• January 18 2009

Things I hate about my Blackberry Bold

I have had my BlackBerry Bold 9000 for nearly two months now. I figure I have spoken enough about how awesome and useful it, and some of the applications I have found are. The device however is not without its faults– there are certain things about it that drive me insane. 

  1. Reboot Time – It takes more time to reboot the Bold then it does to reboot my desktop and then my laptop one after the other. For a full five minutes the device is useless. I wish I understood why it takes so long.
     
  2. Slow Processor – The Bolds 624 mhz processor is the fastest among BlackBerrys. Why then is the device so bloody slow? I see the animated clock icon all the time. Granted, I use the device a little harder than most, and even though I hate to seem like the guy who can’t be impressed by anything, let’s be honest: the performance of  some of the apps is laughable. For example, my Keepass database is roughly 100kb, regular AES encryption. Using KeepassBB to open the DB on the Berry takes roughly 30-40 seconds. My Windows Mobile that is currently over 3 years old can do the same thing in less than half the time. Again, I would love to understand–maybe its the programs algorithm–not sure.
     
  3. Battery Hog – This thing goes through batteries like I wish I could go through video cards. It needs to be charged daily, even after purchasing AutoStandBy and a 25% larger 1700 mah battery.
     
  4. No .NET Compact Edition - This is too much to hope for, but I wish the Blackberry supported .NET CE. I know this would be too good to be true, but would attract new developers to the platform.
     
  5. Developer Tools – I am not the best judge, but from what I have seen and experienced so far, the programming for Blackberry is far from a perfect experience. The Eclipse plugin is just becoming functional, the JDE is a blast to the past and the developer site is not as good as it could be. Supporting Java ME apps is good and it appears like RIM is extending their APIs with the newer OS’s
     
  6. Some programs launch at startup, even if you dont want them too – A couple apps that I have to have on my Blackberry launch themselves when the device boots for no apparent reason other then to annoy me. There is no way to disable this in the app, but there is also no security or startup setting on the OS that will let me prevent these lame apps from starting.
     
  7. No built in Multi-Alarms – Seriously, what is going on with this one? I can only have one alarm at a time with the software the RIM ships. 
     
  8. Cant change default browser – I wouldn’t want to change it to Opera just yet as it lacks essential features for me (send page address via email) but I shouldn’t be locked into using one browser when I click links from other applications.
     
  9. BlackBerry Desktop Software Sucks – Does the Blackberry desktop manager work properly for anyone? I dont think so. I know it attempts to upgrade your foreign language packs every time you turn it on, even if you dont use those languages. Backups are broken with custom ring tones/alarms. Roxio is garbage.
     
  10. Creaky Battery Door – The Bold has this fancy pleather backing on the battery door. Too bad the door does not fit onto the device 100% so the door wobbles a bit with soime pressure. This also drives me nuts. I need to do a electrical tape modification just so the back door fits.
     
  11. No changelog between Operating System revisions – This is one of the biggest complaints I have. There seems to be a new Beta OS for new RIM devices every couple weeks. I think it is great that they ship code so often. The problem I have with it is they dont include changelogs between builds. Users post what they think is different between releases including bugs, new issues, or even how they feel that the browser is faster or their 3G is speedier even though it is likely RIM did not touch code relating to either. Not that big a deal, it will only be a few more months until all support is put into the new and upcoming devices.

So there are all my complaints. Other than the above mentioned things this is a fantastic device. For those who might read that and think the Bold may not be any good, it took me a good long time to think up all those complaints after a month and a half of use. I could think of a list that long about an iPhone and I’ve only used one of those for a couple of hours.

Stay tuned, I will post the next series of my essential apps soon.




Comments

  1. Pat Marsala September 11th

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    truly a worthless piece of crap… PLEASE do not buy one the Blackberry Bold from AT&T… after fighting with it for 37 days and logging dozens of hours trying to fix the thing I am now told I am outside my window for returning it for a new device…. only refurbs….. do yourself a favor… if you have ANY problem with it at all return it to them….. It's no wonder these people are losing market share by the minute to every mfr. swinging a dime around….


  2. stockiejohn October 2nd

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    Can't do anything but agree. The Bold is a piece of absolute rubbish. As you, I am a heavy user, the Bloomberg terminal takes up a bit of juice, but there's no reason it should take 5-6 minutes to reboot. After a couple of days of usage I have to reboot because the thing starts running really slow. Access to the MicroSD is painful, and the 1 alarm limit is just annoying. It still doesn't suck as bad as my wife's iPhone though.


  3. stockiejohn October 2nd

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    Can't do anything but agree. The Bold is a piece of absolute rubbish. As you, I am a heavy user, the Bloomberg terminal takes up a bit of juice, but there's no reason it should take 5-6 minutes to reboot. After a couple of days of usage I have to reboot because the thing starts running really slow. Access to the MicroSD is painful, and the 1 alarm limit is just annoying. It still doesn't suck as bad as my wife's iPhone though.


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