The music player is pretty basic. Aside from standard Stop and Play functions, you can create playlists as "folders" and shuffle and repeat songs within a certain folder. It also displays some track information, such as the title, the artist, and the album art if available. As we noted in our BlackBerry Pearl review, external player controls would have been nice, rather than having to press the Menu key first and then choose to skip a track or go back to the previous song. There's also an option to set a song as your ringtone. You can continue to play music as you use the device's other programs, and if you happen to get an incoming call, the BlackBerry 8800 will pause the music and pick up where you left off after you hang up.
For videos, the player has Play and Stop buttons, and you can fast-forward and rewind clips by clicking the trackball and scrolling right or left. There's still no full-screen mode, but since player controls only take up minimal space of the bottom of the 8800's spacious display, we're less forgiving of this fact than we were with the Pearl.
In addition to moving pictures, the BlackBerry 8800 has an image viewer that lets you peruse your favorite photos. However, there is no camera on the 8800, so you'll have to get your images onto your device another way, whether it's via USB, multimedia message, and so on. As of this writing, RIM has no plans to offer a camera-equipped version of the 8800, in an attempt to appease customers who don't want or can't have camera phones. While we certainly appreciate this precaution and understand it's a growing trend among businesses (for security reasons), we still would have liked the option of having a model with a camera.
Road warriors will certainly appreciate the integrated GPS feature. There aren't a whole lot of smart phones out there that have this feature, so the BlackBerry 8800 certainly holds the advantage against the likes of other popular smart phones such as the T-Mobile Dash, the Motorola Q, and the Samsung BlackJack. There's no need for a Bluetooth GPS receiver or the hassle of an extra gadget. Instead, you can use the internal GPS radio and the preloaded Maps application to track location, get driving directions, search for local businesses, and more.
As far as other voice features, the RIM BlackBerry 8800 offers a speakerphone, voice-activated dialing, smart dialing, conference calling, speed dial, and world roaming. The phone book is only limited by the available memory (the SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts) with room in each entry eight phone numbers, e-mail addresses, work and home address, job title, and more. For caller ID purposes, you can assign a photo to a contact as well a group category, business or personal. The BlackBerry 8800 also supports T-Mobile's MyFaves plan, which gives you unlimited calling to five contacts, regardless of carrier. Plans for myFaves start at $39.99 a month. Unlike the Cingular version, however, there are no push-to-talk capabilities on T-Mobile's version.
Wireless options are pretty much limited to Bluetooth 2.0, which you can use for headsets or hands-free kits. There is no A2DP support for Bluetooth stereo headphones, but the 8800 can be used as a wireless modem for your laptop. Though RIM has hinted at adding Wi-Fi to future devices, it didn't start with the BlackBerry 8800. For now, you'll have to browse the Web using EDGE speeds. Of course, we cannot forget what makes BlackBerrys famous in the first place: e-mail. The RIM BlackBerry 8800 offers the famed push technology and can sync with your company's BlackBerry Enterprise server with support for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell GroupWise to deliver corporate e-mail in real time. All in all, the device can support as many as 10 accounts, including POP3 or IMAP4 e-mail accounts, and there is an e-mail wizard on the device to guide you through the setup process. An attachment viewer is also on board to open popular file formats, such as those from Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Corel WordPerfect, as well as PDFs, JPEGs, GIFs, and more. Other messaging options include text, multimedia, and instant messaging, although the IMs are once again limited to the proprietary BlackBerry Messenger client.
Finally, the BlackBerry 8800 includes a number of PIM tools for the business users, including a calendar, a tasks list, a memo pad, an alarm, and a calculator.
Performance
We tested the quadband (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; EDGE) RIM BlackBerry 8800 in San Francisco using T-Mobile service, We didn't experience any dropped calls, and the call quality was decent. Voices sounded a bit muffled on our end, and our friends reported the same results. It's nothing that prevented us from carrying on a conversation, but things certainly could have been better. Surprisingly, sound quality greatly improved when we activated the speakerphone. Everything was clear, and volume was more than adequate. We also had no problem pairing the 8800 with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset.
Music playback sounded OK through the phone's speakers, though there was a tinny tone to some songs. Video performance was quite good, with clear image quality, although there was some pixelation during action sequences, which is to be expected. The BlackBerry 8800 did falter a bit in the arena of Web browsing. After spending time with a number of 3G-enabled smart phones, the EDGE speeds of the BlackBerry 8800 seemed poky, and we began to lose our patience waiting for pages to load--call us spoiled if you will.
Overall, the BlackBerry 8800 delivered responsive and solid performance. The BlackBerry 8800's battery is rated for five hours of talk time and up to 22 days of standby time. In our battery tests, we were able to get nine hours of talk time on a single charge.
What You'll Pay
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