Comments on: Blackberry 8700g: The Dreaded Sidegrade

By: Ryan Humphreys

Ryan Humphreys — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks for this ‘mini’ review Mike. I was contemplating purchasing a Blackberry over a few other PDA/Phone, but now I’ve read this, I’m going to have to think it over again. I too have the New Phone Fever.

By: OÄŸuz DemirkapÄ±

OÄŸuz DemirkapÄ± — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I have just a new HTC Wizard smartphone. If somebody looks for a smarter alternative, I would suggest to check these smartphones.

By: chris sivori

chris sivori — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I much prefer the 8700g vs Treo, but then I also use the BB Enterprise service for my own domain, which means I don’t ever have to sync with my PC since it syncs over the air. Battery life is also much better on the Berry.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I too had a delimma similar to this. But I never had either the Blackberry nor a Treo. I was moving into the realm of smart phones for the first time. First I tried the Treo 650, then I tried the Blackberry 7100g. Both were within my 30-day trial period with Cingular. Neither felt right to me, were overly cumbersome, and were just too bulky.Luckily Cingular introduce the Nokia 6682 around that time. The Nokia has been perfect for a person who needs a cell phone most of the time and a smart phone only sparingly. The Symbian OS (s60) is a great operating system that I found easy to navigate right away. And the syncing between my Mac and the Nokia is unrivaled. It's nearly perfect. I lack a QWERTY keyboard but the predictive-text feature does a pretty good job.And if you happen to use Yahoo, the new Yahoo! Go application is wicked sweet.

By: Mike D.

Mike D. — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

chris s: Yep. I imagine that the Blackberry is still exactly as it was before — much, much better when you use the Enterprise Server.

By: Eric Schwarz

Eric Schwarz — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Mike, have you looked into getting a Sidekick (since that’s T-Mo’s little “gem” of a smartphone)? Otherwise, the Sony Ericsson P910 and P990 are probably the most overlooked smartphones out there. They’ve got the Symbian OS (which is pretty slick), a Treo/Blackberry-like QWERTY keyboard on the other side of a regular phone keypad, and a touch-screen. S/E’s phones are pretty good, although many American carriers prefer to give away Samsungs and Motorolas. The P910 is the cheaper, older version of the P990.

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I got the Treo 650 in March, and I couldn’t be happier- This is my first smartphone, but I love the email, wireless sync with Outlook and moblie browsing. The QWERTY keyboard is a nice plus too. The only problem I have is a can’t find a [free] IM client that works with AOL Instant Messanger.

By: chris sivori

chris sivori — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

One thing worth mentioning: the 8700g also supports EDGE network highspeed Internet access. Versus GPRS, EDGE is amazingly fast. Another good app for the Blackberry is GoogleTalk. Since GoogleTalk is a federated Jabber network, I have all my various IM services going through GoogleTalk. There are also a few multi-protocol IM apps for the BB that support ICQ, AIM, GTalk, MSN, etc.

I’d be interested to see more reviews from people who have used both the Treo and the Blackberry.

By: Calvin Tang

Calvin Tang — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Didn’t you learn a lesson from watching me deal with that 8700c? I know the g is better, but I tossed that thing out like a rotten tomato to go back to a windows mobile 2003 device!

By: Aaron

Aaron — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Mike,
Our government runs on those things. During my internship, even the interns were gifted a temporary Blackberry. After playing with serveral models, I’ve settled on a dreaded Windows-based device. We don’t have T-mobile or Verizon in Arkansas, so I had Cingular’s line-up to choose from. The Cingular branded 8125 is a fine phone, really light-weight and very powerful. (I’m currently experimenting with the idea of writing some Linux software for it, but haven’t finished the reverse engineering of the windows software.)

Anyway, the Blackberry 8700g is a nice model and I can tell you that many a Senator (and probably your own) uses that particular model. That might be enough to make you want to go with anything else, but I dunno know.

If I were in your situation, I would wait for the Sony phones. Sony makes a great product and they’re historically compatible with Macs.

By: George

George — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

What about the new Q phone?

http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/22/motorola-and-verizon-announce-q-199/

George

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I use Ramble (http://wireless.sra.com/ramble/) for AIM on my BlackBerry. It doesn't convert everything to a text message, and is extremely fast.-Matt

By: Bronwyn

Bronwyn — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I started working at Nokia recently, and some of the other staff have the test versions of the E series.

Of the E61 or its immediate relatives, my manager has one and hates it. The voice recording button is positioned just right for him to hit it when he’s trying to do something else, so he ends up with a lot of unwanted voice memos which must then be deleted.

For contrast, he loves his Nokia 9200 or 9300, which looks clunky and is huge, but also has a huge interior screen.

Like you, I’m really interested in the E70 (I want a smartphone), but I haven’t managed to find out who in the department has one.

By: Will

Will — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Mike, I think you'll learn to appreciate the Blackberry's simplicity in time. There are a lot of shortcuts and keyboard modifiers that make your life a lot easier...they just take some time to learn (for example, to jump to the top of a long message you hit "t", to jump to the bottom hit "b"). Whether this is more/less intuitive than a Palm device is another story. There are a bunch of tips at: http://www.discoverblackberry.com/personalize/tips_tricks.jspYou should also check out blackberry messenger -- a real time messenger service that uses your data, not text messages. Unfortunately, you can only talk to other blackberry users and not other IM protocols, but cool nonetheless.

By: gb

gb — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m kind of interested in if that HTC Wizard dealie (I think T-mobile calls it that MDA) is all it’s cracked up to be. I looks great, but word is that it’s rather slow. So yes… Mike… get that one next and post another detailed review. You’re better than comparison shopping sites… haha.