As stylish as it is powerful, the BlackBerry® 8800 smartphone is designed to let you do your best work from wherever you choose. It gives you phone, email, organizer, web browsing and instant messaging. And then it goes a step further, providing GPS for enhanced access to location-based applications and services, including the pre-loaded BlackBerry® Maps application. A media player for your video clips and music. Expandable memory to ensure you’ve got the room you need for your media files. And a high-capacity battery to allow you to make the most of it all.Sleek and performance-driven, it’s the stylish way to get things done.

If the Pearl is the sleek sports car of BlackBerrys, then the new 8800 from Cingular ($299 with two-year contract) is the Escalade in the line, a beefier model complete with a full-sized keyboard and bigger display. RIM has even decked out this device with a GPS system, enabling the 8800 to double as a navigator using the included TeleNav software (if you pay an extra $9.99 per month). Add it all up and you have a full-sized, fully-loaded smart phone with just a few minor flaws.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 and push-to-talk capabilities. Mobile professionals will be served well by this device. Of course, it’s not perfect. We’re disappointed by the lack of 3G support and integrated Wi-Fi, and call quality wasn’t as good as we had hoped.

The result is a good-looking phone that feels solid in your hand. With the 8800’s slimmer design, however, comes a more crowded keyboard: The keys are much closer together than they were on previous models; each has a raised edge to make distinguishing them easy; and we found it easier to type on them than on most other phones’ keyboards. Like the Pearl, the 8800 lacks a jogwheel on its right spine for navigation; instead, it comes with a trackball situated directly beneath the screen. Though the trackball is easy to use and allows multidirectional scrolling, I prefer a jogwheel for navigation.The 8800 is a near lookalike to its older sibling, the BlackBerry Pearl. It sports the same dark navy blue with chrome highlights, and the same white directional controller, but swaps the Pearl’s 20-key predictive input system for a full 35-key QWERTY layout.

With the 8800, RIM is catering to both the business end of town as well as more mainstream users after a slick handset for messaging.The big news is the built-in SiRF Star III GPS receiver for navigation duties. The 8800 comes pre-installed with RIM’s own BlackBerry Maps navigation tools, but at the time of writing we’ve been advised that Australian maps aren’t available.As a phone, the 8800 is equipped with quad-band 2.5G support with Internet access through GPRS/EDGE and Bluetooth 2.0 for extra connectivity. When it comes to e-mail, the 8800 uses BlackBerry’s now famous push technology with support for POP3 or IMAP4 messages. There’s also an attachment viewer, which allows users to open most Microsoft Office files as well as PDFs, JPEGs, and GIFs. Despite all the new additions, there’s no avoiding the fact that the 8800 misses out on several key features that should be standard for a smartphone in this price range. The 8800 lacks 3G support, Wi-Fi and a camera, which is very disappointing especially up against new rivals such as Samsung’s BlackJack. Additionally, the range of third party software for the Blackberry pales in comparison to that of Windows Mobile.

Specifications:

Navigation: QWERTY (Keyboard), Trackball, Keyboard backlighting
User Interface: Intuitive icons and menus
Memory: 64 MB flash memory, Expandable memory – support for microSD card
Microprocessor: No
Modem: Embedded RIM® wireless modem, Tethered modem capability

Email Integrations:

• Works with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for Microsoft® Exchange
• Works with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for IBM® Lotus® Domino®
• Works with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for Novell® GroupWise®
• Integrates with an existing enterprise email account
• Integrates with existing personal email account
• Integrates with optional new device account

Device Security:

• Password protection and keyboard lock
• Support for AES or Triple DES encryption when integrated with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server
• FIPS 140-2 Validated (FIPS validation)
• Optional support for S/MIME

Network:

• North America: 850 MHz GSM/GPRS networks
• North America: 1900MHz GSM®/GPRS networks
• Europe/Asia Pacific: 1800MHz GSM/GPRS networks
• Europe/Asia Pacific: 900MHz GSM/GPRS networks
• EDGE networks

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 5:30 am and is filed under 8800 series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.