Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Personal Comparison Between Blackberry Bold and Bold 2 (Onyx) - Bold 1 is better?

Having had the opportunity to use both the Blackberry Bold and now Onyx, and of course that accursed Curve 8320 (sorry, but it lost all of my contacts. Three times. It's not even worth mentioning here), I'd like to share my personal comparison between the Bold and the brand spankin' new Onyx.

Screen resolution:
Everyone's been saying just how great Onyx screen is, and that it's the best screen to date, but to me, somehow the Bold seems better. Maybe due to the larger size? It is true that the Onyx has some amazingly crisp and laser-sharp display, but somehow... it doesn't wow me quite as much as when I turned on my Bold for the first time. And then of course I browsed through the pre-loaded pictures and out popped the BMW's Series 1 white Coupe and I remember I was like...whoa.... it literally looked like an actual miniature BMW is sitting inside the phone. The rest of the pictures on the Bold look great too. Just incredibly sharp and detailed and crystal clear. Whilst on the Onyx I had the impression that the pre-loaded pics are mediocre when displayed full screen. There aren't too many great pictures pre-loaded on the Onyx too, but maybe that's because there's an AT&T version and T-Mobile version. I haven't seen the TMob one, so I don't know what pictures are preloaded there. The Onyx's screen is great for reading texts as they really pop out to your eyes, but in the overall picture impressiveness department I still like the Bold better both in magnitude and clarity.

Keyboard:
I know a lot of people will disagree strongly with me on this one, but I found the Bold (and subsequently the Onyx) keyboard to be too soft for my taste. I guess I'm used to mashing on the keys on my Curve and I'm not a gentle type of guy - I type messily, and I like that emo typing where I forcefully jam on each button with all its click-clackity glory. With the Onyx, it's so soft that I almost feel bad jamming my fat thumbs on the keys. I just can't shake the feeling that I'm going to end up chipping one of the keys, although obviously that's not going to happen. While my old Curve is retarded, I have to praise its endurance for withstanding my daily abuse. The keys on the Onyx is also bunched up together, unlike the individual keys on the Curve or Javelin or Gemini so it's hard for me to accurately tell which keys is which, something that I've memorized to an exact science on my old Curve. I need grace to type smoothly on the Onyx, and grace is not something that I possess in abundance. One more thing: I discovered that if my nails are a bit long, my typing accuracy suffers further because my nails would slip on the fretted keys. Not that big of a deal, I think, after I get used to this about a week or so.

Trackpad vs. trackball:
Love it or hate it? Like I said, the Onyx is just so smooth overall that I almost feel bad swiping my greasy fingers across its high-gloss trackpad. The trackpad is super slick, super accurate and super sensitive. It's so sensitive in fact that I notice that depending on the light condition (dim vs. strong light), I can actually move the cursor just a tad bit simply by hovering my finger a couple of millimeters above the trackpad - without touching the pad. The only thing I miss from the trackpad is the actual tactile feel as I scroll around and feel it zip, zip, zip. And since it's integrated flat right into the surface panel, sometimes I touch the wrong panel and the cursor wouldn't move at all. That's opposed to the trackball where I always know exactly where it was since it juts out from the rest of the panel. But the trackpad IS a lot quicker and more responsive than the ball, and I think this is an awesome shift of gear from RIM. One drawback from this pad is that when my fingers are sweaty, movements can get a little draggish.

Size / Form:
For me, the choice is clear. Onyx ALL the way. Besides being totally hot in polished shiny black/chrome sexiness (you can't have too much black/chrome), what really wins my heart is its small footprint. I'm a guy, so I really appreciates a thin, sleek device that doesn't bulge up in or eat up one of my four pockets. The Bold is just way too big for me, especially once it's fitted with a condom silicone case. Bigger size means easier typing? Not for me. I did away typing absolutely just fine with the Onyx or Curve size keys. The Onyx could be a little lighter so it doesn't drag my pants down, but whatever....it just feels very sturdy overall.

OS:
The Onyx comes pre-loaded with OS 5.0.296 (there's a newer .371 version just leaked! try it if you dare then let me know what happens) which is just blazing fast - scary fast, in fact. That's augmented with Onyx's hyper CPU that's considerably faster than the Bold, so I'm truly satisfied. But there's something I totally hate about this OS version, and that is I have to be careful when when composing SMS text because if I make so much a mistake in pressing "alt" and then the "delete" key, it will delete my entire SMS text - right up to the beginning of the message. This is, to date, my biggest pet peeves with the Onyx (or the OS). Like I said, I'm a messy typer, but I type fast, and I make some mistakes. So I chaotically mash on the alt key and delete key, and if I so much as slip past the "L" key and hit delete while the alt is activated, my entire SMS text is gone. That makes me feel like chucking the shiny Onyx onto the wall, and that's not a good thing. I truly hope those morons at RIM amend this huge mistake on their next OS update.

But I can definitely say that the web browser is much improved although it remains, unequivocally, a BLACKBERRY BROWSER. It's not an iPhone. It still can't display some pages. It still won't play Flash. It's nowhere near as robust as I'd like it to be. It's still a Blackberry browser.

Camera:
3.2 MP and so far so good. Auto focus works great. Flash is....flash.




Better keep up with this blog before getting it erased again!

Just tonight I'm having an irrepressible urge to write on my blog again. Just like that. I thought about this long lost blog as I sat through a very beautiful piano performance at Hotel Borobudur's event. Well, to be honest I don't know just exactly how beautiful it was, for I'm not a trained ear and I'm definitely not the type of guy you can talk to about classical music. I mean, I'm at my happiest when I'm sitting there listening to Rage Against The Machine and Matt Darey. But the guy who played it seems to make very few if not no mistakes on the keys. He was good. And that's what so awesome about music. You don't have to understand it to appreciate it. As I sat there listening to the beautiful, melodious tunes as the pianist comfortably alternated between furioso and cantabile, the music somehow touched the innermost part of my soul, and my mind wandered to places I haven't touched in a long time. One of them is my blog. I love getting a good mind blowjob. No wonder they recommend classical music to babies as they say it stimulates the mind.

But I suddenly thought about my blog. Whatever happened to that commitment I've made to myself, a commitment I renewed when my first, long lost blog was erased four years ago? My first blog was, thankfully, just mostly rants about how my life sucked as a student. And to be honest, since I've got nothing to hide anymore, it was a bit suicidal. But then again, what's a good emo rant without a little suicide notes injected here and there? I thought it was normal. But anyways, I'm glad it was erased one way or the other when Google migrated all the data in 2005.

When I came home, though, I made a commitment to re-start my blog as I wanted to document my life's progression and thoughts in very specific time points. And I think I've maintained that commitment fairly consistent for the first four months or so. At first it was instinctual....the words came very easily to me. But now that I work in media, I guess I've had my fill of "words" that I hungered for, and my blog started to lag.

But as I sat there listening to the pianist, I started to question myself...... why am I not writing on my blog anymore? Deadlines. Work. Yes, deadlines can be a daunting hindrance for anyone to write a carefully thought piece of mind, but that's no excuse for me to completely abandon my commitment to restart my blog. I must not. I cannot. I'm no writer, but as a journalist, or an observer of life, as I prefer to view myself, I need to keep this going. I need to maintain the courage to observe and speak my mind, despite work and deadlines, just like National Geographic journalists maintain their tenacity when they're documenting some rare wildlife. At least I owe it to myself that I don't let this one die again like last blog. Or leaving it as an empty shell.

And so. I close this ramble with a renewed commitment that I put in some time for this writing. That ought to be in my new year's resolution. That, and getting more sleep.