Backside has leather texture that provides firm and secure handling. On backside is located camera lens and flashlight as welcomed novelty. Full QWERTY keyboard is present on front side with keys that are tightly packed. Nevertheless thanks to good ergonomics of keys, after some practice fast typing can be easily achieved. Keyboard leaves impression of precision and quality.

On right side are located volume and camera controls. On left side are located miniUSB connector, standard 3.5inch connector for headphones and microphone and microSD slot. Although microSD cards can be changed at any moment, slot itself is little bit difficult to operate with. Because of miniaturizations microSD card is ejected just a little bit so usage of tweezers or long fingernails is necessary in case you want to take card out. Keyboard lock mechanism is changed on this model so instead of magnet (that collected keys and small change in pockets), keyboard is automatically locked upon placing the device in its leather case that comes with device. On top side is located key for changing audio profiles and on bottom side is lock for removing backside cover.

BlackBerry Bold is mostly intended for business, but engineers from RIM realized increasing needs for multimedia reproduction and improved every aspect of Bold to satisfy those applications. Upon first start up of Bold we noticed slightly bigger display with larger resolution (480x320) with exceptional sharpness, contrast and colors. Thanks to built-in ambient light sensor brightness of display is corrected according to light conditions of surroundings. These transitions are done very quickly so it is possible to use Bold on bright sunny day of pitch dark without need for any additional settings. Support for large number of video codec’s will allow user to watch movies, and even read movie titles if they are embedded in movie itself (there is no support for movie titles in SUB, SRT or TXT format). Conversion of video files can be done with software that comes on included CD but we liked free and faster alternative in form of Any Video Converter. How much attention was paid to multimedia reproduction can be noticed thanks to presence of specialized YouTube application. Thanks to big battery capacity during two days we were able to watch one movie, listen music for 4 hours, use WiFi for 8 hours, talk for approximately 30 minutes and do a lot of typing and web browsing. Sound reproduction quality is exceptional without difference in sound quality from integrated stereo speakers or earphones. Earphones that came in package are very good and you also get few earphone covers.

Camera has the same resolution (2Mpix) as previous model (Curve) but pictures that came out of Bold are better so some optimizations are obviously present. For night/evening photos integrated flash can be helpful but only at 2 meters distance. Review of taken pictures is, thanks to exceptional display, very pleasant experience although there is no option for display of next picture so enabling of slideshow is necessary or you will need to open one photo at the time.

Visual identity of Bold is changed thanks to new OS version: 4.6. Icons are redesigned and now they result in more elegant look of whole device.  Task switching is fast (and when we say fast we mean really fast) and you can notice transparency effect. Thanks to new icons and transparency effect, visual identity of Bold is significantly improved. On the other hand business look is still present although icons could be more intuitive. Most of applications are also redesigned but some are not like clock/alarm application. Basic choice of clock display look good but if you go deeper into options you will encounter list of options that looks like it has came from eighties.