Comments on: RIM BlackBerry Bold officially on sale

The RIM BlackBerry Bold officially goes on sale to the public on Election Day. The smartphone is available through AT&T for $299.99.

[JRWilliams308]

Just configured the first one on our enviroment to talk to our BES. what a PITA. AT&T better get their act together on this rollout. They first didn't active the Enterprise Data Services, then couldn't assist my BES ADmin and I in confirming a connection from the AT&T cloud to the RIM cloud. Note to my fellow IT support folks. There's a new field on the Enterprise Activation screen which has nothing to do with Enterprise Activation over a Cellular network. It's for use over a wi-fi network...

[f1rds03]

I snagged the last Bold at a downtown Seattle AT&T corporate store. They said they had gotten in 30 which they started selling yesterday evening. So far so good with setting it up.

[eseaberg]

I received a 25% off coupon via email from ATT a couple of weeks ago to update my 3-year old BB 8700c at ATT online. I thought there was NO WAY they'd honor that discount for a new Bold, but checked last night and ordered it. Final price after discounts was $199. I'll have it tomorrow. MUCH better than waiting in line!

[bugsnest]

I am hearing prices all over the place - $399, $250, $199. That tells me 2 things--

1) Waiting it out a little longer could mean you could get the Bold for a lot lesser than what is advertised now

2) Waiting it out for a lot longer could mean you could get the Bold for *FREE* when other contenders enter the smartphone arena - including RIM's very own Blackberry Storm :-))

All said, the Bold is a really nice phone but not "revolutionary enough" to pay full asking price! And I think most folks living in the IPhone era feel the same.... the only ones in denial appear to be the BB fanboys :)

[DigitalFrog]

A little late, I configured a Bold for one of our employees about a month ago. This may be new for ATT, but other carriers have already been offering them for quite a while. Rogers in Canada has had them out since August, what took ATT so long??

[gotrsx6]

ATT said they did NOT want to have to deal with the mess the 3G coverage caused with the iPhone. Therefore, they decided to hold off their release until they could ensure a smooth release. Normal consumers are a pain, but try messing with huge corporate customers when a new phone you introduce doesn't work as advertised.

[emarido]

got the second one at the ATT at 30 Rock in New York City. Charged 400 and i'll send in a mail in rebate. I think it was a bit pricey but moving up from the motorolla q, it was worth it.

great phone. It's not revolutionary...but trust me when i say, it is the best messaging device ever created. It's the fastest blackberry with 3G and the new OS is smooth, I like it alot.

[worthy_cook]

yeah I went down to the ATT store and when they said it was $550 for just the phone I walked straight out the door. It will go down over the next few months so I will wait it out.

[bubblebathgirl]

That screen looks very small.

[orimta]

does anybody know if the storm is really out on the 14th? they claim that it is going to have a unique touch screen that has the feel like a real keyboard button.

my comments at http://www.commentino.com/orim

[jesssquire]

I wanted to add that another key benefit of the BlackBerry Bold is the rapid development of cool third party mobile software. I also wanted to point out that RIM and AT&T are showcasing a handful of BlackBerry apps as part of the Bold launch campaign.

Full disclosure, I?m the product manager for one of those apps being showcased, called Viigo.

Hundreds of thousands of BlackBerry users are using Viigo every day to stay up to date with their Sports Scores/Schedules, Stock Prices and Portfolios, News & RSS, Weather Updates, Flight Search/Tracking, etc. etc. Best of all, Viigo is Free. You can download Viigo for free by browsing to http://getviigo.com/?bold. Would love to hear your feedback on the product ? please email it to feedback (@) Viigo.com


Keep up the great coverage,

Jesse Sternberg
Product Manager

OTA download link - http://getviigo.com/?bold

[sarb2008]

Wow the americans finally get the Bold. Its alright but i'll take a Iphone over it anyday.

[unknownroukie1]

I actually got it Monday night. The store by my house started selling right when they got the shipment. I got there like an hour after they received them and they said they had already sold about 8 of them.

And btw I had an iPhone and switched to the bold and LOVE it.
No regrets.

[thowe21]

Went last night to get the Bold after work and the store said they were selling like hot cakes all day. The phone is for my wife who is upgrading from a Curve. I do have to say that it does have impressive speakers ( I own an iPhone). The screen quality is also as good as the iPhone's.

[bubblebathgirl]

The battery life is rather poor on this device ... and what's with the small screen? I thought they were making it bigger and making the phone slimmer for this release?

Seems pretty clunky when compared with the iPhone.

[the3p2]

I did go from one line (voting) directly to another (Bold) Tuesday. The voting line was much shorter! I waited 1.5 hours for the Bold ... not so much because other people were getting it, though some were, but because the AT&T store was small and understaffed.

I really like it so far. I switched from the iPhone 3G and am H-A-P-P-Y with that decision. The iPhone is a fun device with too many basic deficiencies in usability. The lack of cut and paste is a "are you kidding me?!" issue. Not being able to search calendar items is crazy. No support for Outlook Notes left me high & dry. Creating calendar appointments is way more difficult than it should be -- seriously, with a state-of-the-art touchscreen, you can't just touch the time you want and create an appointment?!

iPhone does have it all over the BlackBerry world in sexiness and app support though. I'm far from an Apple fanboy, but they know how to design great-looking products. The Bold is "meh" on the sexiness scale. And apps that cost $1.99 to $5.99 in the iTunes App Store cost 4 to 5 times that for the BB. But ... they do support cut and paste!