Blackberry Bold on Orange UK. User Review.

[deveyf]

I have now been using the the Bold for a week and thought that my experiences of what I consider highlights and problems would be of interest to others. Please do note that that if you try any possible fixes or workarounds that I suggest then this is entirely at your own risk.

Lets start with the problems

1) Problem. The Bold reboots itself several times a day.
Impact. None really, it always recovers ok, The phone of course is off line when its rebooting. I do not know the cause(s).

2) Problem. The Bold often looses the Orange signal and ends up only able to make SOS calls. sometimes after moving to a stronger signal area Orange is found again. Other times not. It appears to "give up" searching for the Orange network after a time.
Workaround: Switch Bold Off/On. This forces a network search and Orange is generally then found.
Impact: This is a nuisance I live in a semi rural area without perfect coverage. Consequently my phone is often "off-line"
Note: I also have a BB 8820 also on Orange. This rarely looses signal and I have not experienced the problem detailed above.

3) Issue: There appears to be no UMA support on the Bold.
Comment: UMA is SUCH A USEFUL FEATURE please provide support ASAP in such a way that it can be user retrofitted (by software download).

Issue: The BB Desktop Manager 4.6.0 b12 provided on the Orange CD appears to have problems opening Roxio and usually (but not always) hangs when calling media manager (module9)
Possible remedy: I downloaded BB DTM 4.6.0 b15 from the BB site. This loaded ok but then hung my PC* when it was shutting down! I pressed the power button for 6 seconds to force a shut down. The PC rebooted ok and the updated DTM seems ok.

* My PC is a new dual core top of the range Dell running Vista Ultimate. Given I have not had previous problems with it I do not think that is implicated in this problem.

4) Note: If you reboot your PC with the BB attached it may fail to boot.
Remedy. Unplug the Blackberry and boot again.

You may think from the above I am disapointed with my purchase. Not at all.
It is a splendid device and once these teething problems are solved will delight many.

Some of the great features are:

1) The display quality...wow
2) Sound quality ace
4) Easier connection to wireless.
5) The night clock feature
6) Half VGA browsing, with zoom. It works well for me.

And almost finally :

I think the battery life is ok. A full charge lasts all day even with me excessively using it.

And finally.

It is great and will be just wonderful when fully sorted.

Fred

[ajames01]

Did you find out about uma on the bold?