I was in my friend Omar Shaheen’s office earlier this afternoon, and as he is now a big wig magazine publisher and owner of FACT, he was given a new toy by Zain to check out.
Omar was kind enough to allow me to have a shooftie for a few minutes. Unfortunately, he wasn’t that keen on letting me walk away with it, even though I promised I would write a comparison article with the iPhone for FACT. Bummer.
I should have curbed my enthusiasm and downplayed it a bit. Maybe then he would have let me have it for a few days! It’s a problem when you wear your emotions on your sleeve and publicly salivate at technological devices!
Anyway, I fondled it for a few minutes and briefly investigated its features which are very impressive and very practical indeed. It looks that it will resolutely kick Apple’s ass when it generally becomes available in a few weeks time. It – to me at least – looks like a much better value for money and I will probably shall be fighting to get to the top of the queue to get me one.
At least it is unlocked and you won’t have to beg, borrow and steal to get one and get locked in with a long term contract for the privilege of owning something that will generally become obsolete just a few weeks after you have purchased it.
Comments
Loving the new look to the blog.
I’ve never had more than a bog standard phone as calling/texting/taking drunken photographs are my sole requirements – but am curious as to how these top of the range phones attract such a large following (eg Blackberry is known as the ‘Crackberry’ in the UK due to its addictive nature!). Are they really all that? I guess it helps to be able to check e-mails etc. there’s no denying it looks like a smart piece of kit though.
Back in the UK the one added feature I did use was the ability to go online and check football scores etc through the phone browser of the mobile operator (Orange). I damned if I have had any luck doing likewise here in Bahrain – I guess this is why the TRA’s top man Alan Horne is always bemoaning the lack of ‘value-added services’ offered to users in Bahrain.
I see the FT is reporting that Mumtalakat are selling 37 per cent of Batelco, with Etisalat or Saudi Telecom the likely winner. Will this make a difference?
Me like this baby the Nokia E71 and pretty happy with it…
Even though it’s a better Blackberry than previous models, it’s no iPhone. I know it’s easy for me to say that here in London but I’m comparing it from a technical point of view. Have a look at this exhaustive review of the Bold:
http://www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk/20080819818/rim-blackberry-bold/page-2.html
Compared to the iPhone it fails when it comes to browsing the net over WiFi.
New skin, 10 years old code.
It’s getting better, but they’ll have to re-write the damn OS from scratch to compete.
Still, the perfect fool proof mail toys for business folks, not even close to iPhone or WM6 killer.
Is Zain giving any more away? Who did Shaheen shag for that? Looks nice doesn’t it? Does it feel nice? By the way; the UK just ””banned”” an ad for the Iphone because it was telling porky pies. 3.5G is not all it is cracked up to be especially with some of the distances some of the users are away from the antenna. (Which is a sad artifact of Wimax as well, but it shouldn’t make a difference in Sun Tan land as we can all see ’em)
As I understood it, you cannot make video calls on it anyway. Is that correct???
So if Zain are giving ‘coloured berries’ away, push push, Internet dream machines, they need to set their network straight. The Internet was out today all day so far, in my area anyway. It has been so slow slow slow lately.
The UK ad was banned because the iPhone doesn’t display Flash-based sites. Which is not a bad thing, to be honest.
As for 3G reception here in the UK, I’ve had no problems at all with my iPhone. Websites load significantly faster than my first gen iPhone and the location-aware apps from the iTunes store are impressive, especially Vicinity. Wherever you are in the UK, the app will let you know the closest banks, coffee shops, etc.
Okay, enough Apple evangelising from me.
Oh you party poopers! Can’t you let me have my fund for a couple of seconds? I tell you what though, the guy who’s going to be more disappointed in reading your feedback will be my brother Jamal who has come to detest his first gen iPod and swears everything with the Bold!
Me, I just dislike that bloody SE C902. The piece of junk is clunky and very very slow in its response.
Oh ok, yeah Hani.. I heard something about that, but didn’t take much notice at the time to be honest, so didn’t put two and two together when I saw it. In retrospect, Twas a bit iffy though and quite possibly a bit vindictive of the group who lobbied. The point being that the phone does ‘not yet’ support flash, but the ad implied it did. Oooh Ugh!! Now we have to be politically correct and not refer to the new Berry as Black!
Very sexy phone – Batelco will have it in October so I will have to wait till then.
“it looks that it will resolutely kick Apple’s ass when it generally becomes available in a few weeks time. ”
How DARE you. Blasphemer…. your dead to me.
I REPENT I REPENT!
I’ve just ordered an iPhone from Tariq. I’ll post my experience. Should be a nice toy for the weekend 😉
I want an Iphone – when will it arrive?
The novelty like a new watch! Maybe you’ll answer it more often when we call?
Abdullatif, Tariq (see above for contact number) has a few. Give him a call.
Voyer, stuff it, what’s money for anyway?!! 🙂
My name’s Hisham and I used to be a crackberry addict.
I had a Pearl. Snappy. Charming little java-based OS that’s fidgety at the most inconvenient times and a bit dumb (takes fifteen minutes sometimes to start up after installing apps). Sort of like the Commodore 64 of phone OSs.
Dumped it after I admitted to having a crackberry addiction. I’m now using an SE W890i with a funky TrackID feature that’s way more fun than receiving bloody work emails while I’m on the beach.
Hisham, you’ve always been addicted to one thing or another eh? 🙂
Mahmood, so he has them in stock? Should I take the plunge?
I talked to him and he says he’ll get the mojo keys Sat/Sun so that’s when he will have them in stock. I told him to keep a 16G for me and now that I have made the decision, I can’t wait to get my hands on one.