Orange mulls pulling the BlackBerry Bold (again)
According to a report issued this morning, European carrier Orange is considering dropping the Bold from its lineup after being unable to solve “ongoing technical issues.” Orange employees familiar with the matter have said the Bold has the highest rate of return in its category, something which is not sitting well with the higher-ups due to a previous issue with the Bold. Back in October, Orange halted sales of the Bold due to a high incidence of dropped calls, crashes and poor overall performance. After a more stable OS release from RIM however, sales of the Bold resumed. If Orange were to pull the Bold for the second time it would most likely remain sidelined for the duration of its market life which would deal a huge blow to RIM. To compound matters, this move would give a great deal of additional publicity to the woes of RIM’s latest flagship products, the Bold and the Storm. For the time being Orange has declined to comment on the matter, as was the company’s position before the Bold was pulled last year.
At the time of the first recall, every Bold on the Orange network was running OS 4.6.0.126, a very buggy release indeed. Since Orange reinstated the Bold however, it moved to OS 4.6.0.162 – also not the the most usable version issued in recent history. In all fairness to RIM and Orange customers, perhaps Orange should hurry up and release a new OS build like 4.6.0.190 or beyond (though many are a severe step backwards) as several other carriers have done.
I bought 2 Bolds from AT&T, one for my daughter and one for myself, they are both 3 months old now and so far they have worked perfectly, nearly constant 3g, no dropped calls and decent battery life, and there pretty much loaded with Apps and movies, a great phone IMHO.
OOOppps, NOT a very good time for RIM. The Storm has had record returns.
My rogers bold has worked flawlessly on att for almost a year so sorry
@J:
“My rogers bold has worked flawlessly on att for almost a year so sorry”
Really? Rogers launched the Bold on Aug 21, about 4 months ago. How have you had one for nearly a year?
Ive has my Bold on Att for about a month now and love it. No issues at all. But Ive loaded up beta OS .216, quite a few have loaded up .217 and says its the best one yet.
Go away Canis_major. You are obviously a troll trying to spread bad feelings when there isn’t much.
Are you paid by Apple or Nokia to slander blackberry or just shorting the RIMM stock and annoyed that it’s not going down anymore?
Either way, it should be pretty clear that almost 100% of the Bold users on this forum has no major issues with their phones.
I find it funny that a few of you guys are working overtime spreading false rumors to unsavory media/writers that will believe and print anything a shady blogger is willing to throw out there without anything more than a couple of annecdotal complaints.
Are you the same guy that writes alley insider?
It took forever to come out on att with it and no reports of probs on thier end. The chatter now is that a CDMA version will be hitting Sprint this quarter
I’m with Julius Caesar.
Canis Minor, you suck. I mean, really! Like everyone else, I’ve had no problems with my ATT Bold. None. Ditto my iMac.
Where and how do you get the beta OS of Blackberry Bold?
Mine is with ATT with v4.6.0.167 (Platform 4.0.0.157).
My Bold (Rogers running .162) has a nasty memory leak I do a reset each morning yielding 31ish MB of memory and by bedtime I have 15MB free it starts getting flaky for some things at ~10MB free…
Perhaps it is unresolved annoying crap like that Orange objects to? I love the phone otherwise. I am just annoyed with the maintenance. I have never had a phone that needed as many resets.
Shame that Bold/Storm have soiled RIM’s reputation for launching sensible, stable devices. I guess it’s the heat of the marketplace.
If you want a new BB that Just Works, take a look at the Curve 8900. Classic RIM, neatly executed, stable, no surprises. It can still be done.
My unlocked Bold works like a champ, but i did have random reboots, but once I got rid of a couple of recently added apps, reboots went away.
The Bold is a wonderful machine. I had it for a month on AT&T to try it out.
I had a few problems with it, some dropped calls and memory leaks. It would try to hold on to 3g for dear life instead of dropping to Edge. Once I upgraded the OS, it worked fine for me.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t live without threaded SMS so I took it back…but that’s not a Bold issue, it’s a personal preference.
I am running a Bold on Orange on .190 with no problems at all. All Orange need to do is get a later version of the OS as their official release and work out how to get all the non techy users upgraded. Simple.
@julius and Conrad,
I used to be one the biggest pro-RIM posters here. Go back in the comments, and see how I defended RIM when BGR spoke about the Buggy Bold and the Sucky Storm. The point is, he was right. I’m glad you guys are having no problems with the Bold. The point is, the core business users are struggling with it.
A number of examples:
1) Battery life. Head over to crackberry forums and see how even the most ardent members of blackberry fandom say they have to fully charge their Bold’s every day. Now imagine you’re a businessman, work till 3am, forget to charge your Bold for one night, and the next morning it dies on a conference call.
2) Reboots. You’re sitting in an airport lounge, about to jump on an important conference call with a client. You go to the calendar to call up the number and as the Bold multitasks to the phone, it reboots randomly. You end up being 3 minutes late for your conference call, and the client has already logged off.
Blackberries became the preferred business communicator because the JUST WORKED. The average banker, consultant or marketer does not want to update the OS every other week; does not want to have to call corporate IT every two days for the latest “tip” to improve stability.
This is the problem Blackberry has today. It doesn’t matter that they fix the Bold software with release 217 or whatever. To the corporate world it matters that it works out of the box, works first time, works every time.
Mark my words: If the 9030 is buggy when it launches on Verizon, RIM is done.
Canis,
there will always be people that have problems with their new products. when each of the bold and storm sells a million units worldwide within a few monthly of their launches, you are going to get plenty of people that arent happy about it. Couple that with rim’s 3g chip/design learning curve and its rush to launch multiple products simultaneously, you will probably get greater amount of issues.
But the point here is that the bold, through its software upgrades have improved and are generally viewed as solid products by its users. A few complaints on the web are to be expected in the infomation age when there are a million connected users out there.
i see no reason for you to have defended rim at the launch, and see no reason for you to bash them at this point when the problems are being largely addressed or being addressed.
Hands down, rim’s still the best product for people with business communications and applications in mind.
For consumers, looking for a smartphone, whereever an iphone is not sold (read most carriers in the world), any blackberry, including the storm is still best choice, and miles ahead of any competition out there.
Rim probably bit off more than they can chew during mid 2008 becuase of an overly ambitious simultaneous launch schedule to included hsdpa and touchscreen. But look at the core products/services, the history of solid execution and thoughtfulness, and its knowledge edge over 90% of its competition, i would still bet that more people will use blackberry in the next few years than other smartphone makers.
I hope rim try to walk more steadily before dashing into too many new niches, and launch a kickass app store next year.
I’ve upgraded to a Bold on Orange a month ago and haven’t had a single problem with it. No crashes, reboots or glitches and I’ve installed at least a dozen 3rd party apps. Battery life has been about 3 days between charges and I leave wifi on all the time (I talk about 600 mins a month). All in all, I love the phone and the service – can’t see why Orange would drop it.
At&T Bold on .190 and no problems whatsoever. Read betwween the lines on what people post. The Bold is way solid and true to the BB name. People want to lunp it in with the Storm but its not.
How about some full dsiclosure on the haters. Own AAPL stock or an iPhone? I had two iPhones and the Bold outperforms in every category (ok, not on developers and apps)
Battery is 2x longer, no reboots or crashing apps, and NO dropped calls! IPhone 3G was horrible at that.
My Bold has already gone on its first multi-country trip, and has worked flawlessly for me here on AT&T and overseas.
I would not recommend the .217 release of OS 4.6. As the article states, .190 works very well, and .210 is rock solid in the “.200’s”.
Canis and everyone else: there is a ton of info and convo over at Crackberry about battery life, so-called memory leaks, reboots, etc. Everyone will have something to say and post about. But a thread with 10 diuscussants – or even a hundred discussants – does not a “big device problem” make. Go read the Apple iPhone or any other device forums. It sounds like there are nothing but problems. But it’s some people having some difficulties.
It’s a matter of perception when you cruise through a forum dedicated to problem-solving. Looks like there’s nothing but problems. But give every member of Crackberry a survey and ask them objective questions about the device and you will get overwhelming positive feedback. Most “errors” are user generated and easily fixed.
The battery life on the Bold is fine and easily extendable through using power-saving options. It’s a 3G device though and uses a little more juice than others, but I can get through two days no problem. Anyone who needs to get more than 24 hours out of the phone and is a heavy user is a fool if they don’t have a spare battery or way to charge with them.
I have never had random reboots or dropped calls. Ever. Having said that, every device flips out at some point and needs a little TLC. So one day I may drop a call or reboot. I’m not too worried about it though. Happens to everyone.
I am using .162 on Rogers. No new OS for me, though I’ll do it eventually.
I would say to Heathen – you have a problem app if you are having memory drains. I would be interested in the apps you have loaded. It will be a fixable issue.
Yeah, BB sucks, so guys move over to a … winmo (any1)/ symbian/ iphone to bear all these problems you have! simple isn’t it? (u can try any other too if u so wish n find it, there SO MANY that can replace a BB!) tell me many of those who had problems moved
@julius
Well said. Seems at the end of it, we largely agree. Here’s to hoping 2009 is the year RIM returns to taking the time to have robust products at launch!
@tedp
“How about some full dsiclosure on the haters. Own AAPL stock or an iPhone? ”
I’ve never even bothered to play with an iPhone as it doesn’t work on my employer’s CDMA based network. I use the network of the company I work for. Let’s just call the current blackberry I use a rather buggy Rev.A 9XXX.
I have a bold on o2 Ireland running .162, I have to charge it every night, it will go from a full charge to empty in just under two hours of net use, I am having problems with the trackball, even though my bold is only six weeks old
Maybe if Orange keep the Bold BGR would then fulful the promise of my prize in the Bold Giveaway competition!!! 4 months on….
I’ve had a running the Bold on AT&T since 11/3/2008, initially I had nothing but trouble:
- random reboots;
- nearly every call dropped and it seemed that the phone couldn’t hold a call when stationary or moving for more than 10-12 minutes (not fun to be on conference calls sitting still and be dropped 4-5 times);
- frequent SOS messages when in areas of AT&T’s best coverage;
- poor or no reception in areas of AT&T’s best coverage and were EDGE has worked just fine.
It became so bad that I first had the SIM card replaced (no improvement) and later had the actual handset replaced, best AT&T could tell it was a defective handset. I’m not sure I believe that the handset was actually bad, but oh well. While the new handset _seems_ better it’s still not without issues that are worse than any other phone I’ve owned, including:
- fairly frequent dropped calls in areas where, as an AT&T customer for 12 years, I’ve never dropped calls;
- poor or no coverage in areas where in I’ve always had coverage.
In my non-expert opinion, when on a call the handset seems to “hold onto” the 3G signal until there is nothing left and then drops the call rather than step down to EDGE. When not on a call, the phone often sits “searching for network” for several minutes, often not finding anything, even in an area where other AT&T users/phones are working just fine on EDGE.
Background: I’m still running .167 that shipped with the phone; I live in Seattle and travel frequently on the West Coast. Does anyone know if any of the issues that I mention above have been fixed or improved in more recent builds?
BGR does a nice job getting information and rumor confirmation from sources within the carriers and device manufacturers, I’m curious if BGR can confirm with sources AT&T, Rogers, O2, Vodafone, etc. to see if any of these careers are experiencing the same issues as Orange. If it’s the network to blame for these issues are the carriers doing anything to tune/improve the network to support the bold?