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Released within a month of each other, the Blackberry 9000, better known as the Blackberry Bold (May 2008) and the Nokia E71 (June 2008) are obvious rival smartphones from these perennial rival smartphone makers as they look, feel, and function very much alike.

Both devices are just about equally sized, at 114 mm x 66 mm x 14 mm for the Blackberry and 114 mm x 57 mm x 10 mm for the Nokia. And both weigh just about the same with the Blackberry weighing in at 133 g to a slightly lighter Nokia’s 127 g.

Both devices have a QWERTY keypad occupying the bottom half of the face of the device with a small display screen (2.6 in on the Blackberry, 2.36 in on the Nokia) above it. Interestingly, the display screens on each device possess a quality superior to that of their counterpart. The Blackberry has better resolution, at 480 x 320 pixels to its competitor’s 320 x 240 pixels; but the Nokia has more colors, at 16 million to its competitors meager 65,000.

Then, for a matter of simple preference, the Blackberry Bold’s primary navigation is a trackball whereas the Nokia E71 uses a 5-way scroll key. Also a simple matter of preference, the Blackberry runs on the Blackberry OS, the Nokia on the Symbian OS.

Other similarities amongst these two candybar competitors are their built-in GPS with mapping capabilities (the Bold using Blackberry Maps, the E71 using Nokia Maps – each coming preinstalled), as well as voice dialing, photo calling, video calling, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP, and speakerphone. They also both operate on AT&T’s EDGE network and support HSDPA and 3G.

Also, both devices sport microSD card slots for expandable memory up to 8 GB, though the Blackberry has more more internal memory, at 1 GB to the Nokia’s 110 MB (both devices have 128 MB onboard RAM though). And both devices have a USB v2.0 port, though the Nokia also has a microUSB port.

In terms of multimedia features they each have built in digital cameras, but the Blackberry Bold’s is only 2 megapixels while the Nokia E71’s is 3 megapixels. Both cameras, however, have LED flash and video recording capabilities. Both devices also have a built-in MP3 player.

Also worth noting, along these same lines, is that unlike the Blackberry (or most smartphones, for that matter) the Nokia does not have a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack but rather a 2.5 mm audio jack, making headphone and speaker compatibility a bigger issue with the Nokia. The Nokia, however, has an infrared port while the Blackberry does not.

You can view Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents on both devices, but you can only edit them on the Blackberry.

The battery on the Bold gives up to 5 hours of talk time and 310 hours of standby time. The battery on the Nokia gives up to 10 1/2 hours of talk time in 2G or 4 1/2 hours in 3G, and 410 hours of standby time in 2G or 480 hours in 3G.

Deciding between these two devices is a tough call, and may come down to extraneous features such as the availability of preferred 3rd party apps. Or you may just prefer the Blackberry operating system to Symbian. You may also lean towards the Blackberry Bold if you want to be able to edit Microsoft Office docs, though you might lean towards the Nokia E71 if you’d rather take crisper digital photos. Really these two devices are quite comparable.