mobil phone: Black Berry 8830

A few months after the BlackBerry 8800 mobile phone hit the market for AT & T and T-Mobile, Verizon introduced the BlackBerry 8830 World Edition for CDMA users in the United States. Although the two BlackBerry phones are in the same series of product portfolio of RIM, the BlackBerry 8830 is not only the twin brother CDMA 8800. It adds a radio GSM / GPRS CDMA mixture, which makes the BlackBerry 8830 with two flavored beast. But it loses some speed because it uses a different processor from that of the Black Berry 8800. You can use the phone on the Verizon CDMA network in the United States, and when you travel abroad in Europe and Asia where GSM dominates you can run with the GSM SIM card with service plan from Verizon Global. There are many similarities between the BlackBerry 8800 and 8830, but there are some differences. Since 8800, the BlackBerry 8830 is the new form factor BlackBerry with this attractive, slim body and trackball control, a microSD slot, Bluetooth 2.0, push email, PIM applications and an integrated GPS and navigation. The camera-less BlackBerry 8830 is designed for business users who need greater security in their working environment.


The BlackBerry 8830 works on both dual-band 800/1900 MHz CDMA digital networks and dual band 900/1800 MHz GSM / GPRS for use in Europe and Asia (the United States uses the 850/1900MHz GSM bands only, which does not support the 8830). The service plan in the United States is the same as other BlackBerry devices, but if you want to add GSM service, you will need to get Verizon's Global BlackBerry service plan that gives you a SIM card and the dialing instructions International and a reminder to the United States calls for customer support. The SIM is Vodafone 's and the 8830 Verizon is SIM locked to Vodafone. Sales Channel Business BlackBerry 8830 begins May 14 and consumers will be able to purchase the equipment and services in Verizon stores and Verizon on the website from 28th May 2007.

Design and ergonomics

Like the BlackBerry 8800, BlackBerry the 8830 scores a new body that is slim and sleek looking. The housing money and chrome side panels look even better than the BlackBerry 8800 in dark blue. Money can make a device look classic, and it is certainly the case with the BlackBerry 8830. The BlackBerry 8830 is the same size as the measure in 8800 to 4.49 x 2.60 x 0.55 inches, but somehow it has lost some weight. The BlackBerry 8800 and 8830 have look stylish the BlackBerry Pearl, but with a wider body to accommodate the keyboard and display large landscape.

The integrated QWERTY keyboard on the BlackBerry 8830 should be familiar to veterans BlackBerry. While the buttons have sharper edges for a touch better typing experience over the last generation of BlackBerry phones, they feel smaller. Do not take a seasoned BlackBerry user too long to get used to the keyboard update and it should please new users the keys are much larger than the Treo keyboard. The locations of letters, numbers and symbols have not changed since the 8700 Black Bery series. But the menu commands and directional controls have changed since the 8700 series. Gone are the side jog wheel that has lived on BlackBerry devices for generations, instead of the BlackBerry 8830 has a trackball D-Pad is also on the BlackBerry Pearl and BlackBerry 8800. You can move the cursor or selection using the trackball navigator, and shall take steps or make your selection by pressing the center of the trackball. The BlackBerry menu key and key escape side of the trackball and buttons send the call to life the left menu key and the End call button to the right life of the escape key. While the keyboard is easy to use in light, it is difficult to see in the dark. The trackball has a white backlight and it is a brilliant beacon in the darkness, but the QWERTY keyboard has blue backlight dark even at 100% brightness on the keyboard that makes it difficult to see in the dark, while hiding letters under good lighting conditions. Hopefully we see the future BlackBerry devices away from the backlight and dark blue to white backlight used on the 8800.


You will find the convenience key on the left in the same place you'd expect and can launch applications (such as Voice Command) or functions (like adding a new contact), you assign. With convenient key, you get a stereo headset 2.5 mm jack and a USB mini-USB charge / sync port on the left of the device. The headphone jack 2.5 mm works with the BlackBerry wireless headphones, unfortunately this is not included in the package. We tried a few pairs of non-stereo headphones with BlackBerry-specific phone, but had no luck finding one that is compatible with the jack. You will find the volume up and down button on the right side of the BlackBerry.

The power button is at the top of the device on the left. Pressing the power button turns on the backlight of the screen and pressing and holding the button to enable or disable the BlackBerry. Like the Treo smartphones, the BlackBerry has a mute key on top (right side) also, you can turn the sound pressing the MUTE button. Keep the mute button will also set the device in standby mode which can prevent accidental connection, but when a call comes in while the device is in standby mode, the phone rings and the screen lights up. Between the power button and mute button, you will find a schedule of speakers and you can activate the speakerphone by pressing the speakerphone button on the QWERTY keyboard (it shares the key with the symbol $). The battery life in a doorway at the rear and side you'll find the microSD card slot for hot swappable.


Phone Features and Reception

Before dual-network phones, CDMA users were locked out of GSM / GPRS networks that dominate Europe and most Asian countries. World travelers often have to resort to other options when they traveled abroad. "World Edition" phones CDMA changed by adding a GSM / GPRS radio for CDMA phones, which means you can use the phone on CDMA networks in the United States and on GSM networks when you travel to the abroad. And just as dedicated GSM phones, you will need to pay attention to bands that your GSM phone in its worldwide publishing claims that the world does not work on the same band. The BlackBerry 8830 works on dual-band digital network Verizon CDMA 800/1900 MHz for U.S. and dual-band 900/1800 MHz GSM / GPRS abroad. The band GSM 900/1800 MHz are available primarily in Europe, Australia and Asia, and are not available in the United States. So you will not be able to insert your AT & T or T-Mobile U.S. SIM and use the phone in GSM in the United States. In fact, the phone is SIM locked and can not use a SIM card Vodafone (Vodafone is a leading European GSM carrier that happens to own a significant stake in Verizon Wireless). This means no popping in a local pre-paid SIM when traveling abroad to save on call costs. But it also means that you get optimum BlackBerry data, including push email beloved abroad, thanks to Verizon Wireless and turnkey installation of Vodafone.

With the BlackBerry 8830, Verizon launched its Global BlackBerry service plan that allows you to use the phone while roaming on GSM bands abroad. Upon signing up for the Global Service $ 64.99/month, you get the SIM card and the dialing instructions, a calling card to remind the United States for 24 / 7 Verizon's help desk. For data, you get EVDO support on CDMA networks and GPRS on GSM. $ 64.99 gets you 500MB of data per month, while overseas and you'll pay per-minute roaming rates for voice calls (rates vary from country to country, so visit the website Verizon Wireless to see prices). The Verizon Global BlackBerry service so that you get your push e-mail in over 90 countries (as of this writing, Verizon plans to increase this number). You can make calls in over 150 countries by the Earl of Verizon. When you insert the SIM card mobile phone, the BlackBerry will automatically switch to global roaming and looking for a GSM signal. When you remove the SIM card, the phone will search for a CDMA network only. When you use the 8830 with Verizon SIM, your phone number remains the same for CDMA and GSM networks.

Reception on Verizon is good using the BlackBerry 8830. It gets full signal strength in areas well-covered and half strength in spotty areas. Voice calls are of good quality with a voice clear and loud volume. Voice through the built-in speaker is clear and strong, which makes the BlackBerry as a good choice for conference calls via speakerphone. The BlackBerry 8830 supports popular phone features including call waiting, multi-party calling, call forwarding, speed dial and more. Like the BlackBerry 8800, the 8830 bundles VoiceSignal's excellent voice command software that allows you not only make calls using voice dialing, but also to check the battery status, signal strength and more. Voice dialing using the voice command works well and you do not need to pre-voice tags. Voice Command over Bluetooth headsets work well also. Since we have not had the pleasure of traveling abroad during the period examined, we could not test the GSM functions on the BlackBerry 8830.

We noted that the ringing of the phone has been unusually quiet, even at the highest volume setting.



On the CDMA networks of Verizon, the BlackBerry supports EVDO for data. Download email and loading web pages are both fast. You can read more about push e-mail in the Software section of this review. The BlackBerry 8830 bundles a web browser that can load both full Web and WAP sites HTML. Make sure that you enable JavaScript, tables, HTML, CSS, support integrated media and more in the Options menu to display the HTML page in full screen mode. Desktop mode preserves the web page intact and provides a thumbnail preview where you can move your cursor to select an area of a page you want. It works similarly in concept to the Web browser available for Nokia S60 on the Nokia E 62 and the N75 and Thunderhuwk web browser, but lacks the readable preview the S60 browser has. There are some JavaScript DHTML dropdown menus like that challenge the BlackBerry browser while the Nokia S60 browser can handle these with ease. However, the browser has received a number of major improvements over the built-in Web browser on older BlackBerry devices. If your BlackBerry Enterprise Server v4.1 or higher, you can use the browser to open attachment files in Word, Excel, PDF, etc.. You will find some of the essential browser features such as bookmarks, history, web feed and even some support JavaScript.

Powerful

The BlackBerry 8830 has an ARM 9 processor clocked at 225 MHz, while the BlackBerry 8800 features the Intel XScale 312 MHz. Despite the slower processor speed, the device performs most tasks with good speed. The BlackBerry turns reasonably fast web pages load fast, music and video games well and opening attachments is a breeze. The BlackBerry 8830 comes with 32MB RAM and 64MB of flash memory. Before loading the data and applications, the 8830 has 20 MB of free storage, which is slightly less than 8800.

To expand storage space for data (but not application installation), the BlackBerry comes with a microSD card slot and you can use cards up to 1GB to store your data (although we have tested with a 2 gig card that worked very well). The card is located under the battery cover and side of the battery. The microSD card hot swappable, meaning you do not need to remove the battery or powering off the phone to access the card.

Viewing, Games and Multimedia

The BlackBerry 8830 features a QVGA (320 x 240) TFT display is the same as the BlackBerry 8800. The screen is capable of displaying 65k colors and icons, games, images and video clips of saturated color matching. The screen is very bright at 100%, but some setting issues, including the default theme would make the screen appear Sun While the BlackBerry 8830 has a master light for adjusting brightness for the backlight, you can manually adjust the brightness in the Options menu. The backlight by default to the internal sensor is a bit dark and obviously you have better battery life if you do not keep the screen at 100% all the time. The screen is visible from outside, rather than Windows Mobile Professional and Palm OS Treo models.

The Media Player application is the same as the one on the Black Berry Pearl and BlackBerry 8800. The media player plays MP3, AAC / AAC + / eAAC + and WMA. You can use the microSD card to store music and the BlackBerry 8830 is the music beautiful cards. As in-d'appel vocal quality is good music through the built-in speaker. Unlike the BlackBerry 8800, BlackBerry 8830, Verizon does not include a wired headset. We tried three stereo headphones 2.5 mm on the BlackBerry 8830, none works correctly with the device.




The media player can also play video in MP4, Simple Profile H.263 and WMV formats. Video playback is smooth and the sound is synchronized with the video, even with a QVGA resolution. Although the media player on the BlackBerry is very picky about the details of video encoding. The BlackBerry desktop software can help convert video and audio files to formats that the device can read.

BlackBerry veterans should be pleased to learn that the game BrickBreaker is again included with the device. The game runs smoothly and looks good on screen. The trackball works well with arcade-style games.

Bluetooth

The BlackBerry has integrated Bluetooth v2.0 and supports the Handsfree, Headset, Mono Series and Dial-Up Networking (DUN) profiles and exchange of items for cards. We tested the smartphone with several Bluetooth headsets including the Cardo Scala-700 and the Plantronics Discovery 650 Bluetooth headsets. The BlackBerry was the average quality of the incoming sound via the headset Scala-700; clear enough for phone conversations with the occasional digital noise mixed voice. Outgoing voice has trouble with the CSPs Scala that most ambient noises such as chirping birds and passing cars transformed into generic noise that intrudes into your conversation (we prefer to have our call recipients hear the birds and cars instead of scanned loud noise). The range is very good on the Scala by Bluetooth headset standards, reaching over 20 feet. The Plantronics Discovery 655 Bluetooth headset in the department better voice quality with better incoming voice and better DSP reduces background noise instead of adding more noise to your call. The range on the Plantronics Discovery 655 is shorter than the Scala, to just over 15 feet before you hear crackling (The discovery was short with most phones). Voice Command via Bluetooth works like a charm on all Bluetooth headsets we've tested, and you can dial numbers and perform all the commands using Bluetooth headsets with ease.



DUN support is enabled and you can use an EVDO phone as a modem for your laptop. In addition, you can use the Bluetooth connection on the phone to send ringtones, business cards and more. Bluetooth v2.0 adds a little speed file transfer over Bluetooth to older versions.

Battery Life

Like the BlackBerry 8800, Blackberry 8830 has a LythiumIon beefy 1400 mAh (C-X2). As we noted in the 8800 Review BlackBerry is a good idea to have a large battery to power the big screen and the GPS radio in addition to the wireless radio to cell phones. The battery life for the BlackBerry 8830 has decreased slightly compared to the BlackBerry 8800 in claimed talk time and standby, if the claimed battery life for 8800 is slightly overestimated. You get much more battery life if you use the phone on the GSM / GPRS networks on CDMA. The claimed talk time on GSM is 5 hours while on CDMA you only get 3.6 hours. The claimed standby time on GSM is 16 days compared to the CDMA 9 days of standby time. The battery life on CDMA is a little shorter in our tests for both talk time and standby time. If you talk on the phone for 40 minutes a day, visit the websites of 45 minutes, play music and video an hour doing your push e-mail throughout the day and Bluetooth, you must load aircraft per day on CDMA.

The BlackBerry comes with an AC has three types of component adapters for travelers. You can also charge the phone using the mini-USB cable included with your computer which is much slower than charging from the AC outlet.

Software

Like the BlackBerry Pearl and 8800, the BlackBerry 8830 has an integrated GPS function real (as opposed to 911 emergency GPS) and comes with maps of North America, although Verizon has disabled the GPS in BlackBerry Maps . You can access maps and navigation functions by launching the Maps application. The BlackBerry comes with maps of North America (Canada and USA) powered by Tele Atlas and it offers a large number of POI (Point of Interest). The navigation services provide turn-by-turn directions, but not as many features as the BlackBerry 8800 which can access the GPS offers real-time traffic, the preferences of route planning and 3D map. We tested it with Google Maps for 8830, and demand has been able to access the GPS, but is still stuck at "updating location" (he did not ask permission to enter GPS and warned us when the signal is too weak, but still can not get a job once we went outside and got a signal).


Services push e-mail on the BlackBerry 8830 are excellent: reliable and easy to use thanks to the installation wizard. BlackBerry push email users can connect their devices to their enterprise server enterprise messaging or if their companies do not have the service, they can use the BlackBerry service from Verizon. If you need to access your e-mail overseas in GSM mode, you must register with Global Service Verizon BlackBerry plan. You can integrate up to 10 email accounts on the BlackBerry and yes, you can use to filter mail and search functions that we have all learned to love. The BlackBerry Enterprise Server software provides support for Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise email accounts and allows you to set up personal email accounts outside of enterprise servers. For the first time users of BlackBerry e-mail with the format, the BlackBerry 8830 provides a wizard user friendly setup that guides you through setting up push email accounts on the device. You can view the file formats most common received as attachments on the BlackBerry including office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), image files and other multimedia files. You can not edit Office documents as there is no desktop software supplied with the camera, but you can install 3rd party software for this function. In addition to email, the BlackBerry also supports SMS, MMS and IM (BlackBerry Messenger).

For PIM functions, the BlackBerry bundles Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Memos, Alarm and Calculator. The address book supports groups, and research has incorporated many applications on the device including GPS navigation, web browser and email. You can store up to 8 phone numbers and PIN BlackBerry, two addresses, e-mail, URL, notes and assign caller ID and ringtone. It lacks some of the fine touches found in the Treo700 p's contacts database, such as turning postal code field by number only so that you do not have to keep pressing Alt, but it is a powerful tool anyway. The Calendar offers monthly, weekly and day view and a list of appointments and more. It also has strong integration with messaging software, for example, you can receive and initial meetings according to your calendar items. You will find similar integration in Tasks and Memos. If you have a memo item on your list, you can display the menu in Memo and forward it via e-mail application. Other useful tools include Password Keeper, calculator, alarm and quick access to the connection settings, keypad lock and more.

Conclusion

The full-sized BlackBerry got a great Makeover: Slim and attractive, bright and elegant at the same time, and a very usable QWERTY keyboard and device controls. The second sized BlackBerry to sport this new design offers features to compete with Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian smartphones. The BlackBerry 8830 offers something special for CDMA users who travels overseas: a GSM radio that allows them to use the same device and roam on GSM networks to make calls in over 150 countries and receive email in over 60 countries. As for the BlackBerry 8800 for GSM-only users, the BlackBerry 8830 should be a natural upgrade for companies seeking greater security in the new BlackBerry server software and for users who want to expand the memory with the slot newly added microSD card. Besides the excellent services push e-mail, integrated GPS with BlackBerry Maps and Bluetooth 2.0, the sleek look alone will get you interested. If you are a veteran BlackBerry, the new design should give you a much needed update the phone mode.

Pro: World phone with dual network support is ideal for Verizon customers who travel abroad. An elegant and modern design, will turn heads. The device is thin and light by BlackBerry and smartphone standards. You get the experience push e-mail with attachments, filtering and search. You also get a good set of software including messaging (IM included), PIM, maps / GPS and desktop synchronization.

Con: The keyboard can use a backlight and better quality. Verizon disabling the GPS means that the other 3 major carriers version of the BlackBerry are a better choice if you need GPS. The battery life is not as good as the GSM version of the phone. With Bluetooth v2.0 it begs for more profiles such as A2DP for listening to music through Bluetooth stereo headset. Unable to use the SIM card of your choice when abroad for cheaper voice calls.


Specifications:

Display: 2.5 "landscape 65K color TFT LCD. 320 x 240 resolution.

Battery: 1400 mAh Lithium Ion rechargeable and user replaceable. On the GSM / GPRS: Claimed talk time is 5 hours, claimed standby time is 16 days. The CDMA claimed talk time is 3.6 hours, claimed standby is 9 days.

Performance: Intel processor ARM 9 225 MHz. 64 MB of flash memory.

Size: 4.49 x 2.60 x 0.55 inches. Weight: 4.6 ounces

Audio: Built-in speaker, microphone input and stereo headphone jack. Media Player included for your MP3 pleasure. MIDI, polyphonic ringtones support, a vibrate mode.

Telephone: Dual band 900/1800 MHz GSM / GPRS networks, dual-band 800/1900 MHz CDMA 2000 1X EvDO networks.

Networking: Bluetooth v2.0. Supports Handsfree, Headset, Mono Series and Dial-Up Networking (DUN) profiles and exchange of items for cards.

Software: BlackBerry icon-based user interface. BlackBerry push client e-mail. BlackBerry IM client. VoiceSignal voice command software, BlackBerry Maps, a media player for your MP3 pleasure and video playback. PIM applications include address book, calendar, tasks and memos. Also Alarm, Calculator, Password Keeper included, no voice notes. BrickBreaker game comes. BlackBerry Desktop Software for PC included for syncing and software installation.

Expansion: 1 microSD slot. RIM states it is compatible with cards up to 1GB capacity, but 2 gigs worked fine in our tests.

In the box: The BlackBerry 8830 with battery, charger with international adapters, USB cable for syncing / charging, leather swivel holster, documentation kit, including the BlackBerry Desktop Software 4.2.2 CD and guide the user, VZAccess Manager CD and a quick reference guide.