in your hand and is much smaller than the Doctor’s weapon of the choice – The BlackBerry Bold.

In the next review, we’ll see how it stacks up to this device in terms of performance.

The Pre definitely has a minimalist design. To us, it’s shape resembles the perfect skipping stone… an expensive skipping stone at that. One thing this device definitely has is curves. The screen isn’t made of glass which may have been a cost cutting decision. However from a design perspective, this allowed Palm to shape and flex the screen around the chassis of the device which creates a genuinely sexy look. Unfortunately, as with all plastic screen covers, we’re skeptical about how it will resist scratches.

Smudge Magnet

One thing we’re used to seeing as of late is the faux/real metal border surrounding the device. This is a ploy often used by ODM’s to make the device looks smaller in your hand. Fortunately for Palm, this device is already quite small – this might reduce the devices resistance to drops and scratches though.

Cosmetically speaking, the all black look is definitely attractive and leaves the door open to many future colour options which we’re sure we’ll soon see.

Moving around the edge of the device, things are once again kept very simple – there is only one flap, the one that exists for the  microUSB port. It is flat and flush with the body – a very suprising and clever design move for Palm.

That door is flush.

Of course, there is no external (or internal) slot for removable storage. This thing comes packed with 8GB of internal memory – which as any iPhone user knows, isn’t a whole lot. At least we got a removable battery right? Dr.Wreck is calling future versions with 16-32GB of internal storage – mark his words.

Keyboard/Sliding Mechanism

The Palm keyboard we're so used to seeing

On the outward, this device doesnt feel like it has a keyboard – it’s so small and fits so nicely in our hands! In reality it probably feels like this as the keyboard is fairly small and shall we say… flimsy. The sliding mechanism feels solid although not as smooth as the Xperia’s which we previousely took apart.

The keyboard is the same as previous Palm devices – small and hard to press with anything but your nails. Dr.Wreck has some massive thumbs and as such found it difficult to hit the buttons. Moreover, the space between the top keys and the device is fairly small… stay tuned for some speed typing benchmarking.

Dr.Wreck has some massive thumbs

As we started taking it apart, we revealed the sliding mechanism. We also peeled the keyboard off (turns out the keys are just a sticker with gelled buttons).

The leaf spring

Looking closer at the sliding mechanism, we can see there are two tracks. The entire device has a slight curve which allows the keboard to slide out and toward the user – a very cool and useful feature. There is a small leaf spring which helps pop the keypad into place but is not too loose or too resistive. That said, Dr. Wreck is also abnormally strong… which is also probably why he didn’t experience any binding.

The two tracks (phone is in closed position)

Back Cover/Touchstone Charging Kit

The back cover is suprisingly easy to remove – although with no removable storage or SIM card, there is very little reason to remove it – unless of course you got yourself the Touchstone Charging Kit. If you purchased the kit, you need to put the new backcover on. At this point, Dr.Wreck wanted to give a science lesson on inductive coupling. We figured that might be a little bit boring and decided to forgo it. That said, it charges the same way as your electric toothbrush and isn’t really that ground-breaking – unless of course you consider this as the first time it’s been implemented on a mobile phone.

Touchstone Charger and Touchstone Cover

It’s worth mentioning that the touchstone cover has a matte finish while the original cover is glossy. The glossy cover looks nice but is slippery and susceptible to smudges and scratches. We prefer the matte touchstone cover.

Conclusion

In conclusion this phone is fairly well built and very well designed. If you’re a sprint customer looking for an upgrade, without a doubt this is the phone to choose. If your thinking of switching carriers to get this phone we suggest you try before you buy.

First Impressions: 9

Build Quality: 8

Estimate on Durability: 5

Keypad/Interface devices: 7

That’s it that’s all! In the meantime, subscribe to our RSS, watch Dr.Wreck’s Twitter and check out the Pre’s hardware review and UI Review!

Keep WRECKING!

Dr. Wreck

For full teardown analyses, bill of materials, and high-resolution pictures, hit up the wiki: http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=BlackBerry_Curve_8900

So here’s the big kahuna, the mountain giant, the piercing javelin, if you will.  The Curve 8900 (Javelin) has done well to garner a lot of press, because it’s a well functioning BlackBerry, in a tight package, fitted with some crazy insides, yet lacks 3G.  Many people have stated how gorgeous the phone is, but they take a step back when they learn it doesn’t include a 3G radio.  How does this impact the final use of the phone?  Let’s take a look shall we?

Oh, and of course, let’s smash the darned thing while were at it (with über care, of course).  Read on!

The BlackBerry Curve 8900 is an update to the BlackBerry Curve 83xx series.  Of course, ditching the traditional xx10/xx20/xx30 customs, the Javelin (easier to say than Curve 8900) includes both GPS and Wi-Fi options, similar to RIM’s recent devices.  The one we have here is actually one of the first device launches from T-Mobile in Germany, but the hardware should be exactly the same — except of course, the QWERTZ keyboard.  So without further ado, here’s the review.

BlackBerry Curve 8900 Review

Greats

First and foremost, the Curve 8900 (hereon referred to as “Javelin”) is a gorgeous device.  It’s got the same chrome trim as the Storm, relatively the same shape, and a faux-brushed-aluminum backing.  While I prefer the Storm’s actual metal backing, the Javelin makes up for this in weight.  It’s an astonishingly light device, even with the brick of a battery.  The keyboard is similar to the old Curve’s, but almost seems to fit tighter.  In reality, the size differences of the Javelin aren’t very different from the existing Curve, but gosh, the improvements to the aesthetics are amazing.

When you turn the device on (after its traditional white screen + hour glass sequence), the screen blows you away.  It’s bright, it’s clear, it’s gorgeous.  It runs the same resolution as the Bold, but in an even smaller screen.  You won’t notice the difference in pixel density (even though it’s higher on the Javelin), but heck, everything you look at becomes beautiful.

In standard RIM fashion, the keyboard is better than ever.  To the grunts of the meeting-filled corporate employee, the keyboard is a little louder than normal.  You might get looks from a few more people than you normally would with the Bold, but WOW does this thing type fast.  The distinction is clear between the Javelin and the Bold.  The Javelin sports a separated keyboard similar to the Curves, but the Bold has accented keys that are stuck together.  This is completely a subjective category, as they both type ridiculously fast.  Needless to say though, your friends better get a BlackBerry themselves if they want to catch up to you in e-mail speediness.

In terms of media playback, the phone rocks.  Everything is pretty much the same across BlackBerry’s, so what we said here and here, remains the same.  The only thing to note is that the speaker seems to be the same as the Storm’s.  In terms of sound quality and well, bulk, the Bold still dominates.  GPS navigation is simple and easy with your choice of BB Maps or Google Maps.  E-mail, calendars, and most of the rest of your applications remain the same.  In fact, the fundamentals are all here, including the most fundamental of them all: BrickBreaker.

Mellows

Although most of the apps remain the same, the real question many of you really want to know is how well the browser works.  The verdict is: it’s nothing mind-blowing, but it’s definitely an improvement.  The browser seems to handle Javascript a little better than its predecessors, but for regular use, you still want it off.  CrackBerry had a great posting on the Javelin’s browser times.  They’ve shown that the improvements to the Javelin’s browser are pretty darn significant.  So much so that it nearly compares to the Bold’s 3G speeds even though its on EDGE.  Another interesting thing is the new cursor movements.  Before, you had to run your thumb down the trackball dozens of times just to scroll through a website.  To the delight of those who needed treatment for “BlackBerry Thumb“, the new system has an accelerated trackball motion that lets you move the cursor from one side of the screen to the other side in a quick flick.

The camera implementation on this phone is also decent.  While it won’t replace a good point and shoot, the 3.2MP camera with auto-focus generally fits the bill for on-the-go captures.  Our complaint with the camera is its limited zoom (digital zoom only goes to 2.0x) and the excessive effort it requires to get there.  A good long flick moves the zoom from 1.0 to 1.1.  It does take relatively good pictures in low-light however, and the capture lag time is similar to the Bold’s.

Gripes

To be honest, we’re being a little nitpicky here, but the Javelin’s battery cover is quite annoying.  It uses the same latch as the Curve’s, which isn’t really a bad thing, but the build quality of the cover is pretty crap.  The plastic back, which differs from the Storm’s metallic back, is rather flexible.  In effect, the battery cover “pops” in and out near the latch when you’re grasping it with too much force.  Perhaps it’s this particular unit, but the annoyance of a flimsy battery cover has always got to our heads.

Conclusion

The Javelin doesn’t really have too many gripes rather than the flimsy battery cover and the lack of 3G.  We didn’t include the latter, because we understood RIM’s position in marketing this as an update to the Curve — because it is a Curve.  And in fact, the improvements to the browser make the lack of 3G much more bearable.  The tight, new form factor really has us drooling though.  It’s a great device to use, and definitely tops our list of favorites for the moment.  The Javelin presents a good alternative to the faux-leather backed bigger brother, and we’re very satisfied.  Enough chit-chat though, let’s get to the goods!

phoneWreck Score: 9 trackballs out of 10

BlackBerry Curve 8900 Teardown

Here’s probably what the bulk of you came for — in fact, your eyes are probably not even reading this line.  In any case, a lot of people have been requesting for higher resolution pictures.  So ta-da!  Click on the picture for slightly higher-res marked pictures, and the links below for unmarked ones.  Hope you enjoy!

So right off the bat, much of what you see here is actually very similar to the Bold.  The most significant change is the Freescale chipset including the SC29746VK processor and the MMM7010 RF transceiver.  Skyworks takes the win for modulating power for the RF transceiver with the SKY77526.  Looking at the datasheets for these ICs, it seems as if everything was built to be as small as possible.  Judging from the main PCB and its insanely small size (shown below), our guess is that RIM is really looking to make things thinner.  The Storm had a similarly sized PCB as well.

Click here for the high-res unmarked version

Cypress Semiconductor continues to win designs for their West Bridge solution, with their CYWB0124AB chip, enabling fast transfer speeds as we earlier noted.  MtekVision makes an interesting entrance as well, claiming quite a large space for their camera signal processor.  We’re guessing this is what’s responsible for their relatively quick and strong camera captures.  Texas Instruments, as always, makes some notable wins with their audio codec, Wi-Fi chipset, and the power management unit (shown above and below).

Click here for the high-res unmarked version

Finally, SiRF continues to provide GPS units, and CSR provides Bluetooth functionality.  This is the interesting part, as CSR and SiRF, who provide most of the GPS and Bluetooth ICs for a wide range of handests, have recently announced their intention to merge.  We can’t really speculate as to how this will affect the semiconductor industry in the wireless world, but we imagine that they would definitely offer some hard-hitting competition.  So that’s mostly it!  We’ve posted some of the more important ones below, and the rest, we’ve stuck into our wiki (link below).

Click here for the high-res unmarked version

Click here for the high-res unmarked version

Hope you’ve enjoyed.  Thanks!

If you have questions, comments, concerns, humorous anecdotes, be sure to let us know in the comments or through e-mail (phonewreck@gmail.com). Also be sure to visit the wiki for more pictures (http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=BlackBerry_Curve_8900)! Thanks!

Since the BlackBerry Storm just came out, we thought it’d be necessary to stack the Storm against its main rival on the enterprise side: the BlackBerry Bold. On the outlook, the functions of the device are similar, although the BlackBerry Storm has a vastly different way of navigating than its larger brother. Furthermore, they’re offered on different networks, meaning different chips, different speeds, and even a different customer base.

So what does each device have to boast about? Read on!

Each chart in this post provides a relatively objective comparison between the BlackBerry Bold and the BlackBerry Storm. A green highlight indicates that the function executed particularly well, while a red highlight indicates that the function lacks in comparison. White indicates that it is on par with competition and is acceptable.

Technical Specifications

First up, we compare the actual specifications from the two phones. It’s surprising how much is integrated nowadays, as the capabilities of the Storm (on paper) stack up nicely to the larger and fatter Bold. Check these out below:

The exclusion of Wi-Fi on the Storm was designed out from the beginning, so it is very likely that given the circumstances, the Storm’s form factor (and the size of the PCB) could be capable of integrating Wi-Fi. The Storm is able to keep a slimmer profile due to the integration of GPS, audio codecs, high-speed USB, and graphical capabilities in one single processor, the Qualcomm MSM7600. On the Bold (teardown), each of these are separate ICs – SiRF, Wolfson, Cypress for the GPS, audio, and high-speed USB respectively.

The MSM7600 has interfaces that support CDMA2000/1xEV-DO as well as HSDPA/EDGE/GRPS/GSM, has a 400MHz ARM11 Apps Processor, a 274MH ARM9 Baseband Processor, and two high performance DSPs. Unfortunately, as this is their first implementation, and RIM’s first graphic-intensive device, the launch firmware and integration came up a little short. Most elements requiring the intensive processor capabilities, proved to be frustrating to use, and nigh unusable. The latest firmware (unofficial, but much improved) provided many improvements to the accelerometer, browser, navigation, and general bug fixes. We do think this processor is capable; however, we believe that there is too much for this one processor to handle.

Browser

BlackBerry Bold: Browser 4.6.0
BlackBerry Storm: Browser 4.7.0

In this section we compare the browsers of each phone. The BlackBerry Storm generally fared very well, with many improvements to speed, a more intuitive scrolling than the cursor in the Bold, and a large screen to boot. However, most formatting issues from the Bold still exist in the Storm. In some cases, like the media-intensive Gametrailers, the Storm was actually a step down in formatting from the Bold.

We’ve posted various websites, in order of increasing bandwidth usage.  Note: this chart depends heavily on network availability and coverage – so take these statistics lightly.  We made sure we had really good connections, but of course, speed varies heavily depending on your location.  Update: We’ve split these tests into Javascript-enabled, and Javascript-disabled.  Caches were cleared when performing these tests.  And the Engadget site is the full site, not the mobile version.

It’s also important to note that, while the Storm has many improvements over the Bold, browsing is not up to par with its competitors.  Browsing on the Storm is generally pleasant, but we really believe that RIM needs to redo their entire browser rather than improving upon it.  Perhaps a WebKit development is in order, similar to its Safari and Chrome-lite competitors.

Update!! So it appears the Storm’s browser’s default settings turn off Javascript support, where as it supports it by default on the Bold.  Running Javascript does slow down these numbers a lot, which accounts for the differences between the Bold and the Storm.  We’ve updated the numbers above.  We apologize for the wrongful comparison.  But the comment remains: with Safari and Chrome-lite-ish blazing through Javascript, BlackBerry definitely needs an upgrade to its browser.

Sideloading

This section compares the sideloading performance of each phone. We found this section particularly important, because media content nowadays are increasing both in quality and in density. In the most recent iterations of BlackBerry, we found that dragging and dropping music albums, tv shows, and movies were particularly fast, which was good for porting content on the go. So, following a recent EE Times article comparing the Bold and other recent phones, we decided to do our own comparison of the Bold and the Storm comparing USB transfer times.

BlackBerrys were traditionally fast at sideloading, but with a whole new chipset and architecture, I believe RIM kept the Storm to the processor’s integrated solution. Unfortunately, their performance slowed down dramatically from past BlackBerry devices. This is unfortunate, since before, it was easy to keep BlackBerrys plugged into the computer for charging and loading purposes. Now, to transfer a movie, it was actually painful waiting for a movie or even a music album to transfer.

Camera

The cameras made it tough to determine a winner. The chart below illustrates this problem.

On one hand the BlackBerry Bold was quick and simple to use. Even under low light situations, the Bold took quick snaps of whatever was in front. On the other hand, the 2.0MP camera is limited, doesn’t have strong image processing capabilities, and is very susceptible to graininess under low light. The Storm on the other hand produces relatively decent pictures, even under low light. It has some sort of focusing mechanism even though none of its offficial specifications seem to list it. However, this focusing mechanism causes the picture taking to be insanely slow. If you wanted to ever “catch the moment”, you’d definitely miss the moment using the Storm. Granted, the moment afterwards would look pretty good.

Media Playback

The media playback capabilities have improved dramatically with each revision of BlackBerrys. Each sport a 3.5mm headset jack (unlike other smartphones) and have speakers that are decently loud when sharing a YouTube video with friends.

Nothing really beats the Bold in terms of sheer volume. It even sounds decent at loud volumes, without too much distortion. The Storm’s speakers on the other hand, are moderately loud, but sound like the treble on the equalizer has been maxed. There’s no mid or low-end sound coming out, which is rather disappointing. Also, the speaker placements on the Storm seem to be in an area where my middle fingers are constantly covering in landscape mode.

Finally the visuals. The Bold’s screen, while small, is stunning. It sports a high pixel density on the small screen, while the Storm’s screen uses the same pixel density, but on a larger screen. As a result, the Storm’s screen is not as piercing sharp, and the contrast ratio doesn’t appear to be as strong. However, the experience is definitely much more pleasurable with the larger viewing area.

Typing

BlackBerry’s are typically the best for typing. In traditional RIM fare, they harped on the unresponsiveness of touchscreens and the lack of tactile feedback. As such, they delayed entry until a viable solution was provided. So how does the typing actually stack up? Without beating around the bush, we know that typing is slowed on the Storm due to its lack of multi-touch integration. However, in this section, in an attempt to provide some objective results, we try to give our best shot at guessing what the fastest speed a user can potentially get at.

For each device, we timed how long it would take us to type out a paragraph from one of CNN’s latest posts. There are a lot of them, so we tried to find one relevent: Obama and his BlackBerry. The paragraph is as follows:

Before he ran for president Barack Obama quit smoking. Now that he’s won the job, he may have to break another addiction: Checking his BlackBerry for e-mail.

The president’s e-mail can be subpoenaed by Congress and courts and may be subject to public records laws, so if a president doesn’t want his e-mail public, he shouldn’t e-mail, experts said. And there may be security issues about carrying around trackable cell phones.

In order to simulate typing in a real world situation, we memorized the paragraph to mimic the situation where the user knows what he/she is going to type. Furthermore, we simulated a professional environment, keeping punctuation in mind. Of course, being heavy BlackBerry users and typers, we utilized most default auto-correct words, and we knew where every symbol placement was.

At our optimal speed, using full knowledge of default auto-correct and symbol placements, we were able to obtain 38.8 words per minute on the BlackBerry Bold. There were a couple mistakes not caught by the auto-correct function, however by reading the sentence in context, you could make out the mistakes.

On the BlackBerry Storm, typing slowed down to 26.7 words per minute at the optimal speed. We emphasize the word optimal, because the Storm took an excess amount of concentration, thumb effort, and rhythm — way more than the Bold. We were able to type faster than the processor could handle many times, as we saw the light lag behind the thumbs. Furthermore, the symbol/numerical button also lagged, requiring us to wait for it to transition menus. This transition period caused a few errors due to anticipation of the keys. Also, while the auto-correct function worked hard to keep my words looking good, there were many more words that were nigh unrecognizable. It didn’t even correct “gor” into “for”.

Ultimately, as stated in my review, the BlackBerry Storm goes against what BlackBerry’s initially stood for: efficiency and effectiveness. We could type relatively fast (26.7 wpm is pretty good, in our opinion), but it required so much effort and focus to keep the rhythm going. In fact, we’re exhausted from typing an e-mail. Furthermore, the processor is barely able to handle that typing speed. I could see the highlights trailing behind my thumbs, and the symbol/numeric button and keyboard transitions delay any typing whatsoever. We’re not sure this is the result RIM would have wanted, especially since our iPhone typed that paragraph (in portrait mode), at 28 wpm (4 mistakes).

Conclusions

There you have it. A comprehensive comparison between the BlackBerry Bold and the BlackBerry Storm. All in all, the Storm seems to have taken two steps forward, and the same two steps back. It’s highly desirable form factor coupled with difficult use cases and unoptimized performance, give it a mediocre flavour. On the other hand, the Bold continues to stand for what BlackBerry’s have always been good at, and we hope that continues with any future iterations.

For full teardown analyses, bill of materials, and pictures, hit up the wiki: http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=BlackBerry_Storm

Being another first for BlackBerry, RIM has delved into the widely competed touchscreen market.  Not wanting to be sucked in as “another iPhone wannabe” however, RIM has developed several unique technologies in an attempt to diverge from the traditional touchscreen stigma.  So how does this phone actually fare in-hand, and how does it stack up to its competitors?

After the break, we find the answers to this question, AND we smash the thing apart for some good ol’ teardown analysis.

BlackBerry Storm Review

Greats

First things first, at first sight, this phone is gorgeous.  We think its one of the better looking phones on the market today.  It’s got slants to the device, along with metallic backings – a first for BlackBerry.  Not only that, but the battery door ACTUALLY WORKS.  It’s buttons are well placed, the piano black/matte black/metallic black trims complement each other very well, and the chromed sides actually don’t feel like cheap plastic.  If this is any indication at what the Javelin will look like, then I’ve got good feelings about it.

Next off, the screen is another winner.  Although it doesn’t have the brightness nor the sharpness and pixel density to match the Bold, its HVGA screen on a 3.25″ screen seem to work just fine for movies, tv shows, browsing (we’ll get to that), and anything else that requires lots of screen real estate.  Visuals are obviously accompanied by sound, and while the sound is definitely capable of producing loud obnoxious noises, it doesn’t match the Bold’s quality; it doesn’t have much depth and just sounds like pure treble.

Media experiences in general, on the Storm, are fantastic.  It’s built in way more codecs for audio and video, has a decent interface for finding and playing music, and works as music player.  In fact, though their SurePress technology isn’t mentioned in this review’s “Greats”, it works really well for controlling your music.  RIM has mentioned countless times their intention to dive into the consumer market, and with these capabilities, it definitely works.

Luke Warm

Luke warm features are features that aren’t good, nor are they bad.  The first feature on the Storm to receive this fairly mediocre grading is, you guessed it: SurePress technology.  RIM has attempted to really give BlackBerry owners a touchscreen alternative without feeling frustrated by their keyboard.  By giving tactile feedback, you understand the timing for typing, and once you get rhythm, you get rhyme speed.  It’s implementation works rather well for menu selections, the dialpad (it’s honestly fun to type numbers), and as mentioned, the media player.  Unfortunately, typing, even on a gigantic landscape keyboard, just doesn’t feel right.  It’s mucky, because once you gain speed, you instantly hit an error.  This is due to the touchscreen not being able to recognize another finger while the button is being depressed.  If it had multi-touch functionality, letting you place your finger while you’re pressing another finger, we bet that implementation would be glorious.  For now, however, we got to stick with infuriating spelling mistakes from going too fast.  Not only that, but typing on the screen takes a lot more effort than a traditional QWERTY keyboard, and a regular touchscreen keyboard — you have to press the WHOLE screen down.  It’s easy near the edges, because the radius from the centre gives you easy torque, but anything middle-to-top-row is becomes a pain when you’re hammering out gigantic emails.

Another luke warm feature is the browser.  Without going into performance metrics, the browser still isn’t up to par with its webkit-based friends (i.e. Safari/Chrome-Lite-ish).  While it’s true that it’s drastically improved over previous generations, it’s nowhere near the level of Safari.  Format pages like IGN still give it your good ol’ lists of links and text for you to scroll around.  This bring us to our next point: capacitive touch.

What’s annoying about Verizon phones is that their capacitive touch phones (including the Motorola Krave) always come with a STICKY screen protector.  It leaves a nasty sticky feeling to the screen, which totally harps on first impressions.  What the Storm needs is a good glossing of the screen – it’ll just generally feel more touch-accepting.  The use of gestures is also inconsistent, and without the rubberband effect deployed by other phones, scrolling feels, lacking.  Viewing any relatively long page will have you scrolling like a mad man, because the screen stops when your finger is lifted off.

Gripes

Applications.  Back in the old days, BlackBerry was competing against Palm for the enterprise space, and even then, the distinction of Palm was its better third party support.  Storm seems to be the first to really try and break this stigma, but… it fails (obviously, since its in the gripes section).  What Apple and Google have done was generate application “outlets” in which you can download and install third party apps, with the latter even focusing their entire handset around this concept.  RIM has developed an “Applications Centre”, which was carrier specific.  This was a poor choice, as carrier-specific applications (namely, VZ Navigator, and other VZ products) are pretty useless, and aren’t anywhere near as diverse as the App Store and the Android Market.

Finally, performance.  This is what totally kills the device in our opinion.  Everything about this phone lags.  Ever since the videos were leaked showing its UI, people have been complaining about the animation lag and hoping that everything would sort itself out by launch.  Unfortunately, even with the last-minute flashing of devices, nothing has changed.  Right on the main menu, scrolling through applications gives a choppy feeling.  Even the media application takes a while to boot, and you end up double clicking in an attempt to get things going.  When I plugged the unit into the computer attempting to sideload, even that dragged in performance.  Typical BlackBerrys have been awesome at sideloading when enumerated through Mass Storage Class, but this one, in traditional Verizon fare, runs on MTP mode for syncing with Rhapsody and Windows Media Player.  Transferring movies to watch on your phone, just plainly sucks.

Conclusion

Everything about BlackBerry is defined around efficiency and its ability to get things done.  The Storm stays true in its ability to feel connected, with perfect integration of corporate e-mails, personal e-mails, texts, contacts, Facebook, My Space etc.  Unfortunately, actually using the device, causes an uprising of frustration.  It doesn’t flow well, and goes against what all the other BlackBerry’s have been so good at.  I feel that RIM pushed this out the door for the holiday season, when it actually should’ve been released in 2009.

phoneWreck Score for the BlackBerry Storm: 7 wrecks out of 10.

BlackBerry Storm Teardown

Enough about the phone!  Let’s dig into the juiciness of the Storm.  Remember how I said that the Bold was one of the easiest devices to teardown?  The Storm is the complete opposite.  There are a bunch of hidden screws that require prying off areas such as the camera plexiglass cover, the chin of the device, and the stickers that surround the back.  Also, the shielding around the ICs are even harder to get at than before.  You’ll need some razor sharp wire cutters to get through that (or you could solder the sides off if you’re that keen on it).  But if you were intending on opening up this device, without a scratch in the end, I wish you good luck.

Nevertheless, we got the thing open for you all to see.  The PCB is actually ridiculously small.  And everything actually fits on there including the processor, memory units, all the transceivers and power amps, and things like Bluetooth ICs.  There’s some random spots of circuitry on the other spots of the phone as well, but its amazing how well everything is integrated.  We’ve put the block diagram out below.  Note: several things on here are educated guesses.  We’ve noted these with the asterisks.  Unlike previous teardowns, the ICs on this device seem rather hard to identify.

Most important to note is the implementation of Qualcomm’s latest MSM7600 processor.  When you view the datasheet, its pretty easy to guess what’s wrong with this phone.  There’s just too much functionality jammed integrated into the processor, including audio codecs, graphics processing, and even GPS functionality.  Samsung’s memory MCP from the Bold makes another notable appearance.  Avago takes care of the CDMA Power Amps, but the GSM Power Amps seem unmarked, which makes it hard to find.  We’ll update this if/when we find out though.

Update: We have discovered the GSM/UMTS Power Amps from a little help by our commenters!  TriQuint takes care of the GSM Power Amp, while Anadigics designs the UMTS Power Amp.  Thanks!

This being primarily a CDMA device, Qualcomm brings their entire chipset onto the line including its RF Transceivers for both CDMA/EV-DO, an integrated GSM/UMTS chip, and its PMIC.  TriQuint Semiconductors also makes an appearance.  They’ve previously been used for Duplexers in previous mainstream devices, but its difficult to identify what this IC does, so we’ve assumed that it’s something to do with managing power.  Bluetooth functionality is again won by CSR, while SiRF is notably absent due to the GPS integration into the processor.  A West Bridge chip is also notably absent, with USB functionality also being driven by the processor.  STMicroelectronics seems to have developed the Accelerometer, as the chip in this phone seems eerily similar to one of their other Accelerometer chips in a previous breakdown.  Finally, with Synaptics boasting much of its multi-touch capabilities, we’re making guesses that the BlackBerry Storm uses a Synaptics IC for driving the capacitive touch.  It’s possible that a full multi-touch can be implemented on this hardware, but whether it’ll require updates to the actual hardware or just the firmware, remains to be seen.

Of course, what you’ve came here to see is not just the circuitry.  You wanted to see how the actual button looks like, no?  Here it is, in plain view!  It’s a regular button, pushed by a marked Magnesium Alloy plate with a bump.  Enjoy responsibly.

For full teardown analyses, bill of materials, and pictures, hit up the wiki: http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=BlackBerry_Bold

BlackBerry’s latest flagship, the Bold, is definitely a bold piece of hardware.  We’ve gotten hold of a Rogers unit, and have given it a good rundown including mashing our screwdrivers and pliers inside to give you the enjoyment and excitement of a freshly torn BlackBerry.

Check it out after the break!

BlackBerry Bold Review

RIM delayed its entrance into the 3G market as long as it could, before introducing its new flagship.  In a sense, I’m very glad this happened, because the Bold was a great phone to review (and teardown!).  Although launching through AT&T was very sketchy due to firmware issues, they’ve gotten many of the issues fleshed out on its BlackBerry OS 4.6.

Greats

The Bold works beautifully as your traditional BlackBerry.  Any users stepping up from the Curve or the 8800 should find yourselves totally at home, with tons of extra features at your disposal.  First, the Bold sports one of the most jaw-dropping screens.  When you first turn the device on, the glaring Rogers background stares you right in the face, and its an awesome experience.  It’s got a great contrast ratio coupled with some high pixel density action (HVGA on a 2.65″ screen).  Movies and video clips look great on it.

Sound is even more impressive.  The Bold is single handedly the best sounding (and loudest) device on the market today.  This, coupled with a really great screen, give the Bold a really strong media playback experience.  The actual player is simple to use, with looks akin to Windows Media Player, and works as it should.

Performance on this machine is also top notch.  Using Marvell’s Hermon Processor running at a speedy 624MHz, it chews down on any of the applications you want running.  Getting into menus and applications are lightning fast, which works particularly well with its trackball navigating device.

Sideloading music and videos on this phone was lightning quick as well.  A 700MB movie file was transfered in 48 seconds, making for a speedy 14.6MBps transfer speed.  Great for packing in movies on your MicroSD card on the go.

I don’t even have to talk about the e-mailing and texting experiences, because that’s RIM’s spotlight, that at this point, will be really hard for them to screw up.  Everything was quick and easy to use, which brings us to our last Great: the QWERTY keyboard.

It’s freakishly fast.  We’re heavy BlackBerry users, and we’d venture so far as to say this is on par with the Curve (which we thought to be the benchmark).  Those dimples work fantastically for our fingers.

Middle Class Features

With Americans always focusing on the middle class, we thought we’d title this accordingly.  The first middle class feature of the Bold is its browsing experience.  Browsing on 3G data was a long awaited feature on BlackBerrys, and we conclude that, while it’s amazing for a BlackBerry, it doesn’t nearly match its competitors performance.  When compared to the iPhone and the G1, iPhone’s Safari implementation consistently boasted double the speeds of the Bold when viewing heavy websites and pages, and G1′s Chrome-Lite-ish ran through at around 1.5 times faster.  RIM really needs to revamp their browser.  It’s good, but its not great — and for their flagship, these things need to be great.

Gripes

The Bold is unfortunately a little on the big side.  When compared to other consumer-oriented phones, it’s very chunky and fills the pockets pretty quickly.  Holsterers will be fine, but those of us not wanting to venture into the business-class look, will find the extra bulk a little annoying.

The leather backing and the chrome sides are also questionable design choices.  If it was implemented a little better, we’d totally dig that.  Unfortunately, the fake leather coupled wih cheap feeling sides, leave a little to be desired for a phone that just dented your wallet.

Conclusion:

The Bold is a pleasure to use.  It’s fast, it’s efficient, and it’s even friendly to you.  Take heart, young QWERTY padawans, you’ll be enjoying RIM’s latest 3G device.  Just keep those speakers blasting.  We wanna hear ya.

BlackBerry Bold: 9/10

BlackBerry Bold Teardown

Here is where we get down to the nitty grittys of the device.  The Bold was as pleasurable to teardown as it was to review.  Opening it up was simple, but the Bold gave us trouble when it let us look at its hallowed PCB.  It’s a complicated mess there.  ICs seem to be relatively organized, but there are so many pieces to this puzzle, that it was a daunting task to build up the BOM and the block diagrams.  Fortunately for you, we love doing this stuff.  So we present to you, the BlackBerry Bold Block Diagram.

The first thing to note is that RIM spent a WHOLE TON of money on their new Samsung-made screen.  It’s an expensive beast; but we’d say that it was totally worth it.    Samsung continues to impress with its multi-chip packaged MoviNAND+OneNAND+Mobile DDR.

Infineon and Renesas got big wins with their RF transceivers.  Cypress also seems to have the West Bridge thing down pact producing those speedy sideloading results noted earlier.  Also, RIM seems to have spent quite a bit of money on TI’s audio codec, and the results, as noted above, are staggering.

One of the questionable design choices was the integration of 802.11a.  Implementing 802.11a, which is rarely used by anyone, meant that a dedicated power amp, antenna, and possibly the cause of another Wi-Fi-dedicated PMIC needed to be included.  Sure there’s plenty of board space, but I’m assuming costs could definitely be saved.

Another thing to note is its antennas.  Instead of the traditional metal prongs used in most phones, RIM has used what appear to be stickers.  These pretty much surround the back of the device.  These placements of the antennas are educated guesses, however.  What seem to be obvious placements of the antennas are due to the use cases (holding the phone to your head, or cradling the phone while browsing will cover up areas of the device.  The GPS antenna is assumed to be the top sticker.  SiRF also makes a big entrance with the inclusion of its GPS + A-GPS functionality.