Form:
BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900 – 115 x 66 x 10.5 mm, 130g
Apple iPhone 4 – 115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3 mm, 137g
These two handsets could not be any more different visually, the iPhone is a looker with a design like a shard of sculpted and polished glass, meanwhile the BlackBerry has a squashed and frumpy appearance with both a screen and keyboard squeezed awkwardly into its frame.
It's not hard to see why Apple's designs have been so successful to the point of imitation by other manufacturers.
Winner – Apple iPhone 4
Display:
The Bold's TFT capacitive touchscreen is a little on the dinky side of things at 2.8-inches, the resolution clocks in at 640 x 480 pixels and an impressive 287 dots-per-inch (dpi), it also uses RIM's 'Liquid Graphics' technology for enhanced graphics and a more responsive touch control experience. The screen shares its space with a Qwerty keyboard and an optical track pad, and an accelerometer sensor wraps-up the list of display features.
Apple has used an LED-backlit IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen in the iPhone 4, measuring 3.5-inches with a resolution of 640 x 960 pixels at 326 dpi. It features a scratch resistant oleophobic surface designed to reduce greasy fingerprints, multi-touch, accelerometer and gyro sensors.
The iPhone 4's screen isn't vastly bigger than the Bold's but it's enough to draw and hold our attention and both the resolution and dpi are higher too. We prefer a solid keyboard but not at the expense of screen space so as the Bold isn't sporting a slide-out version this isn't earning it any extra points.
Winner – Apple iPhone 4
Storage:
The BlackBerry has 8GB of internal storage while processing power is boosted by 768MB of RAM and Micro SD cards are supported up to 32GB.
Meanwhile on the iPhone 4 there are options for either 16 or 32 GB of onboard storage capacity, which is much more generous than the Bold, however, things start to go a little downhill from here with 512 MB RAM and no card support.
There's nothing wrong with 512 MB RAM but the BlackBerry simply has more to throw around and no card support for the iPhone 4 is disappointing, though not exactly surprising.
The wealth of storage space on Apple's device is a big plus in its favour though and in our view is of primary importance when it comes to phone storage, so in this round the iPhone 4 wins.
Winner – Apple iPhone 4
Processor:
Both handsets are powered by single core processors, the iPhone 4 uses a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor on the Apple A4 chipset and paired with a PowerVR SGX535 graphics processing unit (GPU).
The BlackBerry Bold, meanwhile, runs with a more powerful 1.2 GHz Qualcomm 8655 Snapdragon.
Not only do both these phones have a decent amount of muscle but they've been nicely optimised with their respective operating systems too, both therefore offer silky smooth performance as you navigate round the interface and multi-tasking with a selection of apps is also well handled.
On paper the BlackBerry should win with a more powerful processor and more RAM but in actual use both deliver equally satisfactory performance and we'd be hard pressed to pick a favourite between the two.
Winner - Draw
Operating System:
The Bold predictably uses the BlackBerry OS, the latest version 7.0 to be precise and it represents some definite progress for RIM in terms of closing the gap with the likes of Android, Windows Phone 7 and iOS.
Changes from version 6.0, itself a step in the right direction, are fairly extensive but you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise just by looking at it as the overall style and presentation is more or less unchanged.
Performance has been enhanced across the board making it much more satisfying to use, the web browser in particular is zippier and now features a pinch zoom and voice activated search function. Churning away behind it all is a tailor-made BlackBerry Javascript compiler as well as HTML5 and Flash support.
There's also integrated support for HD video capture and the much talked about up-and-coming magic of NFC remote banking technology.
Lastly, though by no means least, RIM has added a new set of tools designed to help users separate their business and personal data as part of the BlackBerry Balance suite.
Apple's latest version of iOS as used on the iPhone 4 hasn't changed considerably since the last release, which shows how time and effort has shaped a very complete feeling operating system and it is commendable that Apple have pretty much taken the attitude that they're not going to fix something that isn't broken.The majority of changes were cosmetic interface, icon, menu options and menu placement tweaks.
More substantially, however, there were also a few welcome additions to the networking options with the inclusion of the Mobile Hotspots feature for shared connectivity with other devices, as well as Apple Airplay, a handy way of streaming photo and video content directly from your handset to an Apple TV.
Lastly, and perhaps most impressively, the already nifty Safari browser received a performance boost and is now unbelievably quick.
Both of these are great operating systems, they're well optimised on the handsets with very quick performance and we can't speak highly enough of the intuitive interfaces on each which will have you flitting around the menus at a rate of knots.
Winner - Draw
Camera:
The Bold features a 5-megapixel primary camera at 2592x1944 pixels with autofocus, LED flash geo-tagging, face detection and image stabilization while video capture is at 720p. No secondary camera here though.
Apple has gone for a similar setup with a 5-megapixel primary at the same resolution as the BlackBerry. The features list is more extensive overall, the basic line-up includes autofocus, LED flash, touch focus, geo-tagging but the video capture at 720p also has some additional features with an LED video light and video geo-tagging as well as video-calling over Wi-Fi connections. There's also a secondary camera.
We feel the iPhone has the more attractive setup here.
Winner – Apple iPhone 4
Final Thoughts:
The BlackBerry is decent enough in most aspects but has a few major downfalls relating to design, it isn't pretty and integration of a fixed keyboard means the screen is tiny, which further taints its visual style.
Apart from that though it has a good camera, a great processor and a very nice operating system, and despite being smaller than we would like the display quality is commendable.
The storage, while adequate, is significantly less than the iPhone, which overall we feel is the better handset of the two with more camera features, a larger and more satisfying screen, much more storage space, a good processor and killer looks to top it all off.
-From a source
