Both phones are sharp-looking, shiny and black, with bright, crisp screens. Removable battery, physical volume and camera keys and MicroSD memory-card slot are all standard. The Flip and the Bold can both hop onto wireless hot spots for speedy browsing and e-mail downloads. Each has a 2MP camera, with a tiny flash, that can also record video. Frankly, the photos and videos both look pretty lame—a rare exception to the “top-tier” mantra for these phones. In other words, a rock-solid, corporate-dependable, e-mail-centric heart still beats inside these flashier, catchier BlackBerry models. Yet the Flip and the Bold are actually aimed at opposite ends of the audience spectrum.

The Flip, intended for the consumer masses, works great as a clamshell; the outer screen identifies incoming calls, notifies you of new e-mail and even lets you see the first couple lines of your messages. And, of course, it is handy to be able to answer a call just by opening the hinge, and hang up by snapping it shut.

Still, the Flip costs half as much as the Bold, and that’s no accident. It is thickish, and it feels insubstantial. Worse, it is slow; you sometimes wait several seconds for the response to a button press. The software has a few bugs to be ironed out, too.

Like the BlackBerry Pearl, the Flip has only 14 keys to represent the whole alphabet. They’re huge, so they’re easy targets, but there are two letters painted on each key. The software generally figures out what word you’re typing, but fussy manual intervention is sometimes required.

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