The best Blackberry

With its large screen, fast internet connection – using both Wi-Fi and HSDPA - camera, sophisticated media player, GPS and more, the Blackberry Bold would seem to fit the profile of an iPhone challenger, but such talk is largely irrelevant – the two are aimed at different markets, and while the iPhone might be an excellent entertainment station, the Bold is the one that means business.

t 66mm it takes a walk on the wide side, though of course this is necessary to accommodate the QWERTY keyboard. Fortunately it makes up for this by being just 15mm thin and weighing 136g, so it doesn't feel like a brick in your pocket.

The screen is a more detailed than average half-VGA (480x320 pixels) 65,000 colours display, which is bright, clear and easy to read - which let's face it, is what the message-centric Blackberry series is all about.

Like the best business phones, the Bold is designed to help you work quickly and efficiently, with a minimum of fuss. The casual simplicity of the QWERTY keyboard conceals the thousands of man-hours of R&D that must have gone into this clever design.

The messaging, as you'd expect, is made easy and painless, with quick access to email accounts, and you can have your email pushed to the device as soon as it hits your inbox. You can also create your own Word, Excel and PowerPoint attachments with Documents To Go for BlackBerry.

There's a 2-megapixel camera on board which does a decent enough job, but you can't help feeling it's a bit underpowered compared to some other smartphones which cost less than this. One point in its favour though is that it's very quick to access – it's up and running in less than two seconds after pressing the shutter button on the side, which makes it great for quick snaps.

Picture quality is fair if not exceptional for this grade of camera, and there are a few limited editing options as well as geotagging (positioning data embedded in image files so you can see where they've been takenon a map), and the option to upload your pics directly to your Facebook profile.

A few others, such as Nokia's N71, HTC's Touch Pro, may come close in this regard, but neither of those can quite overtake it as the business tool to be seen with.

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