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The Bold 9000 that PureMobile sells was originally a Canadian "Rogers" locked phone, now unlocked. The phone does quadband GSM, and HSDPA 850/1900/2100. It features a 480x320 65k screen, a 3.5mm stereo headset jack, microSDHC slot, 128 MB of flash main storage, 1 GB of extended storage, 624 Mhz CPU, EDGE, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support, standard mini USB 2.0 port, 2 MP camera with flash, built-in GPS, and a Li-Ion 1500 mAh battery.

The device is really light for what it is, at just 133 gr. It has a very beautiful black finish, a trackball, and a full qwerty keyboard. Its keyboard is its best feature in my opinion. RIM really knows how to create keyboards that are easy to use, without pressing wrong keys all the time. I have small hands, but the Bold 9000 feels just right in my hands (or fingers).

The very snappy Blackberry 4.5.x OS is installed and it looks more modern that ever. Loading the device from a power off state takes about 45 seconds, but there is a "lesser power off" state (aka deep sleep) where some of the messaging functionality is still ON. Booting from that state takes just 5 seconds. Pressing and holding "profiles" button puts the device in standby, and coming out of it is instant. One cool trick this phone can do is turn off the screen and go into standby immediately after you place it in its case (comes in the box). It seems that the case is enriched with a magnet or something else that the phone can detect and realize that it currently slips into the case!

The OS has seen a fresh redesign, it is easy to navigate around, and while some of the menus could be further beautified, it feels every bit as good as Nokia's S60. Pre-installed you can find the DataViz document viewer/editor, a Java MIDP implementation, a media player for MP3/WMA/AAC+, a video player for DivX/WMV/XviD/3gp, an organizer, calculator, notes, voice dial and more. I particularly liked the no-frills dialing and contacts interface.

As I wrote above, the keyboard quality was my favorite feature of this phone, but its reception and battery life are not far off. I am using the device now for about a week, without having it recharged since the initial charging, it it's still at 30% of battery life. Reception was good too, both with AT&T and T-Mobile. Considering that T-Mobile doesn't have a very powerful antenna where I live, the phone manages ok. Voice quality was great too.

WiFi worked perfectly and without any problems. Bluetooth too. I had no dropped connections or similar problems. However, I was not able to try GPS because there was no application for it and no map data installed in it. The GPS module reported up and ready, but without an app, I couldn't do much with it. As for the camera, this 2 MP snapshooter with flash is not going to win any FlickR awards, but it does the job.

That's where the cool stuff stop I am afraid. From then on, it was a pain to get any new applications installed or EDGE/3G data out of this baby. "Fully unlocked" unfortunately didn't mean a free ride.

The first major problem is that I can't have EDGE/3G access with this phone. AT&T recognizes the phone as a Blackberry and denies access to its network (other than voice/texting) unless you buy their expensive Blackberry package or unlimited data plan. I don't have a data plan with AT&T (although I should have still being able to access the internet at their $10 per 1 MB rate), but I do have one with T-Mobile. Unfortunately, T-Mobile just wouldn't play nice either. I tried every possible APN and related settings, but T-Mobile just wouldn't give me access to their WAN network. So the only internet I was able to get, was via WiFi.

The second problem is with installing new applications. You are supposed to go to mobile.blackberry.com to install apps, but the internal browser only saw what you see with your desktop browser. Instead, it should have seen RIM's application store! It's like that RIM doesn't recognize the phone as being a Blackberry (the user agent was correct btw, I checked it). By searching on the web, I found that you can't access that page properly via WiFi (it requires EDGE/3G), and you also need to have certain "Host Routing Table" entries in the advanced settings, but these just wouldn't fill up despite my efforts (with either carrier). Then, I found that in order to have these filled up, you need to send your "service books" and have your carrier recognize the phone as its own. This being an unlocked phone from Canada, failed to get the HRT values with either AT&T, T-Mobile and a Greek Vodafone SIM I had around and I thought that it wouldn't hurt to try too.

Because Opera and Google offers their Blackberry apps directly, I was able to download via WiFi the Opera Mini, GMail Mobile and Google Maps apps. Opera Mini was the only application that worked correctly (with Wi-Fi). GMail and Google Maps stalled and eventually timed out during loading. Apparently, these apps won't work without 3G/EDGE either! What a headache.

My conclusion is that an unlocked Blackberry phone doesn't give you a free ride the same way an unlocked Nokia or even iPhone cellphone does. The Blackberry platform seems to be very tightly closed (and sometimes it has a negative impact even to legitimate users from what I see on forums), while the carriers take the closed mentality one step further. It seems that they see the Blackberry as this business device that they can make an extra buck more. I know that RIM lately wants to compete in more conventional cellphone markets, but this won't happen if they and their friend carriers don't ease up on the control over the platform. Which is a shame, as the Blackberry OS and hardware are actually pretty cool and with a lot of potential.

Pros:
* Keyboard
* Security
* Enterprise

Cons:
* More closed than any other closed platform which makes its functionality as an unlocked device very limited

Rating: 7/10