Blackberry Reviews

Research in Motion’s Blackberry has captured the entire business community with its seamless email facilities and sturdy workhorse ruggedness. But there are more reasons why consumers stay away from blackberry. The very thought of blackberry will bring up things like scroll wheels, bulky and chunky hardware, built-in keyboards, some white collared business men and finally mobile email. Some of  these characteristics but not all, holds true for Blackberry Pearl series. RIM had decided to aim at something more than the average customer. The very first step being the naming of the device as Pearl, which is itself different from the usual number based names of the past.

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.

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Technical Specification Details of RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8100 Smartphone

BlackBerry Curve 8310 Smartphone Review

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.

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RIM BlackBerry Curve 8310 - Technical Specification Details

The Blackberry 8820 was the fourth hit of the year 2007. The other three were the Blackberry Pearl, Blackberry Curve and 8800 respectively. It is almost well known to all of us that a smart phone without Wi-Fi is really very hard to survive in the current market. That was one of the major reasons why the blackberry smart phones were not able to attain that coveted sell outs. Now, blackberry has come up with its first Wi-Fi enabled phone, a long awaited one. The 8820 is similar to 8800 in many ways such as the design, and features which have been just upgraded.

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.

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