BlackBerry Bold browser walk through
Bored at work? Counting down those hours until you’re free? Hopefully this will help take your mind off of things. The biggest request we’ve been getting so far regarding the Bold is to post a browser walk through. We’re about to take you on a magical journey, friends, to BlackBerry Bold browser land. Somewhere you’ve never been before. Just for kicks we included some screen shots of the iPhone’s browser loading the same web pages, but as you can see, the Bold does a pretty decent job at banging sites. Hit the jump for all the pics and our comments!
As you can see, the browser renders pages worlds better than previous browsers on the BlackBerry OS. It’s a welcome change, but it’s still not perfect. It doesn’t do a great job with our header.
This is still in the initial view mode. All you have to do to zoom in is press in the trackball. You can do this as many times as you’d like until you get the desired zoom level.
Don’t get too freaked out with the jaggedness of the text here. It looks very clean and sharp on the device itself. Images also look better than in the screen shots.
Like eBay? Well then, you’d obviously like to check it out from your BlackBerry Bold.
While the browser handles a lot of pages with no problem, there are some sites that the Bold doesn’t play nice with. As you can see, the Bold didn’t render anything in the upper left box, the lower right box, and there’s still a decent amount of content missing.
This is the default browser screen you are greeted with. Anyone running a semi-recent version of the BlackBerry OS will be perfectly accustomed to this.
Here’s where things get a little tricky… Since the BlackBerry has a huge following, many sites have created BlackBerry-optimized versions of their web pages. The issue is that since the Bold is still seen as a BlackBerry, it serves up the optimized pages instead of what you’d really like to see. CNN does the same thing, and there’s no option on either site to exit “BlackBerry mode”. Though we’re sure this will be fixed soon enough.
We also checked out CNET to test the Bold’s rendering abilities. It did pretty well here, but again, there’s a lot of blank space, and even worse, the left column is actually all the way down on the page when it’s displayed on the Bold. Below are the iPhone browser images of the same sites…
Want us to test some more sites? Let us know in the comments and we’ll update this post with them!
Anyone know if the Thunder’s browser will be better than the Bold? I too am not very impressed with the browser on BB. I have an 8830 which does a decent job as a browser but still has much to be desired. I just hope RIM puts an awesome browser on the Thunder.
For me…I’ve been a BB user since the Air Force gave me my first one 8 years ago…I’ve owned them all since, and I’ll own the Bold (More eagerly awaiting Kickstart for some odd reason). It looks nice and the browser looks decent…I was hoping to be wowed. The BB Thunder is what I’m nearly dying for…working for ATT, I was finally sold on the IPhone, but now the shots of the Thunder and Bold has me holding off. I really wished they had upgraded the browser significantly…everything else based on the last review of the Bold has me salivating so the browser for me is a minor shortcoming. Let us just hope that the Thunder really pulls out all the stops…
An interesting post on Silicon Alley Insider:
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/why-i-paid-apple-to-take-back-my-iphone-3g-aapl-
amke up your own mind…
Make that a ‘Make’…. spelling…
Face it, the iPhone was a good phone for a while butit’s technical and physical shortcomings have made it an “Also Ran”, simply stated there were just too many deal killers to stay near the top.
Bgr, rimm is touting tie thing as a video streaming monster, have you tried video streaming features yet, and is there any difference between wifi and like it is with the iPhone where streaming over wifi is a dream and over 3g suxs!
yup, iphone wins. hands down. night and day.
wen does the phone drop?????
@ Gman
How has it been “almost two years” when the first-gent iPhone was ANNOUNCED only one and a half years ago?
I’m sorry you’re an iPhone fanboy, but you’d think after one year Apple would have figured out how to do the simplest things with their mobile technology, you know, like enabling MMS. Didn’t realize that was so hard. I guess they should take some lessons from LG.
He probably meant Opera Mini.
What we really need is a way to make Opera Mini the default browser on the Curve. THAT would put me in 7th heaven.
I would like to know if the Bold Browser works with FileMaker Instant Web Publishing sites. (Filemaker is a database engine that generates web pages on the fly so you can search its engine with a browser.) A free site to test it on in located at http://www.realtyshowcase.org The first page is normal HTML. Select Commercial real estate search and see if you can do a property search. It has drop down lists, check boxes and bullets in its search and I would like to know if Bolds browser can handle it. Normal BB browser can not. Any desktop browser has no problem. (Opera cant either.)
I love my Blackberry for certain things, but it is obvious that BB still has some work to do to compete with Iphone’s browsing capabilities. Hopefully they will improve this for the Thunder when its released.
is there no wifi signal strength monitor in the top bar? that would be annoying to not know how strong the signal is.
As for the post, nothing new here, RIM will take another couple years to catch up with the browser. Its not really surprising, they put their efforts on security so the OS has to move slowly to retain the security. This will keep them behind in the design and functionality of the OS. However with a good facelift and faster hardware most customers will not know. Not a problem really, they do a great of knowing their strengths and weaknesses and hiding the latter.
Yes it does, I am responding using it now…your carrier likley doesn’t allow it
Another republished BGR story. I still think you should change your address to http://www.According_to_the Boy_Genius.com.
that browser sucks. why cant they make it as nice as apple’s
yo dick head why do you get made at blackberry users…cause ya already know that your iphone 3G is peace of shit !! show us some respect you bitch ass iphone sucker !!
Sorry about the post. It was intended for crackberry.com. I started reading this article on crackberrry.com and I didn’t realize the links took me to BGR. They just keep ripping you off.
What people don’t get is that a great browser isn’t a phone! We all know that the browser on the iphone is better! But what about as a phone all around! The Bold is first and foremost a business cellphone! You want a media player, go get the iphone! Personally, I dont have time to sit there and try to type out an email on the iphone’s touch keypad!!
People on here are mean.
iPhone does have a much better browser, but the BB is better at everything else.
And BB User in CA: Crackberry doesn’t “republish”. They reference, and make it a point to give credit where credit is due, hence the reason those links on Crackberry brought you to this article.
I’m just sayin’.
False
“Here’s where things get a little tricky… Since the BlackBerry has a huge following, many sites have created BlackBerry-optimized versions of their web pages. The issue is that since the Bold is still seen as a BlackBerry, it serves up the optimized pages instead of what you’d really like to see. CNN does the same thing, and there’s no option on either site to exit “BlackBerry mode”. Though we’re sure this will be fixed soon enough.”
Go to Browser Options, set emulation mode to Internet explorer.
Opera does run on the blackberry and runds just as wel as the iPhone browser.
what are the chances they improve the browser for the thunder?
Can you test my website on both iPhone and BB? Mainly BB as I don’t know what it looks like just yet on that browser…
Also please do screen shots side by side from the browser shots above from the iPhone!?
=)