Agreed on the applications flexibility.
The blackberry was originally a one trick pony. Push email. That's it. Turned out to be a killer app though because even with that one trick it wtfpwned the corporate phone market and that's a very lucrative one. Leaving it's predecessor, the palms, in the dust. Mind you, the palm was still a "superior" device technically. All it lacked was the push email functionality. That was the deal breaker.
The Bold continues that heritage with some additional multimedia functionality. No, it's not technically superior to other top rated smartphones like the sexy samsung i780 and ones mentioned here but yes, it does the job and it does the job well.
I've recently switched from the 8800 (which I was very very happy with) to the Bold (9000). Equally pleased. Splits, these aren't Lady like phones mind you. They are big and bulky. Most women find mine down right ugly, lol. They are more interested in it from a "status" perspective as hinted earlier by another poster, rather than aesthetics. The Pearl / Curve are still the better looking devices if you wanna run with the heavy rollers in style.
I do miss the gee whiz apps of my P900 but not so much to revert to a symbian/windows mobile 6.1 phone. Realistically though, I don't have a choice. The corporate email feature ties me to a blackberry device regardless of personal preference and I'm not about to walk around with two phones.
Here are some interesting figures for ya and an interesting blurb on the direction of the phone market. Iphone is king of the consumer devices right now by the statistics just as blackberry is king of corporate.
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=575
