Gadget Of The Week: BlackBerry Bold, Now Official!

While we featured the as-yet-unveiled BlackBerry 9000 as Gadget of the Week back in March, yesterday RIM officially unwrapped the BlackBerry Bold, as the handset will be known to marketing firms and eager buyers.

That 480x320 half-VGA screen with 65k colors sounds pretty bold indeed, and the word is it looks even better than it sounds - excellent video playback and an interface competitive with the iPhone. Also: leatherette texture on the back of the handset and superfast 3.5G tri-band HSDPA/UMTS support. Try finding an iPhone with download speeds as fast as 7.2 Mbps!

Wi-Fi a/b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 and full A2DP support, and built-in GPS round out the feature set.

I'm just coming back from a wedding in Carmel where I picked the brains of what seemed like an endless stream of high-powered techies and business types who - without exception - bemoaned the iPhones they all owned. Former BlackBerry devotees, none of the moguls and madams I talked to could say a single good thing about the buttonless device that they all seemed to use a lot anyway: "It's impossible to send email," said one; "typing anything longer than an SMS is agonizing," said another.

It's important to remember that while the iPhone has all the hype and style going for it, there are armies of QWERTY keyboard-using BlackBerry addicts out there - and for them, Bold is not only beautiful, it's better.