Blackberry Bold now available at AT&T

Love the phone, but I will say this: the battery life sucks. I am a business user (email, phone and web–no video or music playing) and I was running out of battery mid-day. I will need a spare charged up and ready to go on the road.

i had the same problem on my unlocked bold when i upgraded to atts softwate .167….downgrade to rogers .162 and your battery life will drastically improve…i get 2 full days now..att’s software is a battery and memory hog

I hear you Rjmjr72, but how do I do that and not undo my enterprise server and other items already loaded? Is this a complete re-install of the operating system or just the power management? How do you obtain the software from Rogers? Thanks.

Nice see its finally available in the US, I have to say I’ve held off posting anything for 2 months now as I do like BGR its a great website, but after Winning one of the BB Bold’s in the BGR Bold giveaway competition I was on cloud 9 looking forward to receiving my prize(first competition I’ve ever won, I know its a cliche but its true) and waited on baited breath for over a month before emailing BGR and even then I didn’t receive a reply and even now 7 weeks after the results were posted I haven’t heard a word from BGR. Great website, poor show BG. Im interested to know if any of the bold competition winners had received thier Bold’s?

Give it time Rich. It was, after all, just released yesterday.

I had been waiting for the Bold, but now I am considering the 8900 over the Bold…

Anyone who’s already got the AT&T Bold: Can you comment on your experience with regards to:

1. 3G Quality / Signal
2. Sound quality with mobile / landline
3. Battery Life
4. Overall operation / reliability.

I’d love to have 3G speed, but I need a reliable device. Previous blackberry devices I have owned have had excellent battery life and call quality. With everything I’ve heard recently with regards to early testing, I’m wondering if the Bold is worth the price tag. I’ll pay if it’s reliable. If not, I’d rather wait and get the EDGE-only 8900.

Big thumbs-down from my first-day experience:

Got my Bold at an ATT store on the release date. Qualified for an upgrade and got the $100 rebate form…also managed to finagle a $75 credit on my next bill just by threatening to jump to Verizon when my ATT contract was due to expire next month.

3G seems to hold decently enough in NYC, but there’s lags anyway, whether it’s 3G or EDGE. I haven’t even bothered with WiFi yet.

My Blackberry Internet Browser completely disappeared for 15 minutes and reverted to MediaNet. WTF?!

Got one “Input Error” flag when trying to initiate the browser.

My media player crashed once. Would display the song but wouldn’t play anything. It was a humbling learning experience to feel like Marlee Matlin for awhile but I’d rather have the music…

Couldn’t install my old Viigo account…some Java Exception Error about an old Account ID (never had that problem on Curve.) Had to create another one from the CrackBerry 2.x days. Not even sure the 3>x beta works on Bold.

Mail from all 3 pushmails (one AOL, two GMails) were all going into the Messages folder, not into their respective email boxes, despite all attempts to separate them. Had to do a complete wipe.

Besides all that, yeah, lovely screen and sound. Kinda anticlimactic compared with the aggravation.

I think I was still happier with the Curve until I get all the glitchy BS figured out. In 2 days, it’s going back if it doesn’t start to behave and I’ll use my Curve till it croaks into tech-dust…then it’s back to two tin cans and a string.

Again, big thumbs-down from my experience with the Bold. And I actually would’ve given my life for RIM before 11/4. Major bummer to wait so long for what’s so far been acting like an iPhone with regards to burps and farts.

Addendums…

Ditto on negs about battery life. If you’ve used a Curve, you’re in for a sharp letdown by contrast. And that’s with no WiFi…less than 50% by 2pm.

The browser is weird in text-boxes…no text wraps. Had a line just go on forever.

Another glitch is my ringer changed itself today. My phone started ringing “You’ve Got Mail”, which was a WAV file I set for AOL emails. Turns out it mysteriously became my phone ringer. AOL Guy is tolerable once…4 times is torture.

Screw it, I may just box it up tonight and not even bother with the issues. I’ll just use my old Curve and wait for something better to come along (like another Curve.)

Has anyone else noticed that the Bold is $400(399) on the the ATT premier website? That’s right $400 no mail in rebate or anything. I don’t really understand I thought the premier site was to give you a discount.

So far, my experience has been varied.

I don’t like the browser. I think it’s a little wonky.

I wish there was threaded SMS. I used a Treo 750 before and I LOVED their threaded SMS.

The GPS doesn’t seem to work. I tried installing amazegps (a free GPS app since ATT won’t let us download Blackberry Maps) and it can’t ever find the GPS. Neither can yellowpagesmobile.com. So I don’t know if ATT disabled the GPS on it to force us to use nothing but their navigator on it (and I don’t know how they’d do that since I’m not a techie so I’m probably wrong on that), but I can’t seem to use my GPS.

I’m in Denver so I’m always on Edge and am on 3G if I moved 2 inches to my right when I’m at my desk and only if I moved 2 inches to my right. Otherwise, it’s Edge all day, every day.

But the battery life has been good for me. I don’t mind having the messages from my emails into one folder. It separates them into different folders, but I hid those folders so I’m just using one folder.

Sound quality is fine and the OS hasn’t crapped on me yet.

I really like the phone with the CV so I can watch videos and stuff. I also ripped some DVDs and put them on my 8gig microsd and watched it on it. It got a little hot, but nothing to burn over.

So I think with a few fixes (GPS, browser and threaded SMS), I’d be really happy with it. Right now, I like it but may return it.

y aren’t the numbers red?

I think alot of us got caught up in the hype, which is understandable. No way of knowing how it’ll measure up to the hype till it’s in your hands….don’t think it’s worth the pre-release fanfare.

It’d be hypocritical along those lines to say the Storm willk be any better, but I doubt it’ll be worse.

Already called ATT tonight and went back to my Curve, but I personally have no plans for the the Storm either. This time I’ll wait till my device is no longer functional or way too outdated to be practical and THEN see what’s out there options-wise. Personally, the Curve has been very reliable and while it doesn’t have as many bells and whistles…at least it’s glitch-free. I learned a pretty good lesson from this in being a zombie to gotta-have-it marketing.

For those that got the Bold and have had a better experience though, enjoy. You’re probably doing better on Rogers than those of us have with ATT, because I think a fair share of the crap is going on with the carrier and not just RIM.

I having been tracking the bold since the very first announcement and have been waiting very patiently through all the AT&T delays. I have to say as a previous owner to almost every blackberry, this Bold isn’t bad. I left my curve for the iPhone 3g July 11th and having that phone was the worst experience ever. Thanks to craigslist I got some of my money back off of it. The only thing I really don’t like about the bold as it seems it charges very slow through usb from my computer ports. The build quality is kind of bad to me as well, don’t get me wrong it’s a very sexy phone but the plastic chrome casing is a let down for me. I also got use to the iPhones nice glass screen where this bold has plastic, smudgy and seems to be easily scratched plastic. I love the new OS but I hate the fact some things do not work like yahoo messenger or AIM as I heard it was suppose to. I do not have 3g coverage in my area and the AT&T bold doesn’t give you the option to switch between 2g & 3g. The battery life is a little low, but having the iphone 3g it’s not even comparable to the low battery life that phone had. looking at the bolds battery (HUGE), you would think it could power a small car, but yet it doesn’t deliver well when it comes to Bluetooth, gps, wifi and the killer……. 3G. But overall if you are a die hard blackberry user like I then you would love it no matter what. I paid full retail price for it came up to 588…..something bout time I left the store, and I don’t feel as I wasted a dollar. Never complain about the expensive things in life because there is always a cheaper solution like buying an 8700 or if you want cheaper an old 7290 off of eBay or even buying a curve from a happy new BOLD updater. But I love my bold and will cherish to the day the next bberry comes out. Skipping the storm…. the iPhone may have ruined it for touch screens in my book of phones.

I agree with most comments on the shortfalls of the phone, but I came from the 8700, which I loved, and skipped right over the Curve to the Bold. So my point of reference is the 8700, and compared to that the Bold is a superstar, even given the battery life issues, build quality, and other shortcomings. For business users like myself (I own an iTouch for music/media) who need a quality phone for Bluetooth use most of the day, and bang out 100 emails a day on a full keyboard, and want to surf the web in wifi or 3G, the Bold is huge step forward. I know some but not many business users who are comfortable typing on the iPhone, so I am assuming the Storm will be as difficult for heavy email use as the iPhone…therefore the Bold is as good as it gets for now.

BTW…I have had it since Monday night and had no reboots, no crashes and no issues of any kind with the exception of surprisingly quick battery drain, which I have come to realize is part of the territory with 3G.

I got my Bold two days ago after waiting almost a year for it! Switching from a pearl with OS4.5 I wasn’t disappointed at all, although there was a few disappointments in the first few hours I played with the device. I will mention a few of them I saw mentioned on the comments above in BGR.
1. GPS doesn’t work – I spoke to AT&T’s tech team and they told me that the GPS uses the same radio as the Wi-Fi and bluetooth so if you turn off the Wi-Fi and BT it should work fine, I did it and it actually works perfectly in Google Maps as well.

2. Viigo gives a runtime error. – Deleted Viigo and re downloaded it. Viigo is written for each OS separately so if you transfer all your data; contacts and apps, including Viigo you’ll probably getting this error message.

3. I couldn’t find the software I transferd from my old Berry to the new one. – Looking around it was in the Downloads folder.

Besides those: I’m very Happy with my bold…

Just curious as to how ‘quick’ was the battery drain?

One thing’s for sure…love it or hate it, if you now own one in the USA, you’ll likely agree – if you didn’t before – that it’s definitely not worth $399 (or even $299 after rebate.)

For those unfamiliar with AT&T rebates, btw, it’s a preloaded $100 creamsicle-colored Visa card that can only be used for purchases….no cash-back at registers, no ATM withdrawals, etc.

Not all that big a deal, you can still just use it for whatever you’d pay cash for so $100 is $100…just don’t expect a check or anything. Also takes roughly about 8 weeks to get it in the mail.

@ Anthony

No argument from me on that point.

Walmart is offering this phone for FREE with a new contrcat and voice plan of $80 or more. http://walmart.letstalk.com/product/product.htm?prId=34661 you can also get it gor $199 for voice plans under $80

Has anyone heard about a Blackberry Release date for Verizon?

Ooops. I meant Blackberry Bold..

Has anyone heard about a Blackberry Bold Release date for Verizon?