Grid Studios's BlackBerry Bold 9000 display is a beautiful look at the iconic smartphone

Grid Studio is marking their third anniversary with a three-dale sale running from today through September 10th. Grid's unique vintage tech displays take the gadgets that defined the future we live in now, opens them up, and gives us a peak inside at how they were put together — all laid out in a smart and attractive fashion that really shows off the care and thought that went into these devices inside and out.

To celebrate their third anniversary, Grid is offering two of their post popular displays with deep discounts — the Apple iPhone 4S, normally $169 is on sale for $99 and the Nintendo Game Boy is discounted from $299 to $179. Both feature these iconic portables laid out with the components artfully labeled, but I really wanted to take a look at something else Grid offers and that I know a lot of the CrackBerry faithful would love to have hanging on their walls: the Grid BlackBerry Bold 9000, one of the best keyboard smartphones ever made.

So I asked Grid and they sent a framed Bold 9000 display over and it is just great. Unlike the "parts on a labeled white diagram" layout of many of Grid's other products, the Bold 9000's parts are arrayed on a textured black backdrop that evokes the leather-like texture of the phone's back panel. It's simple but classy, technical yet elegant.

When I pulled it out of the smartly-wrapped package I was immediately struck by the design. I have plenty of old phones sitting around me, and even performed some circuit board surgery on some back in the day (RIP Palm FrankenPre), but having these parts displayed in such an elegant fashion makes what might otherwise seem macabre — the dismemberment of a once great smartphone — into a fitting tribute to what made BlackBerry and the Bold 9000 so great.

As somebody who is fascinated by the way mechanical things work, it was a delight to peer under the skin of such a tactile device, to see the individual switches for each key and the trackball mechanism exposed. Today's phones are feats of engineering might, no doubt, but this, this required so much clever design and rigorous testing and yet the simplicity of it is so elegant. It's really something to take, and it's also quite the conversation starter even for people that aren't into tech.

Apart from the discounts on the iPhone 4S and Game Boy displays, Grid is also celebrating their anniversary with by randomly comping three orders each day until September 8, and will also enter anybody who places an order $300 or more into a giveaway for a new iPhone 15.