gdgt

Just upgraded the bold software, don't see any major difference.

Same here, no difference seen in 3.0. I did notice an increase in the number of dropped 3G calls from AT&T this week though! Damned iPhones are sucking up all the bandwidth with their pandora & iboobs streams!

You won't see much of a difference from OS to OS until 5.0 comes out. The only major thing is in the newer leaked OS's you can hold down the BB key (menu key) and it will bring up the app switcher, where in older OS's it won't do that.

Same here, no difference seen in 3.0. I did notice an increase in the number of dropped 3G calls from AT&T this week though! Damned iPhones are sucking up all the bandwidth with their pandora & iboobs streams!

I updated mine to the latest AT&T Firmware, 4.6.0.167 and didn't notice any improvements. Is anyone experiencing the standby button on the top of the phone doesn't work half the time no matter how hard you press it? It seems like a software problem as it works pretty well to mute phone calls and music, but not to put it in standby. I hope RIM addresses this soon.

You guys wanna share some of your favorite Bold apps? Mine are BuzzMe (vibrate while ringing), SoftReset (battery pull without pulling the battery), IM+, Vision for Youtube, Vlingo, blueCTRL, UberTwitter (@hilzfuld), iSkoot (Skype calls), LED reset. What are yours?

I just upgraded as well. I hope this solves the Google Maps issue of the 2 minute load time for each map...

The latest device software/firmware is 4.6.0.282. And the leaked 5.0.0.100 adds some nice features, but it is merely an evolutionary upgrade. The Plaftform kernel for both is still version 4.x.x.x.

A significant difference between 4.6.0.167 - 4.6.0.26x/282 is CPU Throttling. The Bold has three CPUs. 624mhz OS/Applications Processor, 208Mhz IP Processor and a 312mhz Digital Signal Processor. When in 3G the IP Processor and DSP run at full speed. The OS/App processor is throttled to run as low as 156mhz, 208mhz, 416mhz and 624mhz.

The new Curve 8900 only has two CPUs, a 523mhz OS/App CPU and 208mhz IP Processor. The OS/App CPU runs as slow as 399mhz (if I remember correctly) which is why it appears more responsive and faster in tests. The Curve 8900 is a 2g device so a separate DSP is not necessary.

Anyway, RIM changed in the .26x software release, the algorithm used to throttle the Bolds OS/App CPU making it more responsive and more energy efficient. Sure it does drain the battery a tad quicker (when compared to 4.6.0.18x-2xx) than 4.6.0.167, but it is indeed faster.