Orange drops the Blackberry Bold due to quality issues
In an internal memo to employees, Orange announced that it has suspended the sale of Blackberry Bold handsets citing “software issues” as the reason for the suspension. The suspension is an interim measure while RIM attempts an industry wide fix. Sounds like AT&T is not the only carrier having problems with this disaster known as the Bold. At least AT&T was savvy enough to wait to release the handset instead of saddling their customers with this pile of garbage highly problematic device.
Internal Orange Statement on the Bold:
“Following reports of software issues with the BlackBerry Bold handset across a variety of mobile operators, Orange has decided to act in the interest of its customers by suspending shipments of the device in the UK. We are currently awaiting feed back from RIM as to when an industry wide fix for these issues will be in place, and expect this suspension to be an interim measure. We apologize for any inconvenience this issue may cause you. BlackBerry/RIM are doing everything they can to resolve this issue and will be completing full testing and validation to ensure future handsets do not have any quality issues. This may take a couple of weeks so it’s up to us to do what’s best for our customers.
So… yeah. Exactly.
Now I know my sources are officially full of crap. This has me worried about the Storm.
BG, what’s good with you and your Bold? Is it holding up or are you back on the Curve?
To all of those (I’m looking at you NickyHilton) for having the guts to admit that you were mistaken about it being AT&T’s fault I tip my hat. To those who are AT&T haters/RIM Fanboys who STILL claim this is AT&T’s fault, I shit in yours.
I said before and I’l say again; if this had been AT&T’s fault, they would have issues with all of the 3G handsets launched. Manufactures like Motorola, HTC, LG, Samsung, and Palm can make 3G devices that work fine on AT&T’s network. RIM however, is unable to. How anyone can equate this to an issue with AT&T I don’t know. The iPhone issue was a problem with Apple and that’s why firmware 2.1 fixed the issue. AT&T’s 3G network may not offer the most coverage but it you do live in a 3G area, the performance is very good.
I like RIM, and I have enjoyed using Blackberrys. However, they do need to get it together and realize that they may still be the current standard in email handling, but they aren’t the only players in the game anymore.
meh I feel a lot better now i didnt wait for the Bold. So Glad i got my nokia E-71
amazed at the people saying that kelly & BG are RIM haters for this story. Idiots, nothing more.
Major embarrassment for RIM.
@Melissa
The fact that AT&T and Orange are two different carriers tends to blow a big hole through your theory. This was RIM’s first non-CDMA 3G device, and its showing. It also seems that all those people saying that AT&T rushed RIM through development were dead wrong, since the main problem here lies with the underlying BlackBerry OS, not with anything else.
I hate to say it, but RIM’s leaving this end of the market WIDE open, and they’re going to lose the customers (if they haven’t already) that were waiting for the Bold.
Everybody just come over to T-Mobile and buy a G1….they get their products out on time.
AT&T did the right thing holding it off rather then putting a half-assed product on the market. It’s like releasing a car, even though the manufacturer has already found faulty parts that will cause a recall.
Had my Bold with rogers for just over a month now, and so far have had no problems. If anything, I find the 3G faster than the iphone.
The bold is not as bad as the carriers make it out to be. We have it up here in canada and i have friends who let me play with it from time to time. The screen is phenomenal and it’s fast. It’s got 3G issues but everything has 3G issues cause the 3G network sucks up here. U gotta remember that when the pearl came out, the OS was…just…pure shit. I was cuming from an symbian S60 device to the 4.0 BB OS and i couldn’t believe that the device actually started up…lol. It was a really bad OS barely holding together. But there was not a big fuss about it cause no one cared about Blackberries as they do now. so..give em some time to fix they’re issues and don’t listen to the carriers. Also keep in mind that, RIM has like..for example 50 people working on the OS. okay. As opposed to Microsoft who have say 300 people working on theirs. Thats a major difference in how fast u can fix shit. On top of that, RIM is fairly new in the mainstream phone market where as Windows has been around for a while. I used to own the Toshiba Pocket PC in 2004 with Microsoft’s Pocket PC 2002 operating system and the OS was better than what’s out now cause it was lighter, faster and more stable…lol So…the bold is an awesome device for what it is. An email workhorse. Don’t expect it to be anything else. I think many people get confused at this point. It’s not a Nokia Nseries phone. It’s just a BlackBerry. And remember that if apple got away with releasing the OS X 10.0 without loosing it’s entire user base then anything is possible…lol (the os x 10.0 was the worst os in apple’s history regarding just about every issue)
Yes, the G1 will be out on time, and so will the malware attacks. I’m guessing your contacts, e-mail and the rest of your life story will be posted on this page by the end of the month. But hey, that comes with “openness.” Cheers.
Just buy a Treo Pro and throw that BB junk away.
My Rogers Bold reboots pretty regularly for no apparent reason.
Have had various other error codes come up forcing a reboot.
Certainly not as stable at all previous BB’s.
@ John: What does two carriers inability to launch a product equate to the manufacturer tying things up when it the Bold has been released to scores of carriers by now without any major issues?
Perhaps both Orange and AT&T have similarly poorly built networks that cannot handle the additional strain?
Not all 3G devices are designed to utilize the network as much as BlackBerry’s and iPhones do so comparing them to a Motorola v3xx user who mainly uses his/her hardware for voice calls is poor logic.
If anything, the problems AT&T is having right now with the iPhone should be enough to force them to enhance their network and prepare it for the additional data load that will hit it. Once they are comfortable with the network, likely they will launch it.
Wow…really?? Hmm…I have never heard of all of these supposed issues with the Bold.
RIM is releasing new Curve’s in different colors on all carriers left and right. Looks like the Curve remains very much a *current* device.
Why haven’t we seen an uproar by all the Bold owners on Blackberry forums??
girlgenius,
my head “hurtz” just reading your post. fix up your damn grammar just a little bit.
Perspective, either get off your hate or get off this site. Try to post something worth reading then your usually garbage.
“Why haven’t we seen an uproar by all the Bold owners on Blackberry forums??”
Because the issues are not near as bad as they sound, yes..previous builds of the OS were horrible and all the things BG pointed out are/were legit problems, but with each incremental update in the OS these issues are slowly getting resolved.
Problem with that is the fact mostly all of theses OS revisions have NOT been made public, therefore causing “uninformed” users to be walking around with seriously buggy Bolds.
RIM should NEVER have launched the Bold with the OS it was shipped with, wheter it be on Rogers or anyone of the other 30+ countries it has launched in, but the device is seeing the issues get resolved slowly..as noted in the article.
And anyone still not thinking it’s possibly a network issue, needs to read the article from crackberry where a perfectly working(network connectivity wise) Rogers Bold choked at the hint of AT&Ts network.
read: http://crackberry.com/new-york-hated-my-blackberry-bold
Personally, I don’t really care what it is, I’m miffed at RIM for the BS with the device, once again NEVER should have been launched when it was but RIM is quickly correcting the faults in it and I have no intentions on switching from my Bold to anything else.
dude dont even bring the G1 into this!!!
It’s probablly a good thing – My Eval handset was running 4.6.0.126, that was all over the shop. .162’s an improvment, but there’s still work to do. Later, in this case is definatly going to be better
Nooo!!! the first competition I win and Orange take it away from me
well I have a bold from Orange France.
Loaded with 4.6.0.147 OS and no pbm so far
I m very very happy with this BB
The 4.6 is not the standard OS for a bold ?
it is but there are like 4 or 5 versions of 4.6 out there.
as an owner of a Bold, and having just bought another 10 Bolds for the office. I can say that the original code was slow and I got a lot of “rotating clock/wait” errors; since having upgraded the newest code the unit is now blazingly faster then the original (I went from 4.6.0.92 -> 4.6.0.167)
Obviously the Bold has had issues. Not everyone has complained about it but a complete global network half of its sales? That’s kind of ridiculous and just goes to show that the device should never have been announced until everything was fixed with it. For their first foray into the 3G market, RIM should’ve been extra careful and AT&T should never have forced them to make it. They should’ve progressed in that direction at their own pace and made the device, then chose the carrier, not the other way around that led to this messy situation.