I've had my BB Bold 9700 for just over 1 year now and it hasn't been able to withstand the development of telephone technology over the past year. After downloading a couple apps the phone started to freeze.

In addition blackerry keeps upgrading their Operating Systems that cannot be fully supported by older BBs. It has turned into a frustrating phone as the performance and reliability has decreased.

It's a great phone for the first 9 months of use and then it dwindles as you actually start using all features of the phone.

I've had my Bold for about 6 months now and use it as my primary phone. At best, I would say it is a "good" phone. I have not had any problems with it so far, but I mostly feel that Blackberrys are overrated. The keyboard keys are relatively small, so it may take time to become comfortable with it, but I prefer it to a touchscreen keyboard. The menus are easy to browse, and although scrolling through text can be tedious, scrolling through menus is quick. For me, the best parts of the bold are: receiving and organizing e-mails, BBM, the GPS, and the Kobo application I downloaded to turn it into an e-reader, but most of these are available on other phones. Overall, I find the Bold to be a useful phone especially for a professional who needs a functional business phone, but I'm sure there are cheaper phones on the market that would work just as well or better.

My blackberry is slowly starting to fall apart, 6 months after having it. blackberrys are very overrated, your just paying for the name