So far though, all RIM has really done is produce a sleeker, shinier version of its usual BlackBerry fare and mere looks alone are not enough to compete with the iPhone. Fortunately, it has also twigged that that a major factor in the iPhone’s success is its slick user interface, and so it’s given the new BlackBerry OS 4.6 that runs on the Bold a cosmetic makeover, too.

The familiar colourful icons of old are gone, replaced with a classy monochromatic set that will undoubtedly fox some old hands the first time they clap eyes on them. The applications themselves don’t look too much different than before, though there are a few new ones of note.

Perhaps the most notable new ones for anyone considering an iPhone are the web browser and media player. RIM last gave its browser an overhaul in OS 4.5 and the version supplied with the Bold is yet another dramatic improvement – at least in some ways. Thanks to added support for a whole host of recent web standards (CSS 2.1, HTML 4.01 and JavaScript 1.5, to name three), web pages now render flawlessly and look fantastic on the razor-sharp 480 x 320 screen. They’re also largely illegible at full-page view (so surprises there, of course), but the trackball controls an on-screen pointer that when clicked, intelligently zooms the corresponding part of the page for easy viewing – just like a double-tap in Safari on the iPhone, in fact.

Unfortunately, as excellent as it is in delivering a desktop-like web browsing experience on a small screen, the BlackBerry Bold’s web browser is just far too slow to be a serious alternative to the iPhone. The Bold is the first BlackBerry with 3G support, but even over a more reliable Wi-Fi connection, our iPhone 2G repeatedly finished downloading a web page several seconds before the Bold had even got past a blank screen and a “Requesting…” message.

Update 1: After looking into this a little more, it seems that the BlackBerry Bold may not have been using Wi-Fi for the web browsing session we shot in this video. Quite why this should be the case when the Bold was connected to the same Wi-Fi network as the iPhone 2G (via a router barely six feet away – see the on-screen Wi-Fi indicator at the start and end of the video) is unclear at this stage.

Of course the situation wasn't helped by the fact that the BlackBerry OS has no option to disable the cellular data connection and leave Wi-Fi active – it's either both or neither. Which is pretty ridiculous. Perhaps we needed to manually configure the Bold's web browser to prioritise Wi-Fi over cellular data. Ok, that's also pretty ridiculous. But rather than mock the Bold for having a web browser set-up that appears to be counter-intuitive by design, we'll run some more tests as soon as RIM can get another Bold to us and either confirm or refute our original findings.

But know this – even with just its 3G connection active (and a full signal), the Bold still lagged behind the iPhone 2G with its mere EDGE connection (and we're kciking ourselves for not videoing this...). Either Apple is doing something right or RIM is doing something wrong with their respective web browsers, but whatever the case, it’s a pretty poor show for the Bold.

Update 2: Here's a video that a BlackBerry Bold owner has kindly shot that shows the Bold web browser in action over a definite Wi-Fi connection (note the status icon top-right of the screen). Is it faster than in our tests? Yes, but the Bold still takes around 59 seconds to display the Mobile Computer site over a Wi-Fi connection – the iPhone 2G took 31 seconds in our test. We'll concede that this user is (probably) in the US and downloading from a UK server, but does that really account for a 28 second difference..? We doubt it. Here's the video:

Update 3: RIM has asked us to pull the browser video, since it did not show a fair comparison between the BlackBerry Bold and the iPhone. Without a Bold to hand to establish what it's actually doing with its Wi-Fi connection, we think it's wisest to comply. So we'll have to leave you with the above video made by a Bold user and we'll re-run our own tests and post the findings as soon as we can.