Fans of smart phones are obviously excited about the announcement of Research In Motion’s BlackBerry 9000, which is also known as the Blackberry Bold, and Research In Motion’s Apple iPhone killer. But then again BlackBerry mobile phone users are somewhat of a different breed to those who use the Apple iPhone. The BlackBerry’s reason for existence is the always-connected e-mail, and BlackBerry users do tend to be mostly business types that are afraid of being out of touch even for a moment, it’s all business with BlackBerry’s.

While the Apple iPhone came about out of the Apple iPod, and counts music playback as a primary feature, the BlackBerry Bold, or 9000, or RIM iPhone killer, whichever you wish to refer to it as, is primary focussed on its core communications features such as telephony, messaging and e-mail along with new physical improvements such as its bright colour display screen.

You can gain an insight into this focus in a detailed hands-on review of the Blackberry Bold at Crackberry.com, and even then media playback isn’t mentioned until the 3rd part and with no more than just a paragraph. Then again 1GB of onboard memory really isn’t enough for the most ardent of music listeners out there, although the memory can be expanded to up to 16GB.

Probably the clearest indication is while the BlackBerry 9000/Bold may echo previous BlackBerry’s and ships with the Roxio app to organise music on the PC and transfer to your mobile phone. Research In Motion is preparing a new app known as Blackberry Media Sync, which lets the user use Apple’s iTunes to transfer music files to your mobile handset. Which means of course that once you accomplish getting music onto the BlackBerry 9000/Bold, a powerful internal speaker system may actually make all the difference when listening without headphones a reasonable option, maybe a sort of futuristic Boombox so to speak. And apparently the Apple iPhone’s speaker system isn’t quite up to scratch for this.

Although, for those ardent music lovers out there who are desperate for a new mobile phone, the Apple iPhone is still the most obvious pick, especially that the new Apple 3G iPhone is waiting to strike in the wings. But if you are a diehard BlackBerry fan, or someone concerned mainly with having e-mail access at all times then the BlackBerry 9000/Bold is possibly the best alternative to the Apple iPhone at present.

Source — Cnet Blogs