Friday, May 23, 2008

BlackBerry Bold 9000 Hands on

As some of you may know, I work for a company that concentrate on developing Input Method for various platform. I am the one responsible for development on Blackberry and today I received the newest product from RIM, the Bold 9000.

If you have ever played with any of the 8xxx series and now holding a brandnew 9000, you may be impressed by its new interface, new functionality and new plastic/metal case.

However, to make things short, I conclude with one sentence: It looks well, it plays badly.

If you are looking for tech details for Bold, read CNET news, or if you want some screenshot, visit crackberry. The one on my hands looks exactly the same. And it's awesome. (Don't compare it with iPhone though)

As a Chinese Input Method developer, what I concern most, as any Chinese would do, is the ability to display and enter Chinese characters. When comparing with the Font on Pearl, which looks like Chinese Char in CWin31 or just eTen, the ones on Bold are clean and clear, and are as good as those on newest Windows Mobile. Bold support HKSCS natively, so there should be no problem reading Hong Kong News. Moreover, Bold has built-in support for multi-lingual User Interface. One can choose its favorite Interface language right from SetupWizard.

The true power of BB handheld relied on its ability on messaging. Actually I didn't see many Hong Kong Blackberry users typing in Chinese (I see users on MTR mostly). Maybe it's because its poor support on Chinese Char Typing. (Visit here for details on Chinese Support).

Bold supports quite a number of Chinese Input Method (natively, like UI) , like 粵拼, 注音 and 倉頡. However, after the "first taste" of using the input method, I lost my chance to test further... THE INPUT METHOD BROKE MY BLACKBERRY!!!

I started up my Blackberry in English Interface with 粵拼 input method. I went to "message" and compose my first email. Everything is the same as in 8xxx machines, nothing surprising. As I have no real experience using 粵拼, I tried some common strokes like "lee" "sin" "sang" and something like that. The control is really bad as if it is programmed by a guy without any experience on Chinese typing. I tried to type a little faster, but it seems to be extremely slow (on searching output?). The speed is unacceptable and I started losing temper. I tried to hit the keyboard in random and finally it showed me "Input Method Error, restarting..." (not exact phrase). That message popup since then whenever I typed fast enough, which is like 3 key per second (not 3 char per second), which is common for any "normal" Chinese typer. I lost my interest and go on testing something else, like Web Browser.

About half an hour later I switch the machine into Chinese Trad Interface, hoping a native Chinese Interface would gain better performance working in Chinese. I start the message editor again and try typing like before. I sense strangely as i switched between input method. The BB gave me 注音 chars when the active input method is 倉頡, wtf. I keep typing until the proper 倉頡 show up, then after like 2 sec... my BB hanged up. There were no response whatever I do, including pressing and holding the POWER button. It showed me the BB is shutting down and is actually hanged.

There's nothing I can do, and I remove the battery and put it back again (a normal hard reset for BB). I think it will be fine since I do reset like 50-60 times a day when i worked on it (install/uninstall require restarts). But no luck, it gave me "SYSTEM PROCESS ERROR" and force me to reset. And of course, no luck after reset. And i am now holding a bricked Blackberry Bold.

To be lucky is that the machine is a sample from the network provider and I can wait for an exchange a few day later. I should not have great hop as it's just a demo machine anyway. I hope that the stability can be improved before its release. The release date is not announced, and they should have lots of things to do. (and Thx to those sloppy programmers, my state in my company is as firm as it can be)

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