Now that the BlackBerry Bold's made its
official North American debut, there's a lot of talk about a video Mobile Computer did of the Bold getting blown away browsing head to head with an iPhone 3G over WiFi -- but there's a slight problem there: the Bold was actually using 3G and EDGE. Yeah, that's not a fair fight -- and given how flaky the iPhone 3G's data speeds can be, it actually reflects quite well on the Bold. Head to head on WiFi, the Bold does seem a tick slower, but we'll let you judge that for yourselves -- videos after the break.
Read - BGR browser vid
Read - Mobile Computer browser vid
The original Mobile Computer vid -- note the lack of a WiFi icon while browsing.
The Bold browsing the same sites on WiFi.
posted August 21st 2008 1:22PM
finally we have proof that bb sucks.
rimm's workers must have taken a 5 year vacation.. starting 5 years ago?
Did anyone else notice the PORN links pop up on his iPhone's history at the 1:11 mark? A quick google query for js09kugla tuns up quite an unattractive British girl. Pretty funny.
OH GOD THE UGLY!!!
If you own a BB, then you just have to accept that browsing will suck. Who are we really kidding here?
thank you for being honest, i wish everybody owning a bb would be this honest
LOL, who the hell are you to talk about being honest? you wanna be honest, let's talk about all the problems apple has had since the new iphone launched. lol. i swear some people are being paid by apple. and if they're not, they should be. i can't believe some people are so pathetic.
see, the funny thing is that iphone is 10 times better than any other phone, even with its problems :D
@sycks
You were sooooo close on this one. You're only falter was right at the end. This is the reason why BB Push is better:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/16/apple-apologizes-for-its-mobileme-mess-admits-bungle-on-push/
And to highlight the meat of it: "Apple rescinded its use of the word "push" to cover all of its services, conceding that while there is indeed push to-and-from iPhones and the "cloud," computers are still being polled every 15 minutes... which is the same as .Mac (and honestly Apple, you didn't know that wasn't technically push?)."
Nevertheless, you still make many strong points; only we should really concede that BB has email nailed to a tee.
Actually that only mean your Mac/PC mail application polls every 15 minutes to check email sent to your MobileMe account.
The iPhone gets email pushed to it nearly instantly for MobileMe, Yahoo Mail or Exchange email accounts. Your Gmail, or other POP or IMAP accounts will be polled every 15 minutes (or less if you set it that way).
Hmmm,
I watched the two videos, and on the first one, you can SEE THE WIFI ICON meaning it's on... plus the audio commentary states so... The only difference is that in the 2nd video, the wifi icon is on the same line as all the other icons, while in the first one it is UNDER the rightmost icon...
Wouldn't the speed problem be fixed by using the better Opera mini?
wow.. i knew that iphone was supirior, but wow, i thought other companies would be catching up soon.. i guess not.
and all of you bb fanboys saying this is bullshit, shut up and get a life, it was done live, no photoshopping.
And LOL@ BB web browser hahahahahah
looks like an old browser from the 90's, or maybe even 80's?
Imagine, a phone with a choice of browser.
LMAO, I used my two year old MotoQ, with my Skyfire browser, in a shitty receptioned area, and WinMobi 5 and blew the shit away out of both the iPown and the Bold hahaha what pieces of shit.
yeah.. now lets return to reality where you cant possible be right, since safari is the fastest web browser to date :)
if your so sure, then do a video test and post it? i would like to see these ridiculous clames on video
Can the iphone send MMS yet?
Although I do like Apple, this comparison is rigged. The Bold is not actually connected to Wi-Fi because the icon is gray. Additionally, I don't know if you could hear it, but there's audible static when the Bold was loading the page (but not when the iPhone loaded the page), which means it was most likely contacting a 3G/EDGE tower... Basically, he's comparing Wi-Fi on the iPhone to EDGE/3G on the Bold...
Whoops that was idiotic... guess that's what I get for not reading the article...
but dont you see the bolds inabilty to stay connected to wi-fi a problem for rimm and all balcberries.
talk about bugs..
I was thinking about buying Bold on Orange.uk, for 35 quid/mo (inc. data, 12 months contract) + 50 for the device it is a quite good deal, but after seeing how slow it is I need to rethink it. I do not need push email that much. It's a good feature but for me browsing feeds/sites is more important. Iphone is way too expensive and fails as a phone, Diamond looks nice but most good offers on it are on 18 months contracts. I am waiting for Android but it is hard to believe that it will be great from day one.
iPhone does great as a phone. Don't let the anti-Apple fanboys scare you away. Try it for yourself and make up your own mind.
Actually, it's more the Apple fanboys that scare me away from Apple products.
And isn't the title 'Anti-apple fanboys' something of a misnomer? Surely you're implying that they are fanboys of so-called 'anti-apple', which is esentially everything that isn't made by Apple. Which in turn implies that they are fans of everything, with the exception of one company, whom they happen to be quite critical of. Which, of course, is the very oppisite of what is the generally agreed description of a 'Fanboy'.
I was thinking of getting the iPhone, Thunder, Pro or Android this October. But now, after reading both Gizmodo posts and Engadget comments of the same topic of web browsing, I narrowed down my choices.
iPhone is out! Not because it's a lackluster device with issues after issues, but because of the Apple Fanboys. Blind koolaide drinkers. This phone is made for Lemmings. Because of you Lemmings, I hate the iPhone! Can you all walk down a ridge together already?! Please, do me a favor and go over to one of the following for your gadget fixes.
Gizmodo = Apply Fanboy
Engadget = The rest of us
I really liked iPhone but then one of my 'busy being cool' friends bought one and I had a chance to use the device. I do not care about the keyboard, after day or so I got used to it and was able to type almost as fast as on Curve that I use at work from time to time. I just could not stand lack of some basic features that every 20-quid phone has.
At the moment it is really hard to find a phone that does things right. I do not expect anything special but come on - we are in 2008, when phone makers will realise that it is time to leave 2003 behind?
Regarding fanboyism - it is natural that people get emotional when they find out they spent XX USD/L/EUR on useless piece of hardware ;-)
Now now Mr. Marty, the iPhone, while expensive and quite impractical, is not entirely useless.
The screen, for example, is great, it's fast enough, and looks quite nice.
What apple has done, I believe, is create a good - not superb - phone, but only, and this is important: when you look at the core features. They've made a great foundation for what could have been an amazing product, but esentially got lazy when they got to the edges of the device, things like software tweaks (like the much-maligned lack of Copy-paste), hardware (I'm thinking mostly of the Camera and embedded battery) and community (of which most smartphone companies, while not necessarily focusing on, at least leave their OSs open-ended, so the people who are most likely going to use their devices to the full potential can actually reach that full potential, and share with others)
If Apple were to take the advice of every single one of their current iPhone users, filtered out the idiots, and then applied what they learn from the feedback to a new generation phone, or even (and I know the fanboys are going to hate me for this one) followed the trend of most current smartphones, instead of going out of their way to buck said trend, then they may just end up with a phone that actually lives up to the immense amount of hype that surrounds it.
CJ: Sir, I believe you are right, honestly. I would not care that much about camera or MMS but I am not going to buy a phone that lacks copy/paste, email attachments, comfortable email client (iphone's is quite slow) and sms forwarding/editing.
I really love iPhone's design, simplicity and screen. I could live without iTunes and Apple-naz...authoritarianism but not without above mentioned features. Maybe next time.
How does this debunk anything? Looks like another video showing how incredoubly slow the bold is loading a page.
And did you folks repeated hear and see in the video that the bold was using WiFi?
Why couldn't this second video do a comparison?
@Benson
try actually USING an iPhone, and magnify the page up as much as you can... i think you'll find the text does NOT go "chunky" or "blocky"
It still doesn't disprove that the BB browser looks awful and the phone makes horrid noises. I will certainly be called a fanboy by the immature set of readers that do so love to name call anonymously on the web, but Steve Jobs said it best when talking about the Mac. "It's elegant." And that's something the Blackberry still lacks for all of it's social "look at me, I'm important making money" status.
You are right, BBs look like windows 3.11 in 2008. They may be functional, for some people, but they suck in eye candy department, unfortunately :-(
I guess even if you state the obvious, you will get people who no matter what won't believe. I could paste the AT&T BB Wifi guideline, or a link to how the WiFi icon symbol works directly as I stated previously, but it wouldn't matter. I knew the moment I showed how it worked I would get the, "it looks the same" "it is not grey" "but it showed the wifi at the first!" and people would ignore the radio signal in the first/wifi in the second in the corner of the browser. End result: It is slower but not as slow as they originally showed, not too bad considering older browsers on BB. However, it is like trying to convince moon landing conspiracy theorists that man actually landed on the moon, ugh. No matter how much evidence to the contrary you present you will never make a dent in their beliefs. It is quite sad and scary at the same time.
If you look in the first photo, just to the left of the red marker around the word EDGE, there's the same icon for Wi-Fi on the Bold!
but can the bold run Mojave?
Holy fucking shit, the above comments all make me RAAAGE.
i think i just burst a blood vessel.
so i just tested this against my iphone 3g on the 3g network and my iphone beat it by a considerable amount of time so it seems that they should have done this with the bold on wifi and the iphone on 3g (or 2g for that matter the bold was sooo freaking slow on both i dont think it matters)
Are you guys daft?
It shows the the iPhone is using WiFi while the Bold is using Edge & 3G!!!
That's the whole point of this article!
Hello? Did you look at the whole thing? The article also shows a second video where the BB IS using WiFi. That is where everyone is saying it is still ridiculously slow... even on WiFi! The iPhone is still twice as fast. Even the iPhone 3G on 3G network is faster than the BB is on WiFi!
Just tried it myself with your video as comparison. The iPhone had finished at about 40 secondes running time of the vid. That's nearly twice as fast. JavaScript and plugins were - of course - enabled.
May I point out that the screenshot you show above is not the same as on the video of this test posted on MacDailyNews yesterday. The video on MacDailyNews does not show the word "EDGE." Instead the narrator of the video points out the wireless icon present on the Blackberry Bold screen.
Im not going to bash the BB but I still prefer the iPhone....screen real estate, yes please!
Please watch the video on MacDailyNews and you will see that the narrator clearly points out that the Bold is connected to wifi and shows the Blackberry wifi icon on more than one occasion.
He also points out that the Bold will not run on wifi unless it is also connected to either EDGE or 3G. That's why the EDGE symbol is showing. If true, this is a big drawback. In my home I cannot receive either EDGE or 3G on my iPhone, but I am able to use my wifi -- a big advantage.
I'm not surprised the Bold is still slower on Wi-fi. I have a Curve and an iPhone. I LOVE them both, but the Curve's browser is much slower connected THROUGH WI-FI than the iphone's when connected ONLY THROUGH EDGE. I've tested this many times.
RIM should be ashamed about its browser performance.
Blackberry kills iPhone on productivity: keyboard, copy paste, full PIM program sync, email.
iPhone kills Blackberry on: browser, media player, wow factor.
I wish I could get them to mate...
(For you Crackheads, yes my Berry's browser is set to wi-fi browser.)
Lots of BB bashers here. As a business user, I'd never get an iPhone. BB has a bulletproof reputation with respect to email & phone communication. I've been using one for 8+ years. Just upgraded to the Bold. While many people will compare the 2 phones, they are for different markets. Perhaps if I was 19 I'd consider an iPhone.
The Bold offers a qwerty keyboard and proven email reliability. The iPhone is a great multimedia device. However, the recent chipset issues shows how Apple deals with its consumers - a fix "sometime" in Sept. As for a true comparison of download speeds, any evaluating this knows that its a difficult to get a true comparison you need to be running similar applications on the same network.
If you want an unbiased comparison - go to the boyGenius report - a little wake up call for the Apple bigots.
Holy iCrap!!!!
I am not going to argue the merits of the BB vs. iPhone with anyone here. You should all like what you like and use what you use.
However, I will comment on the iFanboyz that are posting here. You guys/girls/children may not realize it now, but you are making all mac/apple fans look like raving psychos. The cultish posts are really creeping me out. I know that I will probably never buy a single apple product ever. Not because I think apple makes a bad product, I'm sure they are fine products. I just really fear that if I was to ever walk down the street with an iPhone someone might want me to drink some iKool-Aid.
I don't think fanboyism is really a bad thing. You should be proud of the products you want/own, but you iFanboyz just send chills down my spine. It also doesn't help that every blogger in the digital world treats the iPhone like the new version of the Bible and Steve Jobs like the second coming.
Admit it, how many of you have legally added an "i" in front of your name?
I don't get it...
It took my Nokia n95 1 minute to load the whole page, over 3G - on the other side of the world - Australia.
And, it took 55 seconds to load it over WiFi.
BOTH the iPhone and the Blackberry suck! - Sheesh
It's strange that people are comparing these 2 devices. I used iphone for a month and I need a BB for work all the time. iphone is an excellent phone. I love the screen size, I love browsing on it, carrying mp3s etc. However, I will never ever use it for my work. We had a pilot deployment for 25 iphones at work, ranging from all the way to 1st level technical support guy till the CEO of the company. Everyone loved the iphone but would not use it for their work. It decreased productivity just because people could not get used to typing fast enough on their touch screen phones.
Administration point of view iphone was a disaster. Exchange does a fair work of providing policies etc. but it was not robust. iphone was technically never meant to be of the corporate world. For people who are curious, yes, exchange does provide the push technology. You DONT have to open any firewall for this to work. Every exchange setup has a front end server in DMZ and OWA is provided from that front end server. iphone just uses the http/https to connect to OWA for push to work. No extra firewall configurations necessary.
We found the time taken was almost the same from our exchange to iphone and BES to any BB. BES however had better encryption. iphone would have saved us money because as any activesync supported smartphone, the CAL took care of the device. You dont need any extra licensing feature like BES does for each BB device. As long as you are on the AD, you can have a mobile device connected to it for your emails..
What did I think of iphone? well it was a good gadget. If I didnt need to carry my BB Bold all the time, I would have an iphone. I like how it looks and what it does. I ended up giving my iphone to my younger brother. He loves checking his personal emails, SMS, IM etc from his iphone. He also leaves his ipod behind as iphone takes care of everything. iphone is the best gadget he owns now.
You have to understand that Apple will never be able to beat RIM (creators of BB). The sole purpose of existence for RIM is to make BB. They do nothing else. They invest millions just in research and development on their BB handhelds just to make ensure that it feels right in the business person's hand. It was never meant to be a regular consumer product. I often find a lot of people with BB Pearl complaining about BBs in general. Corporate world do not use BB pearls. We use full QWERTY BBs for our day to day work. They are very different devices. When work needs to be attended, last thing on your mind is how that device looks. The sole purpose of emails and nothing else. Yes the 3G browser helps on the Bold, but I dont think I use it more than finding any address or look up small stuffs on the internet. Occassionally check the news and stocks. So the small screen size is ok. Also with WiFi on Bold, the speed is amazing. The facebook application is also cool, I can take pics and send it directly to facebook on my Bold.
But really, how many of you are seriously browsing on your iphones for more than 10 minutes to do some serious work? RIM doesnt have to be ashamed of their poor browser, they exactly know what they are doing.
Also did I mention about the MDS on BES for providing direct access to Business applications residing on the LAN to your BB? I dont think Apple will take their iphones that far. Not atleast for another year or two.
Just my 2 cents.
This is such a farse
I have just got my BB Bold from rogers and the browser is lightning fast of WiFi
Whaledd
I just spent $800 on a blackberry bold. I bought an unlocked blackberry bold off ebay. It works with emails but the browser doesn't work. It keeps asking to turn on the wi-fi. The default browser is to Hotspot Browser so it won't work. I'm with TMobile.
I spent 2 hours on the phone with Tmobile and they couldn't figure it out. I talked to RIMM and they said until TMobile offers it I can't update the new software to get the browser to work. Does anyone know if there is another way around this?