The Bold looks sleek with its black color and chrome trim.  The back is textured to feel like leather, and the 3.5 inch display has a more crisp and vibrant display than most other phones in its class, including the iPhone 3G.  The Bold is sturdy, but it’s bigger than previous BlackBerry versions and is definitely larger than the iPhone 3G.  BlackBerry loyalists will be happy to note that the Bold’s design stays true to previous models, but still has manages to look modern.

Among the Bold’s features, there is a 2.0 megapixel camera with digital zoom and built-in flash, a QWERTY keyboard, and tethered modem capability.  The camera is nothing special, as the old BlackBerry 8800 model had a camera with the same amount of megapixels.  For whatever reason, RIM decided not to improve the camera quality.  The QWERTY keyboard is one of the phone’s stellar features.   Email and texting are a delight with the easy to use keyboard.  The keys are backlit, and even people with large fingers should be able to type almost effortlessly.

As far as battery life goes, the Bold can last up to 13.5 days in standby and 4.5 hours of talk time.  I believe these estimates to be on par with most smartphones in the same class.  In fact, these times are either better than or equal to the battery life of a 3G iPhone.

Included accessories with the phone are a USB cable and wall charger.  The Bold has 1GB of on-board memory, and if that’s not enough, microSD memory cards are supported.  A maximum of 8GB can be added with a high-capacity microSD card.

Connection-wise, the Bold supports Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth, and built-in GPS.  Another area where the phone shines is its native multimedia support.  The media player has a clean interface, and the phone natively supports DivX, XviD, H.264, and WMV3 video formats.  Audio format support is common with 3GP, MP3, WMA9, MIDI, and AAC.

If you’ve never owned a BlackBerry, you definitely can’t go wrong with the Bold.  If you already own a BlackBerry, the Bold is the perfect upgrade choice.  The phone’s screen and keyboard really provide a pleasant user experience, and the multimedia support is top notch.  The only major flaw in the phone is the low quality camera, but the rest of the phone’s features certainly make up for it.