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Blackberry 8700r from Rogers

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With this device, finally Blackberry is looking stylish and still very functional (7100 series were good, but their keyboard and text entry was piece of crap).

The unit is thinner and smaller than 7500 series that I have used with Bell and Telus. This unit now uses a 312 Mhz Intel PXA901 chip, 64Mb Flash memory, 16 SRAM for applications. It has a gorgeous 320x240 screen.

The OS has been updated to version 4.1 (comes with Desktop software 4.1 as well, I'll come to that later). It definitely feels faster and with addition of EDGE support, you can finally use it for web browsing. :)

I have so far noticed (have the unit for 3 days) new tunes for alerts, additional button's (right below USB port) some functions and of course nice color icons.

The keyboard is a bit smaller and gets a while getting used to. Especially the $ key and keys at the center can be pressed accidentally together with some other keys. The individual call and end call buttons, similar to 7100 series, are a welcomed addition to classic Blackberry shell. This does generate a problem though, I am used to cancel button ending the call, now it is used to switch to home screen without ending the call.

Battery life is so far seems excellent. The new CPU uses lot less power according to Blackberry and thus they can support a more colorful and higher resolution screen.

The package comes with regular set of goodies, charger, usb cable, manuals, software cd and belt clip. I can't wait to try a new case designed for this baby (hey Ruben (from Piel Frama), when are you going to come with some cases for 8700 series?)

The desktop software has a new feature to import your data from your Pocket PC or Palm device, which can be time saving for some people. Of course if you are using Outlook, you probably won't need this feature.

Most of the apps I have tried seems to be compatible so far. I tried Web Messenger X1 search, Pocket Express, Feedburner and EdgeQ Traffic Edge, all worked fine.

Haven't played with Bluetooth yet, but I think it is headset/handsfree only.

I'll keep you all posted on my findings.

Posted 12/4/2005 3:00:00 AM @ 19:18:00 | Sems