BlackBerry Bold doesn't handle pavement well
Always looking to make lemonade out of lemons, the self-proclaimed BGizzle took the opportunity to inform prospective (and current) BlackBerry Bold owners of the handset's fragile nature. To no one's surprise, the naked Bold didn't stand up too well to pavement when dropped from about two feet -- maybe this is where a real metal bezel would come in handy? Anywho, we're not told whether or not the essential functions were fubared, but we'd recommend taking his advice and snapping up a skin / case before welcoming it to the world.


















ah yes, a fake metal bezel...all the looks of real metal without the completely unnecessary physical qualities like hardness...
Eh, my 8820 has similar silver plastic on the sides. I've dropped it a few times, and sure it's got scratches---i mean, what do you expect when you drop it on pavement? Even metal is going to scratch---or dent. Thin metal is arguably going to deform faster than plastic.
Essentially it comes down to whether you want a sexy slim phone in a "modern style" or you want a phone that's going to take a beating. My older 8700 was bigger and clunkier looking, but you could toss it around and it just felt like it could handle anything you threw at it. Or threw it at.
OTOH, despite the relative feeling of fragility of the 8820, it's still continued to function fine after a few drops. If the BB Bold is even more fragile this won't be terribly surprising. I'll probably be getting a protector for this one.
Gravity Kills.
That's funny I've had my HTC Dash and dropped it hundreds of times, dropped it in a puddle, fell on top of it and it is all one piece working great.
I didn't realize that that bezel wasn't aluminum or some other lightweight metal! That is STUPID! And just to remind all the haters, the iPhone was drop tested three times onto concrete from ~5 feet and hardly had a scratch, although the fourth cracked the screen.
@Marco
That's nothing. I was rididng my bike with my iPhone in my pocket and crashed....
My cheapy Nokia 6120 Classic has real metal bazel too
why is it so hard for BB to do so?
... but will it blend?
"snapping up a skin / case before welcoming it to the world".........or just be more careful.....
not a helpful suggestion... as careful as i am with my phone (and everything else I own), i've dropped it at least 3 or 4 times. shit happens. a phone, of all things, should survive a decent fall
If you want to be careful, live in a bubble. You can be the most careful person in the world, but it only takes one jackass walking past to hit you with their shoulder while you're typing away on it and boom, it's on the ground. You've got to take whatever measures are necessary to protect your investment. It's just sad that you have to take them in the first place. My sister had an old cell phone she dropped down a set of stairs... 44 in all... and it worked perfectly while a coworker of mine dropped her Razr (or however you spell it) and it snapped in half. O_O
hey a skin saved my iPhones life... the ruber kept it secure on the top of my car after driving 3 miles before realizing where it was... yea i was an idiot for that but hey i still got it in perfect condition.
I call BS... who's trunk is only 2 feet off the ground? BG riding around in a lowered civic?
totally random, but civic ftw ! :P
seated at an outdoor cafe/bar ?? but yeah encasement #1
My Prizm's trunk starts about 1.5 feet off the ground. This isn't abnormal or anything. A standard civic truck probably starts about 2 feet off the ground (give or take a few inches).
Hopefully you're not just thinking of the top of the truck.
How is this article even worth mentioning?
I'm with you, Bunson. "Dropping shit will break it!"
Riveting, man. Riveting.
A toddler's pocket.
Another phone I shouldn't touch them ;)
It's not that I drop things when pulling them out of my pockets or anything, it's just that when I'm holding things, I always get the urge to throw them up and down :)
same here...bad habit...i used to hrow my phone (only) up and down...there were some bad drops after that a couple of times.....stopped now though
Same problem here. I usually throw my mouse up and down when it takes a while to load stuff. And my 360 controller, but that is harder to catch if you accidentally spin it.
Wow... I'm glad I'm not the only one who does that... I drop my Dash all the time b/c I do that... Or spinning it in my hand... That's a no no too
to be fair, I've seen an iphone's screen spider-webbed by the same fall. at least the bold is still 98% ok instead of having the screen ruined.
I can smell the crap on your breath from here dude! Do you work for RIM or something?
My 1st gen iphone got a pretty bad crack down the screen and dent on the top (like that bold) after taking a fall about 7 feet onto concrete. I had forgotten it was in my pants pocket when i slung them over a divider for showers in my school after swimming... it works fine though.
Another rim butt buddy! Man looking at your past comments: http://www.engadget.com/profile/480699/
I hope they give you a paycheck, otherwise that would make you just a creepy fan boy!
All I was trying to get at it was the absurd lie the first guy posted about seeing a 2 foot drop spider web
an iphone. Iphone glass doesn't break like that unless it's crushed. I don't work for apple, I just own
an iphone with lots of dents in it from 3-5 foot drops to concrete with no glass damage at all.
Get a life rim jobbers!
@ chris:
Maybe you're just lucky? A friend of mine had his screen cracked from a ~3 foot fall.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3022/2707557038_bf42d353a4_o.jpg
Slippery hands, eh, Chris?
I've dropped my iPhone several times from 5'+ without any damage to the screen. Of course I also dropped it about 2' onto a carpeted floor and the glass chipped >:(
I wasn't trying to say that this phone is less damage prone than the iphone; my point was just that the iphone isn't impervious to 2 foot falls. And it's not like I brought up the comparison first because the article even mentions a real metal bezel.
Also, I'm an unemployed college student, but I am interested as to where you bought your "Jump to Conclusions Mat."
http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/images/2007/10/15/iphone_smashed.jpg
Oh yeah, a real metal bezel certainly helped THAT phone out.
I take good care of my phones, but of all things I'd be happier (or rather, not AS mad) to have a crack on a spot like the bezel than on, say, the screen.
Mm, I doubt the bold's plastic (and highly scratchable according to BGR and CB's reports) screen would fare much better to whatever caused that.
two feet? thats like falling of a chair, thats some cheap plastic! either that or that little phone has some mad inertia
After seeing that I don't even want to know what would happen if I dropped my Iphone 3G...
Gives crackberry a whole new meaning.
Heh heh!
I actually laughed out loud. Well done, my friend, well done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZzT1AxV-OE
Mama Mia!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU
I don't get it. Why is RIM doing such a bad job launching the Blackberry Bold? We've all known about the device for a few months now, with maybe one official release from RIM and the rest are leaks. We can't even get a launch date on the various carriers around the world. Some countries (Chile, apparently) already have it, the US is still out in the cold. I think Canada is as well. Give us launch details: date, price, carriers. RIM: You're not competing with Palm anymore, you're competing with Apple, the best marketing company of consumer electronics in the world. Better hop to it.
Apple has a long ways to go before they're competing with RIM. DO you have any idea how many more phones RIM sells compared to the iPhone? Besides an iPhone, no matter what Apple's marketing machine says, is NOT a business phone. It still doesn't meet the needs of many large businesses and it's more expensive compared to most BlackBerry offerings.
@ Kris.
Apple doesn't have a long way to go to compete with RIM, they have a long way to go to _overtake_ RIM. Apple is already competing with RIM, did you see the announcement that HSBC is going to migrate off of the Blackberry and on to the iPhone? They're competitors, regardless of how either of us feel about the devices.
http://blog.omio.com/general-news/hsbc-moves-from-blackberry-to-iphone-200000-ordered/
I'm a big fan of RIM, but they really screw up their marketing compared to the Tour de Force that is Apple's marketing department.
It's not final yet, they're still testing the iPhone to see if it would be efficient enough to work in their environment. The title of the article is misleading. They're NOT ordered, they're just testing.
weoaaa weoaa weoooooooaaaaaaaa
Huh?
I don't want to see what happens if I drop my iPhone 3G on the pavement. D:
Wow, it's like adding 3G to phones make them more susceptible to cracking....
man drops gadget shock!!
its such a revelation it gets a story on "the internet".
soon to be reported on cnn , bbc ....
I opened a door today....read all about it soon..