Pros:

• Sleek Design
• Large Display
• Amazing Connectivity
• Perfect for Email and Messaging
• Decent Applications

Cons:

• Lacks 3G
• Small buttons on the keypad
• Slower than the Bold.

Review:

RIM produces the best and the most successful line of business smart phones in the market today; however, it is still light weight when compared to players like Nokia. But, the first thing that comes to mind when people think of RIM is email. Yes, e-mail. The last decade marked the rise of BlackBerry as the champion device for email while on the go. Today, it has become a need for most professionals who travel a lot.  In 2007, RIM launched the Curve, a phone that was not only used by business professionals, but also by the regular users. 2008 marked the launch of Bold, a more serious attempt at penetrating into the market.  This year, RIM launched the BlackBerry Curve 8900.  A solid addition to the T mobile’s smart phone line up, it replaces the older Curve 8300 series. The phone brings several notable improvements, including a sleeker design, a faster processor and a 3.2 MP camera.  The Curve 8900 is a full QWERTY messaging smartphone with integrated Wi-Fi with UMA support. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the lack of 3G support, something that could have given it a great edge over all its competition. Despite this, it is an amazing phone and is absolutely recommended for both consumers and professionals.

Design:

No surprises:
A typical QWERTY device, there are not many surprises in terms of form factor or design. The Curve 8900 PDA Smartphone looks like all its predecessor BlackBerry handsets except for the half QWERTY models that are slimmer. Whereas the Blackberry Bold was more elegant and classy, the Curve is more sporty and hip looking which would appeal to a wide variety of users. The phone casing is entirely built out of plastic and it reminds you of the Nokia E71. RIM used several finishes and paint applications to make the handset more durable. However, the E71 is built out of metal and weighs 125 odd grams more than the Curve. At 109 x 60 x 13.5 mm, the Curve is about the same size as the original, appreciably much thinner though. The overall build quality of the device is good except the loose fitting rear battery cover.

Display:
The 8900’s display is a beautiful 480 x 380 pixel unit that has a diagonal length of 2.4 inches. Smaller than the Bold, it has more pixel density than the Nokia E71 and runs on a TFT LCD which bundles the resolution along with 65k colours. The display is more legible than the Nokia business phone and it retains more vivid colours when exposed to direct sunlight.

Controls layout:
The BlackBerry layout of controls has 2 call keys, a back and a menu button as well under the screen. The centre piece is the trackball, stunningly black and equally stunning comfortable to use. The keyboard has a four row layout and the num pad is on the left. The side controls allow for easy one handed operation, all keys except the space bar are of the same size. The spacing is sufficient and their shape is very comfortable to use. The keys give a very tactile feedback and the keyboard is adequately backlit.
The left of the BlackBerry has one of the convenience keys that allow you to start the voice dialling, by default and you could change that according to whatever suits your needs.  Another such key is on the right side of the handset below the volume rocker and the 3.5 mm standard audio jack. There is the microUSB slot that allows you to charge your phone.  On the bottom of the phone is the microphone pinhole.

Ports and connectivity:
On the top of the model is the ear piece alongside the BlackBerry logo. On the right side of this is the LED indicator.   Seen it somewhere? Yes, this part of the phone is a replica of the Storm. There are 2 more keys here – one for locking the phone and the other for muting it. The smooth surface might make you miss those keys and the only way you can tell is by feeling them.

Features:

The Interface:
The BlackBerry runs on the BlackBerry OS v4.6 and the interface is no different from the Bold’s UI. The home screen and the main menu are neat and simple and have yet very appealing icons. The main menu and the standby screen can be customized beyond recognition and look more attractive. As mentioned earlier, the text sub menus are non customizable and their frequent appearances are irksome.  The eye candy might not impress users who are bothered by functionality.  We suggest that RIM should do some firmware updates to fix the looks of the deeper UI levels.  The home screen is pretty well organized and has 6 shortcut buttons placed at the bottom and the status icons on the top. The profiles can be accessed from here and as well as the 2 other features one chooses to assign for the convenience keys. The Menu navigation of the Curve does not use soft key based navigation where the available options for every options for every menu item. There are no lag or jerky motions while navigating. Though the processor is slower than the Bold, one would not notice any difference. The 8900 is a business device and the audience would mind the dreary look of the deeper sub menus.  The UI responded well and though it is not the biggest cheer of the phone, it is not that bad either.

Connectivity:
To get connected, one has 3 options: Wi-Fi, BIS or EDGE network that T mobile provides.  The RIM Blackberry Curve 8900 has a Wi-Fi network that allows you to check email, shop online, stream videos and music and even make phone calls. Setting up a Wi-Fi network is easy and one can switch back from a carrier service seamlessly.  The upside of the integrated Wi-Fi is UMA support which allows you to make and receive unlimited calls over a wireless network. In order to make this work, you need to sign up for T-Mobile’s Unlimited Hotspot Calling plan which is available separately. However, what is lacking is the inclusion of 3G support.  Excluding it might hurt its sales in the long term perspective. The browsing speeds were pretty good even on EDGE and yet inclusion of 3G would have made it a killer phone. There is the Bluetooth v2.0 which sports A2DP and a microSD data memory card slot.  One reason why 3G was excluded is the fact that UMA features would interfere with HSDPA networking. We would still want to see 3G included on the phone.

Web Browsing:
One of the biggest disappointments in the BlackBerry Bold was the web browser; the Curve features a much improved browser. Far from perfect, the browser’s home page was nicely rendered. The thumbnails were placed far too side of where they should have actually been, but otherwise the pages seemed natural. Pages loaded slowly on the EDGE but on Wi-Fi, they loaded with ease. The support of HTML Browser with support for RSS feeds and streaming media is an amazing addition.

Email:
One aspect where RIM manages to outshine any of its competitors is the email functionality on the BlackBerry.  The smooth and sleek feeling of email functionality is unique to the series.  The 8900 extends to the legacy of IMAP4, POP and the BES emailing system. Like the other BlackBerrys the 8900 can sync with the company’s BES with support for IBM, Lotus Domino, Novell GroupWise or Microsoft Exchange. It takes just about 10 seconds to set up a new account in the BES. The Curve 8900 can handle up to 10 email addresses. There is a unified inbox for email as well as separate account folders. The email system is undeniably robust, but we wish that the email apps were not dependent on the menus as it was tiresome to keep selecting menus through search, copy and forwarding emails.

Applications:
Being a phone that belongs to the business segment, it has all the basic applications which tend to be handy like the Calendar, Memo Pad, Task List, Voice Recorder, a password keeper, Encryption services, zip services and archiving services performing as usual. The calendar application badly needs a visual update which would make it more usable. The calendar is robust and has plenty of fields that keep track of appointments and meetings. Sadly, it has been the same wireframe box that it was when the original BlackBerry hit the market.  For Office Documents handling, there is the DataViz Documents to go.  It is not a complete premium edition, to use the other features, you will have to pay to upgrade it. The phone allows you to make minor edits to word documents and Excel spreadsheets. There is the built in GPS designed to work with BlackBerry Maps and other location based software to help you figure out your location.

GPS:
There is an in built GPS receiver and comes with A GPS support. There is the BlackBerry maps pre-installed, however for it to work, one needs to activate the BlackBerry internet plan. So you cannot have voice guided navigation till you upgrade it. The Maps provide basic functionality and voice guided navigation and it allows you to send your location to anyone via email or SMS.

Multimedia Capabilities:
In spite of being a business phone, the Curve 8900 is pretty good on the multimedia front. The music player has conservative looks and a decent functionality. The music player sorts the music library automatically according to artist, album or genre. One can make playlists and add album art. Sadly, custom equalizers are not available. The player can be minimized to play in background and go back to it via the task manager. There is the headphone jack that allows you to listen to music on your headphones. The microSD card could be upgraded and we wish there was more memory. The Media Sync app searches your iTunes library and allows you to synchronize music playlists with your BlackBerry. The transfer was slower than what it would have been on an Apple device, yet the inclusion of the feature to allow you to sync to your iTunes playlist is cool.

Video Player:
It was pleasant to watch videos on the Curve. Though it cannot rival the Storm’s screen, its higher pixel density and landscape orientation provide excellent quality. The Movie player played back video clips great, scaling the video without much trouble. For managing videos, Media Sync does not provide any help here. One can set to work in full screen with the virtual buttons by a key press. But here is the best part; Curve’s video player comes with DivX and XVid support along with MPEG 4 and WMV. A good deal on the whole.

Camera:
Like the Storm the BlackBerry 8900 Curve is equipped with a 3.2 MP auto-focus camera and a LED Flash. The imaging capabilities of the device are pretty limited and it produces images that look okay and good for a camera phone, even thought nothing that impressive. The snaps are pretty decent, but at reduced zoom, the loss of detail is obvious. It does a nice job with mixed lighting as well. The Camera interface could have been much better as the status message hides a good portion of what actually ends up in this picture making proper framing impossible. The UI is uncomfortable and there are no shortcuts available either. But perhaps, the saving grace is the image geo-tagging which allows one to record ones location in the images EXIF data. In the settings, white balance, colour effects and image stabilization, picture size and quality are available.  The picture quality is sadly below average in the 3 MP league and most of the photos have a distinct oil painting look. There is a problem with the corner softness, though that would not bother most of the users much. Nothing impressive here!

Video Recording:
If it sounded like the Camera was bad, the Video recording was worse.  A disaster If one wants to take full featured video recording. The videos are captured in 3Gp format and can have colour effects applied.

Performance:

Call Quality:
Call quality of the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 was satisfactory. There was some background noise and made audio quality less pristine than the other smart phones. There is the Enhance Audio option where once can boost treble or bass, but that would not improve the call quality either. The speakerphone was OK and there was some hollowness in the voice of the callers.  If it was not for the cut off bass the Curve could have been amongst the best sounding mobile phones in the market.

Responsive:
The Curve has a 512MHz processor and is fairly responsive and you would not notice much difference between the more powerful Bold’s performance.  There was some sluggishness when we tried accessing our photo album or camera. But that would not be much of a bother either.

Speakers:
The 8900 has a speaker that cannot rival the Bold’s output yet is not bad either. The Video playback was impressive and the picture quality was smooth and the picture looked great on the high-res screen.

Connectivity:
Connecting to Wi-Fi was easy and the EDGE speeds were OK too. The GPS navigator worked reasonably well and one can summarize that the RIM 8900 performs as well as its predecessors.

Battery Life:
The Curve 8900 runs on a 1,400mAh lithium ion battery with a rated talk time of 5.5 hours and up to 14.5 days of standby time. We got about 8 and a half hour of continuous talk time and its digital SAR rating is 1.01 per kilogram. The reason that these figures are better than the Bold is perhaps because of the lack of 3G. Using GPS drained the battery very fast and a car charger would come in handy.

Accessories:

T-Mobile ships the BlackBerry Curve 8900 with a travel charger, a USB cable, a 256MB MicroSD card, a protective case, a software CD and a reference material.  It lacks the 8 GB memory card that the Storm offered.

Warranty:

There is a warranty of one year provided on the BlackBerry Curve 8900 from the date of purchase.

Verdict:

The Curve 8900 is a great addition to the BlackBerry series. It is a gorgeous and a powerful device that is packed to the brim with excellent features and hardware. The display is beautiful and a decent camera, a puffed up 512MHz processor, and is excellent for email, messaging and multimedia. It lacks 3G and that is probably what might dent its sales.  Apart from that, this has everything a regular user looks for. Yet, it does not deviate from its main target : The Business class. Definitely a must buy and highly recommended if you are looking to own a business phone that simplifies things and your work.

Check other 2010 Latest Blackberry Phone Reviews in this website.

BlackBerry Curve 8900 - Technical Specification Table

Design:

One of the sleekest:
Design wise we noticed that the Bold 9700 and another one of BlackBerry’s smallest handsets, the Curve 8900, look and feel as though they have been cut out from the same cloth. Having the same dimensions of height and width, the Bold packs just a wee bit of extra flab on the thickness (H x W x D), 4.29″ x 2.36″ x 0.56 and the set weights a light 4.3 ounces along with the batteries. But the couple of extra decimals cannot do much to diminish the super pocket friendly dimensions and weight of the Bold.

The aesthetics:
As a trademark of the original Bold, this new BlackBerry 9700 model too has been trimmed with a heavy dose of chrome with a broad swoop on the chin. The thin rails running up on the sides and the thick stripe on the top back adds to the aesthetic beauty of the phone. Here is the glad news for most of you out there who hate the fingerprint smudges; none of the panels on the phone are thick enough to show off the fingerprints and RIM has employed some rubbery black plastic on the rest of the parts of the phone to repel them. The original Bold had a full leather wrapped back that made a splash, but that has been toned down to just a more modest patch of black leather on the battery door that still seems to retain the executive fashion statement. The solid feel of the phone well compliments the overall aura of the quality.

The buttons:
The diet of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone has added a touch of class to the proceedings as it now looks like a Storm 2 handset but with a whole lot of keys jammed on instead. As in the case of all the BlackBerry phones, you will find the display and main keypad is separated by a strip of the most commonly used controls that includes talk, end call, back etc, which can be accessed with comfort using the thumb finger. The top of the phone houses two buttons, the lock and mute keys. The lock key turns off the display and locks the keys and the latter mutes the phone when ringing, but holding it down will put the phone into standby mode. RIM has also taken a leaf out of Nokia’s book by including a method of unlocking the phone using the star key coupled with the call button.

What is on the sides?
On the right side of the phone, there is a bubbled out volume rocker and a dedicated camera shutter button. The up/down volume buttons also doubles as a music navigation button for the media player. In the left side, you can find a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, microUSB charging, data connection and a programmable shortcut key. Since this is built into the curved chassis, a portion of the headphone jack is left exposed. On the older Bold, this was a flush socket, which meant a more snug fit; however, we did not experience any issues as far as the audio playback is concerned. So it is just an aesthetic issue. There is a built-in expansion slot just behind the battery door. The best part about the slot is that, it can be accessed without even removing the actual battery and this slot can accommodate cards of capacity of a whooping 32GB.

The ball replaced by trackpad:
The earlier set of BlackBerry had been always known for their trackballs, but the Bold 9700 has taken the divergent path of the most recent BlackBerrys like the Curve 8250 by opting for an optical trackpad. As you swipe your finger over the gem shaped center button, it acts just like the trackpad on a laptop. While some of the BlackBerry fan will be missing the tacky little pearl, they certainly will not be missing the reliability issues that always seemed to pop up from it collecting lint. This new navigation can be adopted easily and soon, you will find yourself trading in the tactile feedback of the old trackball for a slicker and quieter solution.

A better keyboard:
The QWERTY keyboard in Blackberry Bold 9700 Smartphone is better than ever before. The bigger keys make up for a lack of space between them with a sculpted finish that makes each one stand out. But it is disappointing that the keys of the 9700 are not as clicky as the Bold 8900’s, but you will have no trouble typing with it. The build feels tighter, much more refined and quieter than the Curve model. BlackBerry knows what people want from the keyboards and they have proved it once more.

Brilliant display:
As in the case of the Curve model, the new Bold too uses a brilliant half-VGA display of resolution 480 x 360 pixels. The screen is now among the highest resolution in the BlackBerry world, as it stands at a magic-matching HVGA resolution.  It has the same brightness, resolution and colour of the Curve 8900, which is amazing. Being just 2.44″, it certainly cannot compete with the full touchscreen mobiles available; however, the half VGA brightness that has been crammed into the tiny area produces a tack sharp display that makes even the tiniest text and details look very crisp. The powerful backlight offers all the punch that you would need to read under all conditions, without washing out the deep black levels and vibrant shades. The display is also supposed to have a light sensing display, but the Bold 9700 seems to have confused about that function, constantly upping the brightness of the screen when the light conditions do not seem to change.

User Interface:

The navigation has been has been exclusively achieved via the optical trackpad, even though the keyboard offers some easy to use shortcuts. The home screen sports a wider space for your favourite picture, with the favourite icons from the top level of the full menu appearing at the bottom of the home screen to act as shortcuts instead. You will also find links to the sound profiles which are included that allows you to quickly switch off the noisy ring tones or set the phone to vibrate only before entering a meeting or cinema. By pressing on the menu key, you will get a full set of icons that include the complete set of BlackBerry applications and functionalities. If you want to navigate through this effectively, the only way is through the trackpad. So, make sure that you go through the sensitivity setting in the options menu. Though this is not necessary, some might find that the trackpad is almost unusable at the default sensitivity level, and this is especially if you have come from using a physical trackball.

By holding down the menu button, the running tasks pane open up and you will be able to see what is eating up the memory, but we have to admit that the 624MHz processor performs in an admirable fashion. Though the trackpad can be used for most of the operations, it is the menu button that does most of the hard work, as the most important elements of each of the applications are accessed in this manner.

Basic specifications of Bold 9700:

Moving on to the features, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 has a hardware specification that is same as its predecessor for the most part. We were delighted to see the 3G internet which was a much needed feature that made many potential consumers turn down the Curve 8900. The other highlight features included WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 and GPS. The Bold 9700 sports a 3.2 mega-pixel camera, which is an upgrade from the 2.0 mega pixel that was available in the original Bold. Out of the box, the 9700 come with only 256MB of internal memory; however, RIM has included a 2GB microSD card in the built-in expansion slot.

BlackBerry 5.0 operating system:

We are glad that the Bold 9700 Smartphone ships with the BlackBerry 5.0 operating system which is same as the one that shipped with the Storm 9530. But we are left wishing that RIM had done something about the layout of the screen, it still seems to be very sparse. For instance, the contacts menu looks very dull; while the names are listed well, the start black and white background and font could do so with a little design tweak. Functionality wise, it looks and feels the same as the 4.5X software that is running on most of the other models, but this version does have a very long list of minor but appreciable upgrades which includes the ability to forward the calendar entries and resize the photos upon sending them.

The old fashioned OS:

The operating systems of Apple, Palm and Google look great in their 21st century flashy and updated software, while the Microsoft, Nokia and RIM look like the old men of the smartphone world who are just clinging on to what still works. The BlackBerry OS is much preferable to the Symbian or Windows Mobile 6.5. We have to admit the fact that the BlackBerry OS does the business tasks exceptionally well. It is just that the antiquated look and the relatively small app store feel like rust on an otherwise shiny new PDA. Though you might accuse the Bold for being a bit boring when it comes to the design of the user interface, the most impressive fact is that, it keeps everything simple. This is one of the main reasons why consumers have flocked to BlackBerry for so many years. We hope that there will be a few design tweaks in the future to make the menu look a little less boring, but for now, it is perfectly functional and allows the phone to operate at a pretty fast rate.

Contacts:

As we had mentioned earlier, the contacts list looks quite dull. At the profile, the things are a little better, with a picture and all the information about the contact displayed with ease along with the birthdays and your anniversary with him or her. Being able to scroll down and select an action is one of the likable elements of the phone and this means you need not launch a dedicated application every time you wish to send a text.

Call features in Bold 9700:

When you are actually making a call, you have a lot of options on offer. When a call is made, you get to see all the pertinent information that was mentioned earlier in the profile on the call. Activate the loudspeaker and place it with the back down on a flat surface, and the phone becomes a very decent speaker phone indeed. It is a very well known fact that the BlackBerry series which is designed for the business users and with respect to that, the in-call options are even more strongly expected. Here, you can add a caller to the conversation and you can also transfer it on to another person using the same method. Yet another nice touch given to the phone is the ability to enhance the audio of call that brings up the bass or the voice tones, in case you are struggling to hear either, which actually makes a great difference when the person that you are trying to speak to is in a loud environment. The in-call notes are really likable too. Though it is not a latest feature, having the ability to write down a note on a phone conversation and then retrieve that in the contact profile later on, is a very handy function, especially if your BlackBerry is for your office.

Wireless connectivity:

For the sake of connectivity, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 phone has WiFi, Bluetooth and 3G. All works well and especially the WiFi as per usual on all the BlackBerry handsets. The WiFi and 3G switches between each other quite fast. If you have enough battery life available, you can always leave it on and let it connect to your trusted networks whenever you get in range of them. Bluetooth is very easy to setup with both of them having their own set up widget in the menu screen that helps explain what is going on when you try to connect it to a near-by device. We especially liked the option to ‘listen’ for a device trying to find our device, like the two objects were silently shouting commands to each other, just out of range of the human ear.

Everything fastened:

It is worth noting that RIM has significantly sped up the performance in both the BlackBerry Bold and Storm, with both of the smartphones reacting to the inputs and opening applications at a much faster rate than ever before. For instance, when we try to open the gallery in the original Bold, it takes quite some time to load, whereas now, the thumbnails pop up almost instantly. Similarly, opening and closing the applications has become a much easier experience than ever before, making it extremely easy to navigate around without being forced to wait each time an operation is done.

Disappointing browser:

The biggest disappointment as far as the software is concerned was with the lack of improvements in the default browser of BlackBerry, which literally lags behind all its rivals. The slow load time of the phone was very evident when put into test with the iPhone. The tiny display also hampers browsing on the pages that are not formatted for mobile web, but the fine resolution of the display makes the microscopic texts readable. It is certainly not the most intuitive browser on the market, with constant hanging on websites, both on WiFi and 3G connection. The evidence of this can be found in the fact RIM has recently purchased Torch Mobile, developers of Webkit browsers, which is similar to the one used in iPhone and Android platforms, which means the company clearly knows it needs to up the game here.

Not an intuitive one:

You will be able install other browsers, but they cannot be set as default. You will also find some nice touches in the browser, like the way you will be set it to mimic Firefox when accessing certain pages. But some of the other issues like zooming in and out of the pages still does exist, like you can click to zoom in, but have to press the alt key to zoom out. Though we are able to understand why RIM has used these keyboard shortcuts, in today’s pinch, zoom, twist and punch browser interaction society, the Bold has started to look a little out-dated. We have to admit that there are very few options for the non-touchscreen phones, but we would have liked to see some other better use of the trackpad and perhaps some improvised smart-fit text resizing technology. Given the fact that we are marking down the phones for not being able to play flash, it is certainly not acceptable for a phone to struggle with the JavaScript.

Camera:

The 3.2 megapixel camera that is on the 9700 is just identical to the one that is planted on the Curve 8900. As with the internet browser, the Bold’s camera is not there for winning any photographic competition. But we are not here to give a bad idea about it, we are fans of the camera and for what it is designed for, it does a bang up job. The camera auto focuses with a quick half press on the center button and the snaps are sharp and have reasonable colour clarity. The LED flash of the phone is good enough to snap out some workable snapshots in the dark, although you will be able to hear a healthy dose of typical low-light noise to go along with it. The 2x digital zoom can be handily operated by the optical trackpad and it is a nice touch too; especially as beyond that the phone cannot really handle that much of detail. The bad news is that the 2.33” display does not make a great view finder and also seems to exhibit a significant amount of latency as the camera is moved around.

Video recorder:

The video recorder feature is same as that of the camera feature. The phone can record and it will capture footage for those odd moments when you want to share them with your friends latter. Since the video is only a HVGA, there is not a lot of point putting it on any large display, but again, we do not expect that you would want to. It captures a fairly high amount of detail in the videos and the chop-less footage quality appears to be offering a fairly high fps capture. While there is no full video suite to play with latter, you will atleast be able to rename and replay the file to the content of your heart. The great news here is that, if they are not too long, you will even be able to send them.

Media features:

As we said earlier, RIM is trying its best to make the BlackBerry range less of an “Executive type, serious face” device and more of a “wow” factor to it. This has been achieved by the converged media sector on the new 9700. In the earlier model, music was a separate and aloof function and the 3.5mm headphone jack can make listening to music on the go a much easier experience.

Music player:

You will not find any special feature on the music player, but has all the functions that you would hope for including shuffle, repeat, playlists and categorising them by album, artist, etc. There is a menu option to stream the songs out to a Bluetooth headset. The album art displaying interface is cute and it is perfectly OK for the MP3 player of the Bold 9700 could replace an MP3 player, provided, you use a microSD card of massive capacity. The formats supported goes beyond the simple MP3 as there is also support for WMA and ACC+ t00. Hence, you will not be hamstrung by so many of the incompatible file types.

Video playback:

As in the case of the music player, the video player too does just what it needs to without being fancy. We are not sure if you would want to watch videos on a 2.4” display, but what we do know is that the increased and the shrunken proportions make the video look sumptuous on this mobile. When we tried to watch a full length movie on the phone; not only were we conscious the whole time of people wondering why we were staring a BlackBerry for such a long period of time, but the screen seems to have lost some of the details. Coming to formats supported, the 9700 is compatible with DivX, MWV, XviD and 3gp codecs. But for some reason, the Xvid is supported only partially for some reason.

Image playback:

Despite having 8GB full of media files, the Bold 9700 did not show even the slightest hint of slowing down before powering through the thumbnails of the photos which were displayed in just milliseconds, rather than having to wait for ages. Scrolling through them and opening them for editing was a simple task too.

Other media features:

Some other nice media features included in the phone is a voice recorder with apparently no limit on how much of sound can be recorded on one setting. You can even take voice notes so that you will not have to write down that important plot line you had just thought for the novel; one that you might never write.

Making a call:

Although dialling with the miniature number keys of BlackBerry can be a pain, the Bold 9700 had an excellent call quality. The Bold came out with flying colours on the test that we had with the landline. The phone distinctly lacked any warbles blips or distortion, making the PDA one of the most competent smartphones for voice that we have reviewed so far. Though we were pleased with the call quality, the 3G connectivity was not very pleasing as it dropped out on more than one occasion to the default GPRS.

Messaging and Texting:

BlackBerry is actually pretty good for messaging. It is very easy to set up, with just the “ask the guy from IT” elements necessary for you to start receiving the push emails. It is much easier if you want to get involved with some of the consumer email as T-mobile would want you to. The process is as simple as entering your email address and password on the popular accounts like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail accounts. The plug-in gives you direct access to your mailbox. Interacting with email will be a pleasant experience from the well laid out inbox to the sheer number of keyboard shortcuts making navigation around messaging easier than ever before. However, if you are a kind of person who gets millions of junk emails a day, and you do not want the hassle of having to delete them all at once, you have to mark them unopened as it appears that you can mark blocks of messages for deletion, rather than the relevant ones. This is one of those times that on the Bold that you will be ever experiencing any kind of slow down, as the phone struggles to keep up.
Your texting experience will be same as the experience that you will be getting out of emailing. Threaded conversations are a real boon as you will have the set of keyboard shortcuts, however, you might not get as many as you would get with email as they offer a richer messaging experience. With the 9700, you will be able to even send an IM or Facebook message to the person.

Games:

There are a range of games that would keep the business person amused. We are great fans of the Texas Hold’em King 2 poker game and there will not be a soul in the world who will not end up addicted to the BrickBreaker game at some point in their lives. You will also note that the latter works well with the trackpad rather than the ball, this will surely be a big relief for those BrickBreaker BlackBerry fans.

Applications:

There are the Word, Excel and Powerpoint viewers and they do exactly what they are supposed to. The search function is excellent and it can check through practically anything, from messages to tasks to contacts and makes it very easy to spot something that you are looking for in a hurry. Of course, the BlackBerry maps are back into action again, but they are still no better. The cartoonish place labelling and blocky graphics were quite irritating and you also have the GPS system which works well with the inbuilt mapping software. However, we liked some of the features, like the layers option on the map that allows you to make notes on where the important things are, like your house, work place, etc, any place you would struggle to find in general life.

What if I lose it?

The PC software is dealt with in two ways: Desktop manager and media sync. BlackBerry Desktop manager basically allows you to back up all your files to your computer to make sure they are safe if you lose the phone, which we all will do at some point, let us be honest here. Media Sync is one step beyond that in terms of entertainment, whereby it reads your iTunes and Windows Media Player playlists and sends them to your Bold 2 9700 directly to the new device without the hassle of having to put it into mass storage mode every five seconds.

Battery and battery life:

Despite the phone being small, RIM has kept the battery capacity to 1500 mAhr for the new Bold. The battery employed has a talktime of six hours and standby time of 21 days which is a significant rise from the 4.5 hours of talktime and 13.5 days of standby time that was offered by the first model. In fact, the 9700 claims to be having a battery life that is better than any other modern BlackBerry available in the market; which is true too. It can easily last a whole day with normal usage and can sometimes give you another day if the Wi-Fi is shut down and push email when not required. It is really nice that RIM has managed to optimise its battery software to work so efficiently. This means the users do not have to consider carrying a charger around with them “just in case”.

Warranty:

RIM offers BlackBerry Bold 9700 one year limited warranty for parts and labour.

Verdict:

The reduction in size of the Bold and a handful of the refinements has made the new Bold one of BlackBerry’s best ever smart phones. If you had read our Curve 8900 review, you might have noticed that we fell in love with it, but was not happy with the fact that the smartphone was stuck on the EDGE internet. The Bold 9700 essentially takes that winning design and adds the crucial missing element in the form of 3G Internet access, along with a better keyboard, optical trackpad, and even longer-lasting battery. Though the model lacks the frills of an iPhone or Plam Pre, for the utilitarian business users, it proves to be one of the most polished smartphones on today’s market.

Check 2010 Blackberry Reviews in our website.

BlackBerry Bold 9700 Smartphone - Technical specifications, Features

Design:

Dimensions of Curve 8350:
Blackberry Curve 8350 retains the same shape and design of the earlier curve models, but as the new model is packed with a load of features, the size is somewhat bigger. The dimensions of the smartphone are as follows: 4.4 inches high, 2.4 inches wide and 0.7 inches thick with a weight of 4.7 ounces. It is a bit bigger compared with RIM Blackberry curve 8330, which measures 4.2 inches high, 2.4 inches wide and 0.6 inch thick and weighs 4.2 ounces. Unlike the Nextel phones, for instance, the Motorolai365 which has the rugged casing, the new model is a solid handset carrying a soft touch finish along the outer edges to make it easy to grip.

Sharp-looking Screen:
A 2.4-inch, QVGA, non-touch display with 65, 536-colour output and 320X240-pixel resolution is sported by Curve 8350. The screen has got a sharp-look which is complemented by the updated user interface of Blackberry OS 4.6.1. The only small issue about the design is that all of the icons look similar, although there is description when we scroll over the icon it is very difficult to use on the fly. Similar to the earlier models, RIM Blackberry Curve 8350 is also incorporated with light-sensing technology which adjusts the display’s brightness depending on the natural light or environment. RIM also allows you to customise your home screen with different themes and background images.

QWERTY Keypad:
A group of traditional navigation layout of Talk and End keys, a Menu short cut, a Back button and a trackball navigator can be found beneath the display. As the trackball is placed a little deeper than earlier models, it is not very easy to move it side to side and pressing-in, to select an item also requires a little more exertion. Some acclimation should be taken for the users who are upgrading from the Blackberry Curve 7100i, which bears a side jog wheel. The Blackberry Curve 8350 Smartphone is incorporated with QWERTY keypad which is more attractable than SureType keypad of Curve 7100i. The new model’s keypad sports small buttons but as there is a fair amount of space between the keys, many may find it easy to use.

Connections:

A 2.5 mm headset jack, a mini USB-port and a Direct Connect button are present on the left side of the Smartphone, where as the right side bears a volume rocker and a user-programmable short-cut key that is set to camera by default. On the top of the device a mute button is present and on the rear side is a camera, flash and a self-portrait mirror. Last but not the least, under the battery you will find microSD/SDHC expansion slot and SIM card slot. Again, the memory cards have got the inconvenient place.

Features:

Key Features of Blackberry Curve 8350:
With a two years gap between RIM Blackberry Curve 7100i and RIM Blackberry Curve 8350, finally the new model has brought the its customers with a number of betterments and additional features.
Some of the key features of Blackberry Curve 8350 from Blackberry Curve Series includes incorporated GPS functionalities, 2 Megapixel digital camera with 5x digital zoom, flash and video,  DataViz Documents to Go to edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint docs, Internal Antenna improves the design appeal and durability,  Speakerphone optimized for great sound quality with Direct Connect, Advanced Media Player - for music, videos and pictures, Removable or Rechargeable 1400 mAH Battery, microSD memory card slot allows for plenty of storage, Bluetooth version 2.0 with support for (A2DP) stereo Bluetooth and more, Additional Messaging Capabilities - support for instant messaging and multimedia messaging including audio, pictures and text to email addresses and capable phones.

Direct Connect:
With the new Blackberry curve 8350’s Nationwide and International Direct Connect, its customers will be capable to instantly connect within UK and also to users in other eligible countries. The Blackberry Curve 8350 is also the first smartphone to offer Group Connect, permitting its customers to set-up group conversations with up to 20 other users. In addition to this, there is also something called as Talkgroup which connects you to groups of up to 200 people within same local market.

A real Smartphone:
Principal Analyst with analyst firm In-Stat, David Chamberlain said that “Smartphones in general and Blackberry products in particular have become more important to both business people and consumers”. The Blackberry curve 8350 with its PTT capability filled the communication needs of many industries particularly for those in the blue-collar segment of construction, field services, transportation and manufacturing.

Multimedia Features:
The Blackberry Curve 8350 offers rich multimedia, organiser, internet browsing capabilities and access to thousands of other mobile applications along with its capability of delivering unmatched push email and messaging feature of Blackberry Solution. The latest design includes a built-in media player which supports files like MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB and MIDI music files, and MPEG4, WMV and H.263 video clips. The new model allows the customers to browse the Internet and download email attachments quickly and easily with its newly included built-in Wi-Fi. The customers can easily send and receive emails or surf Internet even while talking on phone when it is connected to Wi-Fi network.
The other multimedia features comprise of a search function, playlist creation, shuffle and repeat, and you also get a full screen mode for video playback. A software CD included bears Roxio Easy Media Creator, which allows you to create MP3 from CDs and add audio tags. The device carries a 128MB flash memory but if we load multimedia files on microSD/SDHC card the memory space will be conserved. The expansion slot can take up to 16GB cards.

Blackberry 8350 RIM Smartphone:

Vice President of corporate marketing at RIM said that “The new Blackberry Curve 8350 smartphone offers customers an exceptional communications and multimedia experience along with the power and convenience.”

2-mega pixel Camera:

A 2-mega pixel camera with digital zoom and video recording capabilities is sported by Blackberry Curve 8350 smartphone. It provides three size options and three quality selections for still images. Along with flash you can also fine tune white balance and add colour effects. The smartphone also offers geo-tagging photos with its in-built GPS. First microSD card must be installed in the device to use video recording otherwise it will not allow you to start recording a clip. However video options are limited for Curve 8350. You can only get two formats (normal and MMS mode) and colours-that is it.

The picture quality in particular is really not exhorting. Though the objects are clear, colours are flat-looking and gray. As the clips are very blur the recorded videos are also not of a great quality.

Bluetooth 2.0:

Bluetooth 2.0 incorporated in the new model is also on-board for use with mono and stereo headsets, hands free kits and Bluetooth peripherals. As the Curve 8350 has built-in GPS, a Bluetooth GPS receiver would not be necessary. The Built-in GPS can be called as both autonomous and assisted, which uses satellites and cellular triangulation to find your location. Through the apps like BlackBerry Maps and Google Maps for Mobile you can get maps and text based, turn-by-turn driving directions, but you will have to use a location based service like TeleNav GPS Navigator for real-time tracking and voice guided instructions.

BlackBerry Internet:

Voice is not the only means of communication for BlackBerry Curve 8350. Multiple email solutions are provided. To deliver corporate emails, this smartphone can synchronise with the company’s Blackberry Enterprise server, with support for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell Groupwise. You can access up to ten personal or business POP3 or IMAP4 email accounts with Blackberry Internet Service. You can also open Microsoft word, Powerpoint, Excel, Corel WordPerfect, PDF, JPEG, GIF and many more by using the attachment viewer which is incorporated in it. Many popular instant messaging clients like Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Google talk and Blackberry messenger are also included in Curve 8350.

Blackberry OS 4.6.1:

Due to the updation of Blackberry OS 4.6.1, more advanced productivity tools and multimedia capabilities are brought by Curve 8350. Now you can edit word, excel and powerpoint files as smartphone first transports with Dataviz documents To Go Standard Edition. You will have to upgrade to Premium edition, to get an ability to create new documents. Some other PIM applications can be listed as a calendar, a task list, a memo pad, a voice recorder, a password keeper and many more. You can also always download applications to a great extent into the smartphone.

HTML Web Browser:

We should thank Curve 8350 for providing an ameliorated, full HTML web browser. Still it is not very easy or advanced as compared to its competitors, but it is better than earlier models. You have two options to view, such as Column view or Page view. There is an on-screen cursor which can be moved around in any direction and can be placed at any part of the page where you can click a link, along with zoom-in and zoom-out functions. As there is the integrated Wi-Fi you can browse at some speed. You can manually add a network or the smartphone automatically can search for the available network. Some Wi-Fi tools also exists such as diagnostics, DNS lookup and site survey.

Miscellaneous features of Curve 8350:

Some other phone features includes a speakerphone, a voice-activated dialing, speed dial, text messaging and lastly multimedia messaging. Limitation is applied on the address book with available memory only, with plenty of room in each entry for multiple phone numbers that include direct connect numbers, email addresses, work and home addresses, job title and many more. You can assign photo to a contact as well as to a group category-business or personal or you can add one of the 45 polyphonic ring tones for the call identification.

Performance:

Call Quality:
Though the audio quality is clear, sometimes the calls sound hollow as if the callers are talking in an empty room. Though there was plenty of volume, same problem was encountered the speakerphone was activated. Still they were able to continue conversation with an airline voice automated response system without dropping any calls during the testing period. The tests also proved that we can pair the Curve 8350 smartphone with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth Headset and Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.

GPS Navigation Performance:
Though most part of the Curve 8350 is found responsive, it was also found that you will experience some lag with even simple chores like menu navigation. You may also find some instances in which the device may get stuck for few seconds on the main menu page, making it difficult to scroll to other items or launch apps, after exiting out of the video player. Coming to video, let us say multimedia experience will sound good. As most of the smartphones, we cannot watch the full length movies on Curve 8350, but as the playback is smooth it would be fine if you watch short video clips. If you try listening to MP3 files, you will experience it hollow on speakerphone. As you expect the sound quality is much better on head phones. As the new model is not fitted with 3.5 mm headphone jack, you will need to connect an audio adapter to use ear buds or headphones.

Internet Service:
If you try use Blackberry Internet Service to assemble your Yahoo email account with the device, the process will be done without any arrest and can successfully receive and check mails in the inbox. Nevertheless, the Curve 8350 got trouble sending emails. It should be resend many times in order to be send to the recipient. The promising thing is that smartphone did not have any problem connecting to a Wi-Fi network.

Battery Life:
The RIM Blackberry Curve 8350 comes along with a 1,400mAH Lithium ion battery with a talk time of up to 4 hours. In battery drain tests performed, it was found that one can speak continuously for 8.5 hours on single charge. It was found that the device has a digital-SAR rating of 0.88 watt per kilogram, according to FCC Radiation tests.

Package Particulars:

The pack of RIM Blackberry Curve 8350 comprises of the RIM Blackberry Curve 8350 smartphone, a travel charger, a USB charging/sync cable, a wired stereo headset, a SIM card, a 1GB microSD card, a swivel belt holster, a software CD and reference material.

Warranty:

RIM offers Blackberry Curve 8350 one year standard warranty.

Verdict:

With Customers looking for a fully features smartphone with Direct Connect push-to-talk capability, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS can be served by the new RIM Blackberry Curve 8350. It also provides an updated OS, advanced multimedia capabilities and a full HTML browser. Sometimes Blackberry Curve 8350 made get struck in between of the operations but that would not necessarily stop anyone from buying it. It is the first smartphone without an external antenna.  For the user who is waiting to switch to a new smartphone with many advanced features the new model will be the best suit for them.

Blackberry Curve 8350 Smartphone - Technical Specifications, Features

Finally a sleek Blackberry:

The design engineers of blackberry have taken a great leap completely leaving behind the ugly blackberry model and have moved to a completely new look. The Pearl 8100 is sleek, with a black and silver theme and weighs just 90grams, being extremely pocket friendly. It has its dimensions to be (H X W X D)mm 107 x 50 x 14.5 mm. The overall size of the phone makes it almost on par with the candy bar hand sets. The above description does not at all sound like the one of a blackberry or even a smartphone, this itself is a great leap in the market of smartphones. The Pearl gets a great plus in terms of design as it gives you more of a phone like feel that you do not usually get with the other blackberry smartphones. The only other blackberry that has got a candy bar form factor is Blackberry 7100G, which is bulky.

Why “Pearl”?

Now let us come to the main factor on why the series has been named as “Pearl”. The trademark scroll wheel of Blackberry has gone and it is replaced by a miniature white trackball placed on the navigational area. This track ball looks like a pearl and hence, the phone is named after it. This trackball can be rotated, moved and pressed in order to make selections. Though it might consume a little time for you to get used to it, it is far better than the previous scroll wheel system and in fact quite a clever one.

Buttons and controls:

Towards the left and right side of the track ball are the back and menu buttons, that allows you to move around well. These buttons are very vital for the sake of navigation as the Blackberry Pearl 8100 does not have a touch screen. The display has a resolution of a mere 240 x 260 pixels. But the good thing is that a light sensor has been included which means you will not be having any issues in reading even in outdoors. Blackberry has offered three home screen themes which can be previewed before applying. This is a good touch to the smartphone.

The left and the right edges of the phone have a convenience key each which can be customised according to your wish. But by default, the key on the right takes you to the camera application and the one on the left is used for voice dialing application. The right side of the pearl also has a volume rocker that works only either when the music application is going on or a voice call is proceeding. The top edge of the phone has a mute button which acts as a pause button during music playback, otherwise puts the phone on standby mode. The left edge has a mini USB power connector and unfortunately a ‘non-standard’ headset jack.

QWERTY keyboard:

You can never imagine a blackberry without a keyboard. Pearl 8100 Smartphone has a small 50mm keyboard. The individual keys are wide and the suretype predictive system is used for entry of text and this means that most of the keys have two Qwerty alphabets and a these buttons are surrounded and picked up with a silver surround and hence easy to catch-up with.

Features:

Coming to the part of features, the RIM Blackberry pearl 8100 has a lot of first times. The set of new features include memory expansion, MP3 player and a camera. Though these features have been there in the smart phones for a long time now, the inclusion of these in blackberry is a great move towards the right direction. The pearl 8100 is a quad band phone with support for GPRS and EDGE.

Memory expansion, Beneath the battery:

The fact that the memory has been expanded is most welcome but the place where the slot has been placed is not that appreciated. The microSD slot is placed right below the battery slot which means you will not be able to add a card unless you switch it off. But in the better side, it switches on automatically once the battery is placed back into it.

Good music player:

The music player offered is reasonably good. Options are available to play tracks from a memory card. You will be able to set any tone as your ring tone quite easily. You can continue to have a music playback as you do some of your other tasks such as making notes diary etc. In case a call comes, the music play back pauses and resumes once the call ends.

Low resolution camera:

Though we are pleased with the fact that a camera has been finally included in the Blackberry Pearl 8100 Mobile Phone and that flash and self portrait mirror are great. The camera resolution is just 1.3 mega pixels which is very average and the fact that there is no video recording facility is also agonising. Though there are not any filters provided like the sepia or greyscale, a few white balance settings like sunny, cloudy, night, and indoor are available. There is an automatic settings on offer for this.

Browsing:

RIM Blackberry Pearl 8100 Smartphone comes with an Internet browser which is an HTML browser that allows the user to view the Web pages in HTML format. You can browse the Internet in the same way as you would do from their office or home computer. The BlackBerry Pearl 8100 comes with an embedded RIM wireless modem. The phone comes with quad band network connectivity which allows the user to use their mobile phone in many countries including Europe, North America & Asia. The user can store their data on the phones 64MB of internal Flash memory or expand the phones memory by adding a MicroSD memory card.

Communication:

A PC software is provided along with the package that can be used to synchronise dairy and tasks  with your pearl 8100. Emails can be sent either using your company’s network in case it has support for blackberry or by using the internet email service that is offered by your network operator. The absence of WiFi will not be felt much as Bluetooth is always available.

Typing:

The predictive suretype system that we had mentioned earlier is made use of by the Blackberry pearl 8100. . Two letters share a single key and, as you type, software in the Pearl has a guess at the word you want and when you spot it among those suggested you can use the trackball to pick it out. But the whole process of predicting and then selecting is very slow and so it is better to type the words on your own. Since the size of the keyboard is also small, you might have to use your finger tips which might prove to be a little painful after a while and could easily annoy frequent texters.

Call quality:

The call quality of RIM Blackberry Pearl 8100 is very good as is loud and clear both via handset and speaker.

Battery life:

The battery life of is quite good as it gives about 10 hours of continuous music playback. This value has been made possible as the display turns off itself on two continuous minutes of non-usage.

Warranty:

RIM offers Blackberry Pearl 8100 one year limited warranty.

Verdict:

Blackberry Pearl 8100 is RIM’s most consumer focused model that shows that the company is keen to take on operations like Nokia and Sony Ericsson. The new design and multimedia features are most welcome. If you are a corporate who is fun loving too (a rare combo), then blackberry Pearl 8100 will satisfy most of your needs.

You can read latest Blackberry Phone Reviews, Cheap Blackberry 8900 Deals, Best Blackberry 8320 Deals in this website.

Technical Specification Details of RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8100 Smartphone

The Blackberry Curve 8310, released in the year 2007, has turned out to be the most loved phone in the Blackberry Curve series. It is the Blackberry series with satellite navigation along with features like email, internet, 2 mega pixel camera and memory card slot. RIM have taken on a great idea by continuing to release models in the Blackberry 8800 series that keep the people of corporate sector happy and simultaneously the Blackberry Curve series which will keep the consumers sector happy. This time Blackberry has to face some fierce competition as the mobiles that run on the Microsoft’s Windows Mobile Platform are selling twice that of those running on the RIM’s Blackberry.

Blackberry Curve 8310 is the successor of Blackberry Curve 8300 which was released in the month of June, the same year. While both of them has similar looks and features, the major difference is the introduction of the GPS.

Smart, stylish design:

The design of the phone is exactly the same as that of its predecessor. One of the major things that the designers of the Blackberry Curve had to keep in mind is that, since this series, unlike the others, is consumer oriented, they has to design the phone in such a way that it is slim and stylish enough to attract the consumer community. It has a 2.5 inch LCD display. The Curve 8310 has managed to weigh an average 111grams that is just 12 grams more than Blackberry Pearl, that had two letters in each key. But 8310, being just 10mm wider at 60mm has managed to put on a full QWERTY keyboard. Hence, the designers have succeeded, making 8310 one of the most stylish device in the market.

Navigation:

The small keys in the QWERTY keyboard work much faster than the usual T9 predictive text available in the Pearl, once you get used to it. The main navigational button is the mini pearl like trackball that was in imitation from the Pearl. With this, you will see that scrolling through long pages is no longer irritating.  This smart phone has been designed ergonomically.

Menu usage:

The menus of the RIM Blackberry Curve 8310 are really a breeze to use once you get used to it. Blackberry key switch is used to switch between various applications and reassign items in the launcher. Once the application is opened, the same key brings up very useful drop down menus. The sat nav application was absent in the default programs list in the Curve’s launch bar, surprising! The phone has a simple navigation set up that aids you in a lot of means. The Curve lends itself particularly well for your email and browsing needs. There are no annoying home pages that you will have to go to and eliminating your need for entering the entire URLs of the sites that you want to visit. All that you need to do is, select Go To option from the drop-down menu where you can select whichever website you want to, when the browser application is active.

Satellite navigation feature:

You must have used the sat nav application in the other mobiles and said, “what is the great deal?” as all of them take ages to even pinpoint your current location. But the combo of the Google maps, Vodafone sat nav and Blackberry have done a great job. They get you your locations in just a few seconds. But Vodafone cannot actually take all the success of the sat nav feature as it had bought in a third party application from Telmap that had already proven to be successful. The Google map application is not custom designed to be used while driving and so, you will have to plot the route before you start driving and then start off by following the sat nav.

Sat nav menus:
Even if you are not familiar with the way Blackberry menus work, you will not be having any trouble working with it. All that you will have to know is that, if you click over the red arrow icon, the Vodafone sat nav application will be launched and then just select yes to admit Telmap to make use of the satellites to get the maps and locations for you. It will then take you to a screen that has options like “Where To“, “Place or Business“, “Where am I“ and “My places and Inbox”. As each of their names indicate, they work accordingly. For instance, the option “where am I” presents you with a 2D map of your current location and when you click over it with the central navigation button, it displays to you the address and geo-reference. You will also be able to save the location along with details attached to it like the place name and number. The only issue is that, we feel is that, the display is a bit on the smaller side for viewing the maps.

Sat nav operation:
If you choose to go to a particular place with the help of the Sat Nav, just enter the town name, suburb name or just the post code number. In just a few seconds, the complete route data will be downloaded, and you will be set to explore. You can move around the map with the numeric keys as was the case of the sat navs in the other Blackberry smart phones. The Google maps take some relatively long time to pick up signals in areas that are heavily built and in that case, by default, it tends to display to you maps that cover quite a large geographical area. In such a case, just move around the map and zoom-in and out will help you better making your work a little faster and easier. Your current location in the map will be indicated by a flashing blue ball and you can go back there by just pressing the ’0’ key. The navigation instructions are given by a female voice that is clear and authoritative but not bossy. In case you misinterpret the instructions, the error sound is just a gentle ping and not some irritating alarm like sound.

Lack of connectivity:

One of the major dis advantages of the 8310 is that, it lacks connectivity. The support for Wi-Fi that was available in phones like Blackberry 8820 is absent in this model. And like every other RIM Blackberry except the Blackberry 8320, this phone too lacks 3G. One of the major disadvantages of lack of 3G is that, you will be limited to the speeds of the GPRS and so, at times web surfing can be horribly slow.

Camera and memory:

A smart phone without a decent camera and memory card slot is sure to fail. The other Blackberry models that were designed without camera keeping in mind the security concerns, but since the Curve is consumer oriented, this feature cannot be neglected.

2 MP camera:
And so RIM has taken a wise decision to include a 2 mega pixel camera and a multimedia card slot to impress its consumer market. Though the fact that the resolution is just 2 mega pixels might limit the definition of the images, but the images taken have strong and natural looking colours. Photos you take can be saved and used as caller ID images. These images can be displayed on any external display of up to 1,600 x 1,200 pixels resolution. Flash is available and you will be able to zoom 200 percent. The flash that is provided is one of the brightest LED photo lights that we would have ever seen and hence taking snaps in low light areas is never going to be an issue. Micro mirror is available for you to take self portraits. In addition, you can also give interesting colour effects to your images.

Memory:
About 64MB of internal flash memory is available and the microSD card slot accepts cards of up to 2GB in capacity. You will definitely need to make you of the slot if you want to make use of the multimedia applications.

Email:

Our review is not complete if we do not list you systems and protocols that this mailing and messaging specialist has. Though, RIM is no longer having the virtual monopoly over the push email services, this device stands tall, unbeatable when it comes to messaging. The email application is very straightforward. It has the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise. It also integrates with an existing enterprise email account, personal email account and new device account. It also has the support for AES or Triple DES encryption when integrated with BES.

Battery:

Most of the smartphones in the current market have very poor battery lives. But thankfully, Curve gives you a good four hours of talk time and two and a half weeks of stand-by time. The satellite navigation feature drains off the battery of the Blackberry Curve like nobody’s business.

Availability:

Blackberry Curve 8310 smartphone is being sold exclusively with Vodafone in UK and the combo of GPS makes the smart phone complete. You will get a full year of Vodafone sat nav service with updates that are quarterly, which is included within the contract of the handset.

The Blackberry Curve 8310 comes with one year limited warranty.

Verdict:

RIM has done a great job with the Curve 8310. The Palm Treo 600v is a heavy competitor to the Blackberry Curve. The 8310 retains the core features that made BlackBerry into a household name and indispensable business tool, full keypad and push email. It also adds some new features that make the Curve more like a multimedia smartphone, a camera, media player and GPS satellite navigation.

Having solid built quality and adequate features why would not we recommend it. The Curve 8310 is an excellent value for money too.

Check Reviews of Latest Blackberry Phones, Blackberry Pearl Series reviews in this website.

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RIM BlackBerry Curve 8310 - Technical Specification Details

Design - a cloning of blackberry 8800

Talking about the design, it is a cloning of the Blackberry 8800. It feels quite bulky with the large QWERTY keyboard and with its dimensions being (H x W x D) 114 x 66 x 14 milli meters and weighs 134grams. The wide design of this smart phone make it very difficult for it to be held as a normal phone. It has a 2.5″ display which has a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels giving a widescreen viewing area. The display is very sharp and bright. Just below the screen you will find the basic four buttons and a track ball. The 8820 is entirely black with silver letterings and silver buttons in the sides. The trackball is white and is a real breeze to use, it makes scrolling through the web menus and selection of various icons in the menu very easy.

QWERTY keyboard:

The QWERTY keyboard is of great help when in comes to typing out your texts, and it feels to be a better system than that of the SureType predictive system that is employed in pearl. The keys are large and are placed side by side in ergonomically. The keys are flat which some people might like and some will not prefer it though. The blackberry pearl might be a good performer as a phone with its half qwerty keyboard but as a messenger and composing mails, 8820 smartphone from Blackberry does a better job.

Memory and memory card slots:

Only 64MB of internal memory is provided, you can expand it though using microSD cards. But since the slot is available under the battery cover you will not be able to swap cards without switching off your blackberry. It would have been a much better option to have the memory card slot in a more accessible fashion. But the happy news is that, blackberry supports the SDHC cards and hence you can increase you memory to up to 32GB.

VOIP facility:

Weather or not you can make voice over IP calls depends on what the phone is prepared to allow as blackberry uses the UMA protocol and not the SIP. The network will be in control and if you do have the facility, then blackberry 8820 switches automatically from Wi-Fi and GSM network to make voice and data connectivity.

Robust mobile email:

Similar to the other blackberry smart phones, you have several options for mobile email. You can use the internet services of blackberry to receive your mails of POP and IMAP for up to ten accounts in case you are a stand alone user and you can also opt to use the BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) if you are in a corporate.

Wi-Fi - finally:

Setting up the Wi-Fi connections can be done in seconds. All that you will have to do is, just select the dedicated Wi-Fi icon in the menu then select the network and just enter your password, that’s it. When you start using the Wi-Fi you will sense the difference in the speed immediately. The pages get loaded much quickly and the browser feels far more responsive than that of a GPRS connection. The manage connections utility that had been added by RIM helps you to manage your Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GSM very effectively. The integrated GPS antenna and the maps application that was available in the 8800 can be found in 8820 also. When it is used in conjunction with the GPS, it is not as satisfactory as a stand alone satellite navigation system or that of a CoPilot in a mobile. It is extremely slow taking about five minutes at times. It gives a feel that these functionalities have been included for the sake of specification and much work has to be done with the implementation and its respective execution. Another fact that must be taken in to consideration is that, since the maps are being downloaded through air, depending on your tariff, this service can prove to be costly for you too.

However since the support for 3G is still unavailable, web browsing can be very sluggish and the pages on GPRS might be testing your patience.

Multimedia:

In Blackberry’s effort to change this mobile email device in to a device that is filled with features to compete with the current mobile and smartphones, RIM has also included a music player application whose performance is satisfactory. A full battery charge gives you just more than 10 hours of music which is quiet good for a mobile phone. You can also enjoy stereo Bluetooth output.

There is no camera in Blackberry 8820 from RIM, as was the case of 8800. The absence of camera is a welcome feature by big companies as for the security reasons. When it comes to the hardware, it is all similar to 8800. The blackberry 8820 operates on the Microsoft windows mobile operating system. The miscellaneous applications that are included are, address book, calendar, memo pad, task lists, alarm, calculator, voice dialling and mobile email. The software that is bundled along with the 8820 included the Roxio Media Manager that helps in file conversion and transfer.

Security:

In case of loss or theft of the BlackBerry 8820 SmartPhone, RIM provides you a lot of options to choose from. There is the password protection and the basic keyboard lock feature. Also there is a support of the AES or the Triple DES encryption when it is integrated with the BES. It is also validated with the FIPS 140-2 and has an optional support of the S/MIME too.

Battery:

The battery life of the RIM Blackberry 8820 depends fully on how much of the GPS receiver and the Wi-Fi features you use. On the whole, it is pretty decent giving you around six hours of talk-time and three weeks of stand by time.

Verdict:

The upgrading has done good for Blackberry. If you already own a blackberry mobile without the WiFi and looking for a replacement, another blackberry like this one will itself do the job for you as you will not be able to find better mobile email options elsewhere. The Blackberry 8820 Mobile Phone is a great option for the business users.

Read Blackberry Bold Reviews, Blackberry Storm Reviews in this website.

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RIM Blackberry 8820 Smartphone - Technical Specifications, Features

Undesirable design:

BlackBerry 8700g just a little smaller than the 7290 with a weight difference of just three grams. This phone has the terrible design of the traditional blackberry with a cheap plastic design. It does not for sure have the candy bar form factor, rather a squarish one, with its dimensions being 4.3” x 2.7” x 0.7” (H x W x D) weighing 4.7 ounces.

Good display:

On a good note, there are a few positive improvements when it comes to the display. The display being a spacious 2.5″ QVGA, is now bigger and brighter. It displays 65,000 colours with a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. The higher resolution gives it a brightness that is miles ahead of the previous Blackberry phones. The display is visible only with the backlight on, whereas, 7290 always had the Tran reflective on the screen. This means, you cannot simply leave it on the desk and peek to have a look if there is any new mails, rather, you will have to fiddle it each time to have a look.

You can also adjust the backlight’s brightness and time-out settings, as well as font size and type, all through the Options menu. A small LED above the screen flashes different colours to alert you to various messages: green for network activity, red for message notification, yellow for low battery, and blue for Bluetooth connectivity.

The QWERTY Keyboard:

While typing, the Blackberry 8700g smartphone does a great job without any denial. It has incorporated new Send or End and soft keys are also found on recent BlackBerrys. The center soft key, or the front convenience key as RIM calls it, can be programmed to launch any application. The side convenience key on the left spine can also do the same job for you. The keyboard itself is fairly spacious, and gives you no troubles in firing off quick e-mails and text messages. Yet, while they are well backlit, the slippery and plasticky feel of the keys way not that enjoyable.

Ports and interfaces:

There is a USB port and a headset jack on the left side, while the right end sports the track wheel that we are already familiar of and an escape button. The keyboard has the alt button that allows you to toggle between different applications. This button is a familiar one, as it was already available in 8700c. Rounding out the BlackBerry 8700g’s chassis are power and mute buttons on top, as well as the speakerphone on the mobile’s backside. For the sake of connectivity, RIM has included a wealthy set of accessories like wired headset, a USB cable, a travel charger, a belt hose and an AC adapter.

The high speed EDGE:

The absence on 3G was disappointing but, RIM Blackberry 8700g has taken the privilege to be the first blackberry device to have EDGE support. EDGE too provides broadband like data speeds. But at the time when blackberry 8700g was released in UK, there were no UK networks with an EDGE service, now there is no problem though.

A faster processor:

blackberry 8700g’s new intel inside design allows it to experience speed like never before. This was achieved with the help of the PXA901 processor which runs at 312MHz.

Coming to multimedia, entertainment sector, Blackberry 8700g PDA Phone is nothing but awful. There is no MP3 player, no camera and hence no memory card slot. This is where, blackberry completely looses the normal consumer market. RIM might think that these are a loop hole for some of the secure information to be leaked but, we hope that a blackberry phone with more jingles with no compromise on the security features would sell more.

Great performer as a corporate device:

There is no question on the performance of blackberry as a complete corporate phone. It is on a music when it works with RIM’s BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server). The blackberry will be having a controlled access to the corporate network which in turn allows you to networks like intranet and LAN with BES’s Mobile Data System. Any of your browsing also goes via the BES that allows you to enjoy the benefits of corporate firewall protection saving you from other web prying eyes. This browsing comes out of your monthly blackberry data allowance, but you will be charged extra with a non-BES version. With triple DES encryption security is done for sure. Email messages are even encrypted at all points between the handheld and the corporate email account.

Centralised management is a cornerstone of the corporate BlackBerry platform. BES allows an array of policies which gives a remote control of what a handheld can and cannot do. The applications can be centrally pushed to the device. There are third-party softwares available too. An easy-to-use tool called MDS Studio, allows you to quickly build your own enterprise applications. And it is when running these applications that you really appreciate the extra speed of the 8700g over previous BlackBerrys.

Messaging:

The proprietary instant messaging client was one of the  consistent complaints of past BlackBerry models, but that ends with the 8700g. We are glad to see that RIM has added support for popular IM apps, such as Yahoo, ICQ, AOL, and MSN. Google Talk is also available for download, and the 8700g supports text and multimedia messaging as well.

Battery:

You might be thinking that all these great features included like brighter screen and a faster processor, all comes at the cost of the battery draining. You are wrong and the fact is almost the other way round. The new light sensor of the phone automatically adjusts the brightness of the display and keyboard according to the surrounding light conditions. Which in turn helps in saving the charge.

The previous blackberry phones were able to last for only four or five days where as, the 8700g from Blackberry was able to make it to a decent one week. This number is quite amazing for a device with permanently open data connection. It gives a standby time of 16 days with a talktime of four hours.

Verdict:

With the next generation QWERTY keyboard, intel processor, EDGE, Bluetooth2.0 and support for up to ten corporate or personal e-mail accounts. Blackberry 8700g is certainly more consumer friendly and easy to use compared to blackberry 8700c. The device delivers greatly as a phone, a mail machine and a handheld.

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RIM BlackBerry 8700g  - Technical Specifications, Features

The moment you think about mobile e-mail, the first thing that would strike your mind would be Blackberry. It has created a special place for itself in this area. Though many of the other mobile phones such as Symbian and a lot of other well-known models have this feature, Blackberry has almost completely conquered it.

Trackball navigation:

Blackberry had been traditionally using the side mounted scroll wheel. In the past few Blackberry phone models, the side mounted scroll wheel has been replaced by a small pearl like round ball, which can be moved to make any navigation and , when pressed, it makes a selection. Since this navigational ball is placed right below the screen, this is well suited for both right handed and left handed people. It has made the four-way pad look lethargic and outdated. Since this navigational trackball looked like a pearl, the first Blackberry to come out with this was called as, Blackberry Pearl which was released in march 2007 and this series was followed by traditional style Blackberry 8800.

Stylish and light:

Coming to the model that we are to review, the BlackBerry Curve 8300, you might be wondering which feature of it must have given its name to be “Curve”. It is because, it has a smooth & curvaceous casing which has soft edges and feels smooth to hold in the user’s hand. The edges of the phone gives you a rubberised feel that allows you to grip the phone well Unlike the dirty blue, which most of us hated, the Blackberry Curve 8900 comes in a stylish silver colour. The silver and black theme has made Blackberry look more stylish than ever. It looks very compact and light weighted when compared to the other Blackberry models. Its dimensional specification seems to be 107 X 60 X 15.5 mm (H X W X D) and weighs 111.4 grams.

BlackBerry Curve 8300 Vs Blackberry 8800:

At your first look at Curve 8300, it might seem to be familiar to you… somewhat identical to Blackberry 8800, but when you literally take the two devices in your hand and compare them, that is when you will notice that there are quite a lot of differences. Their keyboards are very different. The silver Curve has smaller keys that are well spaced and the black 8800 has bigger keys that are not adequately spaced. Length wise, 8800 is lengthier whereas, with the depth, Curve 8300 is fatter.

Good display:

RIM Blackberry Curve 8300 seems to be very user friendly. It has a colourful 2.5″ large screen that can display up to 650000 colours with a good resolution of 320 X 240 pixels. Since the display is light sensitive, it has the ability to adjust itself according to the lighting conditions in which it is used, which enables the user to view the display clearly and  saves your battery too. The screen has a good wide viewing angle but is prone to glaring, which cannot be helped much.

The QWERTY keyboard:

Curve 8300 comes with a full QWERTY keyboard. This keyboard is of great use while typing in emails and messages. The QWERTY keyboard also has the numeric keys that are overlapped on a few of the alphabets which are having a black background. The subtle backlight provided to the keyboard is of great help as it indicates the spacing between the keys well. Blackberry has included the spell checker in its e-mail software for the first time ever, a feature that should have been included long time before.

The text entry yet, requires some amount of concentration. You would be first searching for a dedicated ‘@’ and period keys. But once you get used to it, we are sure that you will be typing swiftly.

Toy camera:

RIM had finally made up its mind to focus on the common people too and has provided the phone with a camera. Having a great deal of messaging and sharing features, the pictures taken using the camera can be shared swiftly. The camera has a resolution of two mega pixels and a LED flash. It has only basic features and images are miserable, suffering nasty colour tints, blurry detail and dull exposure. The media player is better, with tunes sounding acceptable, especially through decent headphones. Curve uses the standard 3.5mm headset and provides us with stereo earbuds.

Multimedia features:

As the BlackBerry Curve 8300 phone supports MP3, MIDI and polyphonic ring tones, you can now set ring tones and alert tones of your choice. The desktop software has also included a feature that lets you to copy multimedia on to Blackberry Curve. The Roxio software from Sonic included, which is the first time media manager for RIM also includes CD ripping, editing and media library management.

The voice activate call feature is a very interesting feature that allows you to make calls very easily. The Curve is much better at plain old voice calls, with a clear, crisp loudspeaker and much impressively, the voice dialling that actually works. You can just speak a phone number out loud, at a normal speed and with background noise, and the 8300 will usually recognise it. It is slightly less reliable on contact names from the phone book

Memory:

BlackBerry Curve 8300 smartphone comes with 64MB of internal flash memory and if this is not enough for your needs, then you may use the MicroSD slot of expand your phone’s memory. But the slot is placed under the battery cover near the SIM card, where it is a bit hard to handle.

The email and messaging support:

The email support that Blackberry Curve possess has complete document attach support which make practical mailing possible. Its features works well. But the blot is that the documents, media files and PDFs cannot create or edit files beyond the basic text memos. When the Blackberry internet service that was designed for the POP3 email customers, it certainly kept up to date with all the important emails, and unfortunately with the spams too. There is a way to prevent spams as it is very easy to delete the mails either using the device or the server. The speed will depend on the sender’s and your email servers and network coverage.

With the feature of instant messaging being available, you can easily chat with your contacts and even share photographs and tunes. That is, along with instant messaging you can also use the traditional SMS, MMS and Blackberry messenger too.

Connectivity:

Wireless transfers between devices is made possible with the Bluetooth technology and since the Curve supports it, you will be able to establish connection with another Bluetooth enabled device in seconds. It also has the EDGE technology which make high-speed data transfers possible, at almost thrice the speed of GPRS.

The Blackberry maps feature is available. The Bluetooth being built-in, with the help of the GPS antenna, you can forget your need for any other GPS device. But, since you can download the maps on the air, it does cost you.

Browser:

RIM Blackberry Curve 8300 Smartphone uses a HTML browser, allowing you to make use of the internet on a fly. A disappointing fact is that it cannot display full HTML emails and displays the text only version, the undesired one. Since the phone uses Quad band technology, international roaming has become possible.

Secure:

You can rest in peace of you have left your Curve outside because, it comes with password protection for additional security to save your confidential details from prying eyes. The keypad lock, as you know prevents accidental pressing of the keys on the mobile. All the day to day smartphone features are also available like that of the alarm clock, phone book, memo pad, task list and an organiser.

Battery:

It has a talk time of four hours and stand by time of about 408 hours which is really good for corporate people who go on long tours.

Verdict:

The Blackberry Curve 8300 is a highly capable device with a lot features aiming not only the corporate sectors but others too. The Curve 8300 has finally proved to be a good business tool and a great entertainer too. The absence of Wi-Fi and 3G cannot be really felt, but it would have been great if it was included too.

BlackBerry Curve 8300 - Cheap, Best 10 Deals

Technical Specification Details of RIM BlackBerry Curve 8300 Smartphone

Pros:

A better design than the previous Blackberry models
Manoeuvrability
Good organisational features
Advanced security features

Cons:

Limited memory
No further expansion slots provided
Lacks MP3 player and FM radio
Does not support high speed EDGE

Complete review:

There was a time when the word Blackberry was spelled out, it makes you think of some bulky phone having an appearance that does not near the word “stylish”. This is because, RIM basically concentrates only on packing the phone with features like emails and business productivity tools without caring about its form and having only the corporate sector in its mind.

With the hope of acquiring more casual customers, RIM launched the Blackberry 7100t which has something for the 21st century. Now it has released a more improved version called the Blackberry 7100g. Well, Blackberry 7100g is loaded with features with a chic and sleek design.

It is similar to the 7100t in a lot of ways. But this time with a high-resolution colour display, 32MB of internal memory, Bluetooth and with a lot of other functionalities, it seems to be appealing to both the sectors of the community.

A better design:

The RIM Blackberry 7100g fits easily in your hand being more comfortable to use with its dimensions being 117 x 59 x 21mm (H x W x D) and weighing just 120 grams. It says good bye to the awful boxy shaped Blackberry Phones, now having a more authentic and clean design. Owning a high end look, it features a display of resolution 240×260pixels which in turn can display 65K colours.

The buttons and ports:
Manoeuvrability is very mandatory when it comes to mobile phones. Users of the commercial sector need to have a system that keeps information at their fingertips. The trackwheel provided for navigation provides convenient usage of the menu structure and the emails. The BlackBerry 7100g Smartphone delivers this with a dedicated send key and end keys for fast connections and immediate cut offs respectively. The convenience button gives swift access to the commonly used applications like contacts and entertainment.

The power on/off switch is present at the top of the 7100g along with a LED indicator. The LED indicator notifies the user when any new data is received. Towards the left is the 2.5mm standard headset jack. This side also sports an USB port used for  synchronization of data and for charging the battery. The rear side of the mobile sports a speaker and battery door.

Well designed keyboard:

The keypad is well designed with the QWERTY keyboard . The reduced size of the keyboard is one of the major reasons why 7100g from Blackberry is having a condensed size. The keys are generously spaced and since it also features the SureType technology, typing is not going to be an issue at all. Having just 20 keys, it requires up to two presses for entering a letter as most of the keys contain up to two letters and one number. Difference between the inputs depend on the sequence of keys pressed that matches the 35,000 word dictionary. Being well designed, it renders a lot of space for text editing which compliments a lot of other applications in the phone.

Limited memory:

BlackBerry 7100g from RIM contains 32 MB of flash memory and 4 MB of SRAM. The users will have to manage their memory usage efficiently as the 7100g does not contain any extra slot for memory expansion.

Perfect for Organisations:

Blackberry phones as we all know are basically used by the people of the corporate sector who require a lot of organising to be done. The job of organisation can be done in an easy and quick manner with Blackberry 7100g.

Miscellaneous features:
The calendar is ideal for creating visible schedules that can be accessed in a glance. The calendar allows you to view your meeting schedules in four ways. The day week and month view allows you to view the meetings that are scheduled in the selected time frame and the agenda view lists your complete schedule. The memo pad helps to keep important details readily available and the task pad provides a handy to-do list. Each contact can hold up to 8 phone numbers, one email ID and 2 postal addresses, all limited only to the memory that is available in the phone.

The Personal Information Management programs:
The 7100g wireless handheld device is compatible with many of the more popular Personal Information Management (PIM) programs which includes calls, email, SMS, schedules etc. This helps to maximize organization and to keep busy professionals on task and connected. This smartphone supports formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Adobe PDF, Corel WordPerfect, ASCII documents , Zip Archives,  and HTML.

Some additional features:
The phone is supported with additional convenience features that make connections quick and reliable. Users can enjoy hands-free correspondences using the integrated speakerphone or Bluetooth technology. Bluetooth provides the service using a headset of convenient car kit.

Lack of any audio features:

The Blackberry lacks any audio features that are interesting. It does not have any MP3 player of FM radio as any other latest mobiles that are currently available in the market though it supports up to 32 simultaneous chords. Polyphonic ring tones are ideal for creating a personal touch to the unit. The BlackBerry 7100g is a practical mobile phone that adds a little fun into the mix.

The hands-free technology can be enjoyed either by using the provided headphone or by using a Bluetooth wireless headset or by keeping the phone in speaker mode.

Connectivity:

Coming to the part of connectivity, it is a quad-band GSM device (850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz) which makes possible compatibility and international roaming between Europe, Asia Pacific and North America. The 7100g incorporates the GPRS Class 8 with transfer speed of up to 40 kbps. But, it is not capable of utilizing high-speed (EDGE) Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution network, so expected broadband burst rates of up to two hundred kbps are not being supported.

The browser:

Viewing the internet depends wholly on the configuration of the browser being used. The WAP browser users WAP2.0 which renders WML over the internet. The users can access the corporate intranet using BES that supports IPPP protocols and HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) with the help of the Blackberry browser.

A question might have raised in your mind that “ what if I do not work in a place with the BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) installed? “ yes, there is an alternative solution which is using the BlackBerry Web Client. This Web client forwards the email messages in a wireless way to the 7100g from up to 10 POP3 or IMAP4 accounts in 3 to 15 min duration.

Secure:

Being a device that is largely used by the business consumers, Blackberry is expected to have advanced security features in order to safeguard sensitive corporate data which the 7100g does achieve. In addition to password protection and keyboard lock, information such as address book entries, messages, memos and tasks, calendar entries, can be encrypted locally.

With the help of Enterprise, an extra layer of security can be added to emails through Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) technology which satisfies the IT requirements that are mandatory through the use of public-key cryptography, digital signatures and writer-to-reader authentication. The AES encryption and End-to-End Triple DES makes sure that all the private information remains secure at all the junctions between the device and the server.

The Blackberry Enterprise Server Software:

But perhaps the 7100g’s real eye candy to corporate users is what they can not see on screen which is the features that are available when BlackBerry’s Enterprise Server software is installed on existing corporate servers. Unlike traditional phones, BlackBerry devices can be centrally managed and supported by IT departments through the Enterprise. When the software is installed behind firewalls, BlackBerry users can have secure access to programs like IBM Lotus Domino ISP and Microsoft Exchange email accounts, remote address book look-up,  single mailbox integration, attachment viewing and lots to come.

Fun with Java games and applications:

Since Blackberry 7100g also supports the Java 2 platform micro edition(J2ME), downloading and installing of third party Java games and applications is possible. This technology being increasingly popular, applications and games are available in abundant on the net.

Battery:

BlackBerry 7100g smartphone from RIM uses a standard 960 mAh Li-Ion battery. It has a decent four hours of talktime and eight days of standby.

Box contents:

The box contents of the device includes a standard 960 mAh Li-Ion battery, handsfree headset, international travel charger, USB data cable, BlackBerry Desktop software, and user manual.

Verdict:

Balakberry is a real leader when it comes to securing corporate data from rivals. The limited Bluetooth connectivity and absence of EDGE are drawbacks. The lack of an expansion slot is one of the major cons. The lack of camera in such an advanced mobile is even more disgusting. The absence of MP3 player will be felt by everyone using the phone.

For users whose work place uses the BES and needs to use the intranet with high level secureness, the BlackBerry 7100g  is a good and wise choice. While the consumers who want more rich multimedia features and do not require any advanced and secure e-mail functionalities, BlackBerry 7100g might not be the one they are looking for.

RIM BlackBerry 7100g - Technical Specifications, Features

Built:

The BlackBerry 7290 PDA Phone was designed especially for the business people. It is its bulky form-factor that puts most of the people away from it. It has a dimension of 11.3 x 7.4 x 2 cm (H x W x D) and weighing 133 grams, yes, as you can imagine, it is a big one, compact in no means. The phone comes in a metallic blue colour which certain users find as attractive and some others frown at it immediately.

Display:

Talking about the display, this Blackberry phone has a good 240×160-pixel resolution supporting  more than 65,000 colours. With the above features, the display is quiet bright and colourful.

Simple layout:

The RIM can always boast its simplicity and in regard to that, the 7290 Smartphone from Blackberry is a perfect example. The track wheel and the escape button is placed on the right side of the phone which restricts the usage of the phone to right handers. Both these units are the most commonly used ones in the phone as they are equivalent to a stylus in a PDA or a mouse in your PC. The track wheel is moved up and down to scroll through the items and has to be pressed in case a selection has to be made. The left hand side of the phone has the USB port.

The battery is placed in the rear side of the phone with a removable battery cover and the SIM card is placed below the battery similar to all other mobile phones. The LED on the top of the device is used to indicate a lot of things. There is no LED indication for charging, Bluetooth or radio as available in a lot of other smart phones. The phone also sports a tiny IrDA window over its top and a headset jack in its side. The top of the device also has a dedicated button that allows you to retrieve the information of the latest calls list.

A small comparison:

This model looks very similar to its predecessor 7230 some of the differences being the addition of Bluetooth, three backlight settings and a smaller round backlight button. As mentioned earlier, the 7100 series had a smaller form factor with a much smaller screen and lesser number of keys.

The keyboard:

Similar to its other traditional PDA Blackberry predecessors, 7290 uses a QWERTY keyboard which includes the 26 alphabetical keys, a space bar, two alpha shift keys, a numeric shift key, an enter key, a delete key and a symbol key. The keyboard is backlit for its efficient usage in darker areas. Depending on your needs of power consumption, you can change the backlight from anywhere between 10 seconds to 2 minutes. The keys on the left side are overlaid with numbers. The other keys represents and does what it is suppose to do in a conventional keyboard except for the symbol key which when pressed displays a list of special characters. The spacing between the keys is sufficient enough and hence typing can never be an issue.

The applications:

Desktop:
The applications of the BlackBerry 7290 Handheld PDA can be managed using the desktop manager though most of the applications are built-in. While you are in the home screen, pressing any of the numeric will automatically take you to the phone dialer.  The ability to set a password for your phone is a very useful feature and protects your phone from a few prying eyes.

7290 must be appreciated for the amount of information it gives on its status. A lot of important stuffs such as the battery level, signal, PIN and IMEI numbers are available. The Bluetooth icon also appears when switched on and changes its colour from grey to blue once the Bluetooth radio is switched on which is interesting and useful.

Games:
Some of the games that are available in the phone are really exciting specially the brick breaker. You can also download a lot of other games such as pub checkers and disco bowling for free.

Browsing and mailing:
The browser in the phone is said to work fairly but the size of the screen may be a disadvantage. This smartphone is particularly very good for mailing purposes and it also supports push email from a network provider or a corporate server.

Email is one of the major functionalities of this corporate phone. Unlike the other smartphones, the RIM BlackBerry 7290 mobile phone does not use the convensional mailing system and rather it uses Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) and a personal user can sign up in to a similar scheme which is known as the Blackberry Internet Services (BIS) with his network provider. But one of the major loop hole that is involved with system is that, you may experience problems with junk mails, quotas and attachments.

Miscellaneous applications:
When it comes to the expectations of the smartphone as a corporate, the word and excel applications are a must, it is absent though. The phone’s integration with outlook is smart, clever and satisfying. The other minor applications such as the address book, calendar, tasks, alarm clock and memo pad are present. As is the case of most of the mobiles, BlackBerry 7290 from RIM also has a lot of preloaded 32 polyphonic ringtones but not that useful ones. The vibrate mode is also available in the phone.

Memory and address book:
BlackBerry 7290’s address book is limited by the available memory, and the device comes with 32MB of flash memory along with 4MB of SRAM. Each contact can hold up to 8 phone numbers, an e-mail ID and two postal addresses. Additionally you can also enter URSs, personal information and notes under each name. one of the major disadvantage that RIM has carried over to 7290 also is the lacking of an expansion slot. Another irritating fact is that is also lacks speaker phone, but as a compensation, the Bluetooth can be connected with the headset.

The most irritating facts:

The USB port in BlackBerry 7290 can be used for both data transfer and charging. But we have to mention something funny yet a serious issue about the USB port. The 7290 can be charged only by a PC and it cannot draw power from the USB port until a data connection is established… ridiculous. This not only places severe restrictions on the way that the device can be charged, but ruins the concept of “charging” altogether.

Removing and reinserting is the only means by which the phone can be reset and the device also takes several minutes to reboot which drives you mad if you have to swap SIM cards on the fly.

The battery life is an average four hours of talk time and nine days of stand-by time.

Verdict:

The RIM blackberry 7290 is a fairly priced mobile. There are a wide range of better choices in the current market. If you are not really worried about the above said disadvantages, and mailing is your sole purpose, then you may opt for 7290.

RIM BlackBerry 7290 Smartphone - Technical Specifications, Features