How did you know?! HONESTLY... I have been playing with a BUGGY BOLD. Actually. BOLDS. I have two now. I bought another one yesterday after being so perturbed about glitches I was having on the first one.
Bold's web browser is hooped. It's driving me insane. Device was doing ok...and then I decided I'd do some BlackBerry Bold vs. iPhone 3G web browser tests. The makings of a nice blog post.
The Bold's Internet Browser over 3G with Javascript turned off works well enough. It'll actually load sites faster by a couple of seconds than the iPhone 3G with Javascript turned on. Which these are the default browser settings by the way - so people who buy phones and never touch settings would probably be happy enough. The Bold's browser does a decent job of rendering pages too. Not quite as good as iPhone's Safari..but getting closer. Probably 95%. CB is a little messed in the header, and some sites it doesnt like (tables on nationalgeographic.com for example - site gets messed), but for the most part not bad.
HOWEVER...Turn on Javascript support on the Bold's Internet browser, and sites that used to take 30 - 45 seconds to load now take 1.5 to 3.5 minutes to load, if they finish loading at all (have seen a ton of errors pop up - out of memory, communication error, can't render page). And try browsing a couple of sites in a row - it wigs out and you get more errors or you just get stuck with hour glass and have to reboot.
Then, turn on the Hotspot browser, and guess what? It's slower than browsing on 3G. Which is just NOT RIGHT. 3g signal is at -70, wifi connection is at -35 to -40 (strong), yet 3G is loading sites quicker. Actually - in the case of the first Bold, I couldn't even get the hotspot browser to load a site. Talked to Rogers support, quickly left them and went straight to RIM support (paid the $50!). Reloaded my OS on the first Bold, still running into glitches, RIM thinks it may be a hardware issue and told me to take it back. I think maybe it's an issue with the Bold not liking my wireless router (almost makes more sense to me) but don't have it sorted out yet.
But WiFi/Hot Spot browser issues aside, I still can't figure out why the Bold Internet browser slows down soo much when you turn Javascript support on. I was on the phone with RIM tech again for an hour today... we were doing time trials over the phone. They've now escalated to RIM research and RIM is doing testing on it internally. Seriously think the code is bad and they are going to need to address some issues. I have given up even trying to use the HotSpot browser on both Bolds till I hear back from RIM tomorrow.
I've been trying to fill out my spreadsheet here of time tests for over 24 hours now, and it's impossible. All I want to do is visit 8 websites 8 times... 4 with the Bold, 4 with the iPhone - 3G/WiFi/
JS on/
JS off. 64 speed tests total. IMPOSSIBLE task apparently.
Whipped through the iPhone's 32 sites in literally minutes. Fast, no issues, good job rendering all pages. Battery level never moved. Whipped through 8 of the Bold's sites in decent time (not as quick iPhone 3G though - when you turn
JS support off on the iPhone that browser is actually insanely fast). Then turning on
JS support on the Bold literally ads minutes to each site I visit. And have to close out and clear cache and reboot if I want to load up another. Obviously the Bold can download data over 3G fast - its like the browser just doesn't know what to do with Javascript. It just sits and loads and requests and thinks and in the end, if it loads, it's still the same formatting on the page that it did 3 minutes faster with the
JS support turned off. Then the errors - can't manage it's internal memory or something while browsing. Fire up the browser with like 45 megsof application space/memory free. Browse some sites, and there's like 20 left or 15 left. And I haven't installed a thing on any of these devices. Honestly - the new one doesn't even have contacts on it yet. Out of the box, charged, and just trying to browse sites. Though the charged battery seems to go down quick when the attempts to browse sites take so bloody long.
So yeah..I'm not in a good place right now. I just want my Bold to be perfect and so far it's not. Next podcast may just be an hour long rant at this rate. I'm glad RIM support/research is now on top of it. I don't want to even put up my speed tests/blog post/bold review up until we've gotten through the issues and I actually know what's at play here, just in case there's some sort of insane one off with me...though it's happening on two devices now (tested a rep at the store's too and his browser slowed down to nothing when I turned JavaScript support on too). But seriously am questioning how the code got released like this... unless of course I'm just insanely cursed and am the only one experiencing these issues. I haven't really "heard" about it too publicly (but haven't really looked yet cause I'm just playing with mine) or maybe people aren't playing with the different browsers/settings like I am and are just using the default Internet Browser with
JS support turned off. But ARRGGGGGGGGGGG.... not even going nuts. I've gone nuts.
Ohh.. and somehow the trackball on the new Bold I picked up doesn't seem as good/smooth as the trackball on the first Bold I bought (that by the sounds of it unless we figure this out is going back). Double Argg. So now I want a third one. FRAK.
Thanks for the patience on the podcast and letting me vent. Maybe later this week. I need to get this Bold stuff figured out first before I move on with my life and think about podcasts or newsletters or reviews or anything.
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POD cast??? 
No longer a CrackBerry addict. Moved to Android - could not be happier! 
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