Orange yanks BlackBerry Bold for quality issues

Buggy smartphone withdrawn from sale

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10 October 2008 9:50 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

It's being reported that mobile phone operator Orange has suspended sales of the BlackBerry Bold smartphone.

A leaked internal Orange memo about the Bold confirms reports suggesting the phone is currently buggy:

"Following reports of software issues with the BlackBerry Bold handset across a variety of mobile operators, Orange has decided to act in the interest of its customers by suspending shipments of the device in the UK", reads the statement.

"We are currently awaiting feed back from RIM as to when an industry wide fix for these issues will be in place, and expect this suspension to be an interim measure. We apologise for any inconvenience this issue may cause you."

It seems RIM are busy working to try and resolve the issues - said to be problems with the camera, video playback, as well as 3G call dropping:

"RIM are doing everything they can to resolve this issue and will be completing full testing and validation to ensure future handsets do not have any quality issues. This may take a couple of weeks so it’s up to us to do what’s best for our customers."

Although available on multiple operators in the UK, the Bold has not yet launched on AT&T in the States, despite it being announced in the spring and promised in the summer.

RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis was recently quoted as saying it's still undergoing "certification".

UPDATE: We've has a statement from an Orange spokesperson:

"Orange UK is committed to providing the BlackBerry Bold to its customers in the UK, however Orange UK and RIM are currently working on providing a maintenance release of software to address some reported 3G related concerns. Although the reported 3G concerns have been limited to a minority of Orange customers in the UK, Orange UK and RIM both take customer concerns very seriously and felt it was prudent to introduce a maintenance release of software for Orange UK customers at this time. Orange UK and RIM apologise to customers for any inconvenience and expect to provide a software maintenance release soon."