RIM BlackBerry 8830 - black (T-Mobile)

CNET editors' review

• Reviewed by: Bonnie Cha
• Edited by: Kent German
• Reviewed on: 05/15/2007
• Released on: 04/19/2007

Editor's note: Portions of this review were taken from our original review of the RIM BlackBerry 8800 for Cingular.

Since its release in September, the RIM BlackBerry Pearl has received much praise from users, earning an average 8.0 user rating. The sleek new design and added multimedia capabilities were a hit, and the company definitely made it more of an attractive and viable option for consumers. Yet, there was a segment of the market--power business users, SureType keyboard haters--who could only admire from afar while tapping away on their traditional BlackBerrys. Not so anymore.

The RIM BlackBerry 8800 brings the sexier look and versatility of the Pearl to a full QWERTY device. Not only do you get multimedia functionality and expandable memory, but the 8800 also offers integrated GPS. Of course, it's not perfect. We're disappointed by the lack of integrated Wi-Fi, and call quality wasn't as good as we had hoped. Also, the device is quite wide, making it a tad awkward to hold as a phone. All that said, messaging is still king on this device, and it performs those duties well. Mobile professionals will be served well by this device. The RIM BlackBerry 8800 is available now through T-Mobile for $349.99.

Design
Taking its style points from the BlackBerry Pearl, the RIM BlackBerry 8800 is a far cry from the days of the blocky and drab BlackBerry 6280 or even the most recent BlackBerry 8700g, which was fine but still a little lackluster in the design department. That's all changed now with the BlackBerry 8800; it's sleek and sexy, with smoothed edges, a deep-midnight-blue casing, and chrome accents. At 4.4 inches long by 2.6 inches wide by 0.5 inch thick and weighing 4.7 ounces, it's slightly taller than the 8700c (4.3x2.7x0.7 inches; 4.7 ounces), but it's definitely thinner and thus, easier to slip into a pants pocket or purse. That said, the phone's pretty wide, so clutching it in your hand and holding it up to your ear is a bit awkward and cumbersome. To be fair, this is typical of the full QWERTY BlackBerrys as well as Pocket PC phones and Treos, but still, the Samsung BlackJack is probably the slimmest of such devices out there.

The BlackBerry 8800 features a beautiful 2.5-inch (diagonal), 65,000-color display with a 320x240 resolution. Text and images are clear and vibrant, and the screen also features light-sensing technology that automatically adjusts the backlighting of the screen, keyboard, and trackball, depending on whether you're indoors or outdoors. We found that this function works well, and we had no problems reading the display under harsh lighting. However, the screen and the casing tend to hold a lot of smudges and fingerprints.

Also, carried over from the Pearl to the BlackBerry 8800 is the trackball. It's great in the sense that it allows for four-way scrolling, and pressing it down acts as a select button, but we felt the trackball on BlackBerry 8800 was a little too small and we wish it were raised just slightly more above the phone's surface. Also, it's easy to get carried away with the rolling of the trackball and go right past your selection, though you can adjust the trackball's sensitivity under Options in the Screen/Keyboard menu. For that reason, we missed the jog dial and the Escape key that have been mainstays of BlackBerrys' past, but as with anything new, these changes just take some acclimation.

Surrounding the trackball are the Talk and End keys and the Menu and Escape buttons. Below that navigation array is the 35-button QWERTY keyboard. Though there isn't as much space between the keys as with the BlackBerry 8700c or the BlackBerry 8700g, the buttons are pretty large, so you should be fine. Keys also have a raised ridge to make them more tactile, but even so, we found the lacquered finish made the buttons slippery. The number keys are highlighted in white, and there's also a shortcut on the keyboard to activate the speakerphone.

On the right spine there are volume keys, while on the left side, you will find a 2.5mm headset jack, a mini USB port, and a user-programmable convenience key. There is a microSD expansion slot behind the battery, but good luck getting to it since it took some superhuman strength to take off the battery cover. We hope RIM reconsiders the placement of the expansion slot on future devices. Finally, the Power and Mute buttons are on the top of the unit.

T-Mobile packages the BlackBerry 8800 with a travel charger, a USB cable, a wired headset, a belt holster, a CD-ROM with BlackBerry Desktop software, and reference material. To find more add-ons and tips and tricks for your BlackBerry, check out our Cell phone ringtones, accessories, and help page.

Features
The RIM BlackBerry 8800 keeps a lot of the same features that made it such a staple among the business set, but it also adds some to make it more than a messaging device. We'll start with those highlights first. To start, the BlackBerry 8800 now has multimedia capabilities. More specifically, you can use the built-in media player to listen to music (MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, and MIDI formats) and watch video (MPEG4, WMV, and H.263 files). We should note that there's about 64MB of flash memory available, but we suggest using a microSD card to store larger media files.

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.

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User opinions

WRITE YOUR OWN REVIEW How would you rate this product?

• 7/10 Very good May 21, 2007

  by smithjp3 (see profile)

  "Slim design; next generation should be better" Read more >>

• 8/10 Excellent June 17, 2007

  by Speciialj (see profile)

  "Best phone ive had yet!" Read more >>

• 6/10 Good April 12, 2008

  by Neila777 (see profile)

  "Maybe I should have gone with Verizon." Read more >>

• WRITE YOUR OWN REVIEWSee all 4 user opinions >>

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