Internal 96MB Storage, External MicroSD Slot (MicroSDHC on 8330 and 8350i)
Connection Ports
Mini-USB 2.0 Hi-Speed, 3.5mm stereo audio jack
Physical Attributes
Dimension: 107mm x 60mm x 16.1mm, Weight: 114g
Media Support
Audio Support
Codecs: MP3/WMA/AAC/AMR/MIDI/WAV
Video Support
Codecs: MPEG4/H.263
Bill of Materials
Processor
Qualcomm MSM6550 (8330)
The N95 is part of Nokia‘s N-series of handsets, focusing on delivering multimedia content. It was previously the flagship model of Nokia‘s entire handset lineup, predecessor to the current flagship, the Nokia N96.
BlackBerry’s latest flagship, the Bold, is definitely a bold piece of hardware. We’ve gotten hold of a Rogers unit, and have given it a good rundown including mashing our screwdrivers and pliers inside to give you the enjoyment and excitement of a freshly torn BlackBerry.
Check it out after the break!
BlackBerry Bold Review
RIM delayed its entrance into the 3G market as long as it could, before introducing its new flagship. In a sense, I’m very glad this happened, because the Bold was a great phone to review (and teardown!). Although launching through AT&T was very sketchy due to firmware issues, they’ve gotten many of the issues fleshed out on its BlackBerry OS 4.6.
Greats
The Bold works beautifully as your traditional BlackBerry. Any users stepping up from the Curve or the 8800 should find yourselves totally at home, with tons of extra features at your disposal. First, the Bold sports one of the most jaw-dropping screens. When you first turn the device on, the glaring Rogers background stares you right in the face, and its an awesome experience. It’s got a great contrast ratio coupled with some high pixel density action (HVGA on a 2.65″ screen). Movies and video clips look great on it.
Sound is even more impressive. The Bold is single handedly the best sounding (and loudest) device on the market today. This, coupled with a really great screen, give the Bold a really strong media playback experience. The actual player is simple to use, with looks akin to Windows Media Player, and works as it should.
Performance on this machine is also top notch. Using Marvell’s Hermon Processor running at a speedy 624MHz, it chews down on any of the applications you want running. Getting into menus and applications are lightning fast, which works particularly well with its trackball navigating device.
Sideloading music and videos on this phone was lightning quick as well. A 700MB movie file was transferred in 48 seconds, making for a speedy 14.6MBps transfer speed. Great for packing in movies on your MicroSD card on the go.
I don’t even have to talk about the e-mailing and texting experiences, because that’s RIM’s spotlight, that at this point, will be really hard for them to screw up. Everything was quick and easy to use, which brings us to our last Great: the QWERTY keyboard.
It’s freakishly fast. We’re heavy BlackBerry users, and we’d venture so far as to say this is on par with the Curve (which we thought to be the benchmark). Those dimples work fantastically for our fingers.
Middle Class Features
With Americans always focusing on the middle class, we thought we’d title this accordingly. The first middle class feature of the Bold is its browsing experience. Browsing on 3G data was a long awaited feature on BlackBerrys, and we conclude that, while it’s amazing for a BlackBerry, it doesn’t nearly match its competitors performance. When compared to the iPhone and the G1, iPhone’s Safari implementation consistently boasted double the speeds of the Bold when viewing heavy websites and pages, and G1′s Chrome-Lite-ish ran through at around 1.5 times faster. RIM really needs to revamp their browser. It’s good, but its not great — and for their flagship, these things need to be great.
Gripes
The Bold is unfortunately a little on the big side. When compared to other consumer-oriented phones, it’s very chunky and fills the pockets pretty quickly. Holsterers will be fine, but those of us not wanting to venture into the business-class look, will find the extra bulk a little annoying.
The leather backing and the chrome sides are also questionable design choices. If it was implemented a little better, we’d totally dig that. Unfortunately, the fake leather coupled with cheap feeling sides, leave a little to be desired for a phone that just dented your wallet.
Conclusion:
The Bold is a pleasure to use. It’s fast, it’s efficient, and it’s even friendly to you. Take heart, young QWERTY padawans, you’ll be enjoying RIM’s latest 3G device. Just keep those speakers blasting. We wanna hear ya.
BlackBerry Bold: 9/10
BlackBerry Bold Teardown
Here is where we get down to the nitty grittys of the device. The Bold was as pleasurable to teardown as it was to review. Opening it up was simple, but the Bold gave us trouble when it let us look at its hallowed PCB. It’s a complicated mess there. ICs seem to be relatively organized, but there are so many pieces to this puzzle, that it was a daunting task to build up the BOM and the block diagrams. Fortunately for you, we love doing this stuff. So we present to you, the BlackBerry Bold Block Diagram.
The first thing to note is that RIM spent a WHOLE TON of money on their new Samsung-made screen. It’s an expensive beast; but we’d say that it was totally worth it. Samsung continues to impress with its multi-chip packaged MoviNAND+OneNAND+Mobile DDR.
Infineon and Renesas got big wins with their RF transceivers. Cypress also seems to have the West Bridge thing down pact producing those speedy sideloading results noted earlier. Also, RIM seems to have spent quite a bit of money on TI’s audio codec, and the results, as noted above, are staggering.
One of the questionable design choices was the integration of 802.11a. Implementing 802.11a, which is rarely used by anyone, meant that a dedicated power amp, antenna, and possibly the cause of another Wi-Fi-dedicated PMIC needed to be included. Sure there’s plenty of board space, but I’m assuming costs could definitely be saved.
Another thing to note is its antennas. Instead of the traditional metal prongs used in most phones, RIM has used what appear to be stickers. These pretty much surround the back of the device. These placements of the antennas are educated guesses, however. What seem to be obvious placements of the antennas are due to the use cases (holding the phone to your head, or cradling the phone while browsing will cover up areas of the device. The GPS antenna is assumed to be the top sticker. SiRF also makes a big entrance with the inclusion of its GPS + A-GPS functionality.Being another first for BlackBerry, RIM has delved into the widely competed touchscreen market. Not wanting to be sucked in as “another iPhone wannabe” however, RIM has developed several unique technologies in an attempt to diverge from the traditional touchscreen stigma. So how does this phone actually fare in-hand, and how does it stack up to its competitors?
After the break, we find the answers to this question, AND we smash the thing apart for some good ol’ teardown analysis.
BlackBerry Storm Review
Greats
First things first, at first sight, this phone is gorgeous. We think its one of the better looking phones on the market today. It’s got slants to the device, along with metallic backings – a first for BlackBerry. Not only that, but the battery door ACTUALLY WORKS. It’s buttons are well placed, the piano black/matte black/metallic black trims complement each other very well, and the chromed sides actually don’t feel like cheap plastic. If this is any indication at what the Javelin will look like, then I’ve got good feelings about it.
Next off, the screen is another winner. Although it doesn’t have the brightness nor the sharpness and pixel density to match the Bold, its HVGA screen on a 3.25″ screen seem to work just fine for movies, tv shows, browsing (we’ll get to that), and anything else that requires lots of screen real estate. Visuals are obviously accompanied by sound, and while the sound is definitely capable of producing loud obnoxious noises, it doesn’t match the Bold’s quality; it doesn’t have much depth and just sounds like pure treble.
Media experiences in general, on the Storm, are fantastic. It’s built in way more codecs for audio and video, has a decent interface for finding and playing music, and works as music player. In fact, though their SurePress technology isn’t mentioned in this review’s “Greats”, it works really well for controlling your music. RIM has mentioned countless times their intention to dive into the consumer market, and with these capabilities, it definitely works.
Luke Warm
Luke warm features are features that aren’t good, nor are they bad. The first feature on the Storm to receive this fairly mediocre grading is, you guessed it: SurePress technology. RIM has attempted to really give BlackBerry owners a touchscreen alternative without feeling frustrated by their keyboard. By giving tactile feedback, you understand the timing for typing, and once you get rhythm, you get speed. It’s implementation works rather well for menu selections, the dialpad (it’s honestly fun to type numbers), and as mentioned, the media player. Unfortunately, typing, even on a gigantic landscape keyboard, just doesn’t feel right. It’s mucky, because once you gain speed, you instantly hit an error. This is due to the touchscreen not being able to recognize another finger while the button is being depressed. If it had multi-touch functionality, letting you place your finger while you’re pressing another finger, we bet that implementation would be glorious. For now, however, we got to stick with infuriating spelling mistakes from going too fast. Not only that, but typing on the screen takes a lot more effort than a traditional QWERTY keyboard, and a regular touchscreen keyboard — you have to press the WHOLE screen down. It’s easy near the edges, because the radius from the centre gives you easy torque, but anything middle-to-top-row is becomes a pain when you’re hammering out gigantic emails.
Another luke warm feature is the browser. Without going into performance metrics, the browser still isn’t up to par with its webkit-based friends (i.e. Safari/Chrome-Lite-ish). While it’s true that it’s drastically improved over previous generations, it’s nowhere near the level of Safari. Format pages like IGN still give it your good ol’ lists of links and text for you to scroll around. This bring us to our next point: capacitive touch.
What’s annoying about Verizon phones is that their capacitive touch phones (including the Motorola Krave) always come with a STICKY screen protector. It leaves a nasty sticky feeling to the screen, which totally harps on first impressions. What the Storm needs is a good glossing of the screen – it’ll just generally feel more touch-accepting. The use of gestures is also inconsistent, and without the rubberband effect deployed by other phones, scrolling feels, lacking. Viewing any relatively long page will have you scrolling like a mad man, because the screen stops when your finger is lifted off.
Gripes
Applications. Back in the old days, BlackBerry was competing against Palm for the enterprise space, and even then, the distinction of Palm was its better third party support. Storm seems to be the first to really try and break this stigma, but… it fails (obviously, since its in the gripes section). What Apple and Google have done was generate application “outlets” in which you can download and install third party apps, with the latter even focusing their entire handset around this concept. RIM has developed an “Applications Centre”, which was carrier specific. This was a poor choice, as carrier-specific applications (namely, VZ Navigator, and other VZ products) are pretty useless, and aren’t anywhere near as diverse as the App Store and the Android Market.
Finally, performance. This is what totally kills the device in our opinion. Everything about this phone lags. Ever since the videos were leaked showing its UI, people have been complaining about the animation lag and hoping that everything would sort itself out by launch. Unfortunately, even with the last-minute flashing of devices, nothing has changed. Right on the main menu, scrolling through applications gives a choppy feeling. Even the media application takes a while to boot, and you end up double clicking in an attempt to get things going. When I plugged the unit into the computer attempting to sideload, even that dragged in performance. Typical BlackBerrys have been awesome at sideloading when enumerated through Mass Storage Class, but this one, in traditional Verizon fare, runs on MTP mode for syncing with Rhapsody and Windows Media Player. Transferring movies to watch on your phone, just plainly sucks.
Conclusion
Everything about BlackBerry is defined around efficiency and its ability to get things done. The Storm stays true in its ability to feel connected, with perfect integration of corporate e-mails, personal e-mails, texts, contacts, Facebook, My Space etc. Unfortunately, actually using the device, causes an uprising of frustration. It doesn’t flow well, and goes against what all the other BlackBerry’s have been so good at. I feel that RIM pushed this out the door for the holiday season, when it actually should’ve been released in 2009.
phoneWreck Score for the BlackBerry Storm: 7 wrecks out of 10.
BlackBerry Storm Teardown
Enough about the phone! Let’s dig into the juiciness of the Storm. Remember how I said that the Bold was one of the easiest devices to teardown? The Storm is the complete opposite. There are a bunch of hidden screws that require prying off areas such as the camera plexiglass cover, the chin of the device, and the stickers that surround the back. Also, the shielding around the ICs are even harder to get at than before. You’ll need some razor sharp wire cutters to get through that (or you could solder the sides off if you’re that keen on it). But if you were intending on opening up this device, without a scratch in the end, I wish you good luck.
Nevertheless, we got the thing open for you all to see. The PCB is actually ridiculously small. And everything actually fits on there including the processor, memory units, all the transceivers and power amps, and things like Bluetooth ICs. There’s some random spots of circuitry on the other spots of the phone as well, but its amazing how well everything is integrated. We’ve put the block diagram out below. Note: several things on here are educated guesses. We’ve noted these with the asterisks. Unlike previous teardowns, the ICs on this device seem rather hard to identify.
Most important to note is the implementation of Qualcomm’s latest MSM7600 processor. When you view the datasheet, its pretty easy to guess what’s wrong with this phone. There’s just too much functionality integrated into the processor, including audio codecs, graphics processing, and even GPS functionality. Samsung’s memory MCP from the Bold makes another notable appearance. Avago takes care of the CDMA Power Amps, but the GSM Power Amps seem unmarked, which makes it hard to find. We’ll update this if/when we find out though.
Update: We have discovered the GSM/UMTS Power Amps from a little help by our commenters! TriQuint takes care of the GSM Power Amp, while Anadigics designs the UMTS Power Amp. Thanks!
This being primarily a CDMA device, Qualcomm brings their entire chipset onto the line including its RF Transceivers for both CDMA/EV-DO, an integrated GSM/UMTS chip, and its PMIC. TriQuint Semiconductors also makes an appearance. They’ve previously been used for Duplexers in previous mainstream devices, but its difficult to identify what this IC does, so we’ve assumed that it’s something to do with managing power. Bluetooth functionality is again won by CSR, while SiRF is notably absent due to the GPS integration into the processor. A West Bridge chip is also notably absent, with USB functionality also being driven by the processor. STMicroelectronics seems to have developed the Accelerometer, as the chip in this phone seems eerily similar to one of their other Accelerometer chips in a previous breakdown. Finally, with Synaptics boasting much of its multi-touch capabilities, we’re making guesses that the BlackBerry Storm uses a Synaptics IC for driving the capacitive touch. It’s possible that a full multi-touch can be implemented on this hardware, but whether it’ll require updates to the actual hardware or just the firmware, remains to be seen.
Of course, what you’ve came here to see is not just the circuitry. You wanted to see how the actual button looks like, no? Here it is, in plain view! It’s a regular button, pushed by a marked Magnesium Alloy plate with a bump. Enjoy responsibly.The Motorola Krave ZN4 is a smartphone released on Verizon Wireless.
Other Names: Motorola Blaze (Internal)
Here at phoneWreck, we tear open, break apart, and analyze the latest and greatest handsets on the market. Most importantly, we do this for free. Why?
To empower you, the reader, the engineer, the network analyst, the ASIC designer, and even the general curious folks out there, with the access, knowledge, understanding of all that is: the mobile phone.
Most important to note is the implementation of Qualcomm’s latest MSM7600 processor. When you view the datasheet, its pretty easy to guess what’s wrong with this phone. There’s just too much functionality integrated into the processor, including audio codecs, graphics processing, and even GPS functionality. Samsung’s memory MCP from the Bold makes another notable appearance. Avago takes care of the CDMA Power Amps, but the GSM Power Amps seem unmarked, which makes it hard to find. We’ll update this if/when we find out though.
Update: We have discovered the GSM/UMTS Power Amps from a little help by our commenters! TriQuint takes care of the GSM Power Amp, while Anadigics designs the UMTS Power Amp. Thanks!
This being primarily a CDMA device, Qualcomm brings their entire chipset onto the line including its RF Transceivers for both CDMA/EV-DO, an integrated GSM/UMTS chip, and its PMIC. TriQuint Semiconductors also makes an appearance. They’ve previously been used for Duplexers in previous mainstream devices, but its difficult to identify what this IC does, so we’ve assumed that it’s something to do with managing power. Bluetooth functionality is again won by CSR, while SiRF is notably absent due to the GPS integration into the processor. A West Bridge chip is also notably absent, with USB functionality also being driven by the processor. STMicroelectronics seems to have developed the Accelerometer, as the chip in this phone seems eerily similar to one of their other Accelerometer chips in a previous breakdown. Finally, with Synaptics boasting much of its multi-touch capabilities, we’re making guesses that the BlackBerry Storm uses a Synaptics IC for driving the capacitive touch. It’s possible that a full multi-touch can be implemented on this hardware, but whether it’ll require updates to the actual hardware or just the firmware, remains to be seen.
Of course, what you’ve came here to see is not just the circuitry. You wanted to see how the actual button looks like, no? Here it is, in plain view! It’s a regular button, pushed by a marked Magnesium Alloy plate with a bump. Enjoy responsibly.The Motorola Krave ZN4 is a smartphone released on Verizon Wireless.
Other Names: Motorola Blaze (Internal)
