If the Bold works, don't fix it. AT&T followed that advice and has achieved mostly solid results on its version of RIM's BlackBerry Bold 9000, which is similar to the model for Canada's Rogers Wireless, we reviewed back in August. The Bold remains an excellent executive smartphone with a gorgeous screen, reliable e-mail, Microsoft Office document editing, and a terrific media player. But we wish AT&T had used that three-month delay to work on the troubled Web browser, which still struggles to load pages that contain JavaScript.

At 4.5 by 2.6 by .55 inches (HWD), the 4.8-ounce device with metal accents and a leather back feels thick and solid in your hand. It's longer and wider than the BlackBerry Curve, and a little broader than the iPhone 3G. The Bold feels a full paygrade above the Curve, and if the iPhone is a sporty Mini Cooper, this device is a luxurious Rolls Royce.

The Bold is actually as "touch-centric" as the iPhone is—it's just not all about a touch screen. The keyboard is a make-or-break feature for a BlackBerry aficionado, and plenty of people didn't like the 8800's cramped, tightly-spaced keys. The Bold has solved most of the 8800's problems by making the keyboard slightly larger and adding space between the rows. I still find the keys more slippery than those of the Curve, but all-in-all, the keyboard is easy to get used to.

Aside from QWERTY keys, there are Volume, Camera, and quick application-switching controls on the Bold's side, and a Mute button up top—typical BlackBerry fare. The MicroSD card slot is now on the side of the device, as opposed to under the battery. The slot in my AT&T Bold was sticky, so cards were difficult to remove (I tried a few different cards). I didn't have this problem with my Rogers handset, so I'm guessing it's an issue with my particular unit.

Though it has the best-looking screen I've ever seen on a mobile device, I wish the Bold's display were a bit larger. It packs the same resolution as the iPhone's display (320-by-480 pixels, into much less space; 2.6-inches diagonal (compared to the iPhone's 3.5 inches). This creates images that are so tight and clear, it's difficult to make out the actual pixels. The screen responds to ambient light, so brightness is always perfect, whether you're outside in full sunlight or inside of a dimly lit restaurant. The keyboard is also backlit, and illuminates when the surrounding light is reduced.

Running at twice the processor speed of the Curve, the Bold features a 624-Mhz Marvell Tavor CPU to handle its double-resolution screen. It's a little bit faster than the iPhone's processor, too. BlackBerry handhelds are typically very responsive, and I found the Bold to be snappy except for its Web browser, which was often sluggish.

There's good and bad in the Bold's phone performance. First, the good: the handset didn't drop calls during testing. It transitioned between 2G and 3G networks seamlessly and voices were quite loud and clear, especially with the 'bass boost' option turned on. The Bold does pass a lot of background noise through its microphone, but my voice also came through unusually clearly—even landline-quality in some cases.

The dual side-ported speakerphone is a wonder. It's very loud and very clear, and works as well on a conference room table as it does outside on the street. As expected, the Bold paired with both our mono Plantronics Voyager 520 and stereo Motorola S9 Bluetooth headsets without problems. Voice dialing is basic—dialing and status checks only, and not a broad range of commands–but accurate, thanks to the excellent Nuance VoiceSignal suite.

The bad: Our Bold showed a poor ability to connect calls in areas with weak, 2G-only signal, and there was a noticeable hiss behind many calls over 3G.

You can use any of your own songs as a loud, stereo ringtone. You also get the typical BlackBerry tones along with a half-dozen custom tones written by The Police drummer Stewart Copeland, one of which sounds a lot like the opening to Every Little Thing She Does is Magic. The vibrate alert is noticeable, but not very powerful; you might not feel it from deep inside a bag, for instance.

Battery life is on par with other high-res 3G smartphones like the iPhone and T-Mobile G1, but will disappoint BlackBerry loyalists. I could easily run the battery down entirely in one day of heavy use, which I've never been able to do with a Curve. In our battery rundown tests, the Bold delivered 4 hours and 28 minutes of talk time on AT&T's 3G network.

An HSDPA 3.6 (850/1900/2100) and quad-band EDGE phone with 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi, the Bold connected to both AT&T's HSDPA network and to our WPA2-protected 802.11g wireless network without incident. You can use the phone as a modem for your laptop, too. I was able to achieve a speedy 950Kbps download speed, and AT&T's streaming Cellular Video channels looked great.

The Bold connects to PCs with the new BlackBerry Desktop 4.6 and to Macs with the new PocketMac for BlackBerry 4.1.2, which let you sync contacts, calendars, tasks, notes, photos, applications, and iTunes playlists to your phone. But both apps are a bit temperamental. (BlackBerry Desktop 4.6 stalled a few times on my Windows Vista machine.) BlackBerry Desktop will also automatically reformat videos so you can view them on your phone.—next: A Bold New Web?

A Bold New Web?

With the same smooth e-mail capabilities and IT-department management flexibility that have made the BlackBerry, the Bold connects to both corporate and personal e-mail servers, aggregating multiple accounts. The device shows full HTML e-mail messages, a new feature for AT&T BlackBerrys. But remember that unlike the iPhone and the Nokia E71, the Bold doesn't sync contacts and calendars directly with Microsoft Exchange servers. If you don't have a BlackBerry Exchange Server, you'll have to sync your contacts and calendars with your computer via USB cable.

The integrated DataViz DocumentsToGo for BlackBerry displays Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents and lets you make basic edits. You get formatting, including Word tables and graphics, but not embedded graphics or charts in Excel. Paying $69.99 for the "Premium" version buys the ability to create new documents, add advanced formatting in Word and Excel, and add slides to PowerPoint presentations.

Unfortunately, the browser still feels rough. Like with most modern mobile browsers, the Bold displays complete, desktop-style Web pages, letting you zoom in to magnify different areas of the page. But any page with JavaScript slowed the phone to a crawl. Turning off JavaScript helped, but the Bold still took longer to render pages than the iPhone. I preferred using the free Opera Mini 4.1, which works well on the Bold. Also, AT&T doesn't include a mainstream instant-messaging app, only BlackBerry Messenger.

The Bold has built-in GPS. The phone comes with AT&T's $10 a month TeleNav-based GPS service, though you can also use free programs like Google Maps. TeleNav allows you to enter locations using the GPS, the keyboard or your voice, and includes traffic alerts with its driving directions. AT&T also includes five games: the good ol' BrickBreaker' Word Mole, a word-finding puzzle game; poker, Sudoku, and Solitaire. —next: A Bold Multimedia Experience

A Bold Multimedia Experience

The Bold's video and music players both look and sound great. The included Roxio PC software transcodes your videos to play smoothly in full-screen mode, and the free BlackBerry Media Sync now syncs the Bold with iTunes music playlists. The phone plays MP3, AAC, and WMA formatted music (but not DRM protected files), and shows iTunes and Windows Media Player album art. I was also able to play iPod and iPhone-formatted videos, as well as WMV-format videos, without a hitch. The handset features 1GB of internal memory and comes with a 4GB MicroSD card; our 8GB SanDisk card worked fine, but Media Sync had trouble recognizing a 16GB card.

Not all 2-megapixel cameras are created equal, and on resolution, noise, and color fringing tests, the Bold outdoes both the iPhone and the Curve. Eyeballing the shots, though, all weren't perfect—the Bold's camera overexposed shots of a bright sky, and shutter speed issues led to blurring in many low light photos. With Facebook installed, you can send photos to the site within two clicks of taking them. And if you're in the range of a GPS signal, the camera will geotag your photos with your location.

The phone records 320-by-480 videos at 15 frames per second, and they're uncommonly smooth; free of the annoying 'pulsing' effect you get with many camera phones. They are compressed and grainy, though.

Should You Go Bold?

The BlackBerry Bold 9000's major competitors are the unlocked Nokia E71 and the HP iPAQ 910, which are both capable, enterprise-friendly handhelds with a similar physical style. The E71 is easily as pretty as the Bold, and has a better Web browser. But Nokia just hasn't been able to make push e-mail work as flawlessly as RIM has. The iPAQ will please businesses that want to connect directly to an Exchange server without the BlackBerry middleware. But Windows Mobile is traditionally less stable and slower to respond than the BlackBerry OS. Ultimately, the Bold also has more processor power and a higher-res screen—and thus possibly more potential for the future—than either of its competitors. And there's no denying the fact that the Bold will be compared with the iPhone. The iPhone has a better Web browser and the App Store, but the decision really comes down to one thing: do you prefer a keyboard, or a touch screen? Unless you're a corporate IT manager with a BlackBerry bias, deciding between the two is more of a question for your gut than your head.

The BlackBerry Bold 9000 costs $299.99, after rebates, with a new two-year AT&T service contract; without, it's $549.99.

PJ Jacobowitz contributed to this review.

Compare the BlackBerry Bold with several other mobile phones side by side