I own and love my BB bold that I bought back in Dec 08. Before the BB, I had a Sony smartphone which sucked real bad. I had a hard time choosing over the iphone and the BB. But with research and comparison (playing with my friend's iphone) I picked up the BB and it is my best phone I ever owned.
The only thing that isn't so great is the customer support by the carriers for the BB. Very little info on the BB models that they have. Especially the carriers don't have their own link for OS updates. Btw, my Bold has Arabic on the keyboard, though I don't know Arabic...