Stephen Fry on the Bold, Storm, and G1...and the iPhone
Stephen Fry reviews the new BlackBerry Storm and Bold, plus the Google Android G1, with a dash of context based on the iPhone and its strengths.The G1 is a little narrower than an iPhone and has an attractively light, semi-matt, almost rubberised texture to its back and a glossy enamelled lustre to its front that I happen to like. I am assured by a friend that ‘coffee bean’ would be a good description of the colour of the one I bought, a kind of dark army brown/grey, officially designated ‘bronze’. ‘Metallic mocha’ is also suggested by this colour literate acquaintance. Black and now white are also available and I must say it does my heart good to see a phone that isn’t trying too hard to imitate the iPhone in its exterior lineaments. When I saw pictures on the web I thought, as did many, that the ugly stick had given the G1 a damned good thrashing, but in the hand and up close it’s much better than I expected. It has a gentle, somehow retro form factor that I find comfortable and appealing without eliciting screams of desire. The bronze version reminds me of GPO brown from the days before BT: trimphones could come in that colour and also had those simultaneously square yet rounded corners. The lower section of the front, which carries five buttons and a trackball is tilted forward and up in such a way as to have earned the soubriquet ‘the chin’. Otherwise standard volume rockers, an angled camera lens and a camera button in the usual place complete the outward appearance, in the closed position at least. Yes, ‘closed position’, for this is a slidey-open phone which reveals a full qwerty keyboard when the top half of the sandwich is prised away from the bottom. More on that later. The hard buttons, incidentally, are Menu (context specific), Green Phone, Home, Back and Red Phone. Pretty basic and all one could need. I am pleased by the addition of a trackball. Apple’s purity can sometimes get in the way of convenience and I like thumbing balls. Hang on … look … stop it at once …. you know perfectly well what I mean.This is a short blockquote, percentage-wise.
Gee, One Bold Storm coming up…. [StephenFry.com]
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Fry seems a bit unfairly hard on the Bold, perhaps Orange's service is to blame compared to, say, T-Mobile USA. BlackBerry Maps works swimmingly, and very quick in response with the more powerful processor (compared to waiting seconds with the previous models). The BlackBerry web browser has vastly improved in 4.6 from its 4.5 versions, and with the higher resolution screen zooming is a luxury but not strictly a necessity; I've never had the XML errors he describes. Only that some AJAX stuff, even with JavaScript enabled, doesn't quite work right. (But it's a mobile browser, what do you expect?) Maybe he's having difficulty because he doesn't have BIS data service; WiFi only for data is still a bit dodgy (and you at least need the correct service books -- another BlackBerry quirk -- for the "Hotspot browser" to be the regular web browser).
If streaming video is limited to 3GPP, I don't notice it. I'm guessing that's what mobile YouTube does? More importantly, the Bold is powerful enough to playback most popular non-HD videos found online, such as The Daily Show. (Although this matters a little less now that HandBrake 0.9.3 can handle any kind of input format.)
Also, I don't know why this rumor persists, but there is an option for font smoothing on the Bold, (Options -> Screen/Keyboard -> Font Smoothing -> On).
Finally, it looks like the "Precision" theme in all-white might be the standard, while the one I use has hints of color added, as part of TIM's branding. With a touch of a single color on most of the icons, it's very elegant and recognizable, in my opinion. (Blue on the Contacts, green on the Calendar, Yellow on the web browser, red on the Maps, etc.)
But he's absolutely right about how dramatic the improvement from the higher resolution screen is. And it has HSDPA / UMTS (3G) data support, and Bluetooth tethering, and Bluetooth A2DP + AVRCP for handsfree music and calls in the car.
As I said before, the 9000 Bold does well what the previous 83x0 and 88x0 barely managed to do at all.
Oh, but I'm still extremely intrigued by the Kogan Agora Pro.
If a future version of Android reliably included ZRTP for opportunistic voice encryption, I'd switch to the Agora Pro. (Better still if Android also included support for Bluetooth ad-hoc scatternets to share music with people on the subway / library / wherever.)
Err, that's not true at all. I'm not sure how he missed the fact that when you connect the phone to your computer (standard USB cable) and it works like a USB drive on either Mac or PC. Toss some MP3s on there anywhere and the phone's media player finds them automatically.