Page 1 of 2 View as a single page 9:34AM Sunday March 02, 2008
By Peter Griffin
The 'World Edition' BlackBerry 8830 does just about everything a PDA should - except take photos.
It's been an involuntary ritual I've performed countless times in the last couple of weeks - my eye settles on the polished black of Telecom's BlackBerry 8830 World Edition, looking for that red pulsing light that indicates a new email message has arrived.
The BlackBerry is like a bookish travel companion, always ready to divulge some new insight. When using it, the concept of logging-on to check email goes out the window. The device, from Canadian firm Research in Motion, functions primarily as it did back in 2004 when I trialled one of the first BlackBerrys to be offered by Vodafone.
The whole experience centres around push-email technology which uses GPRS mobile data to dribble copies of email from a server to your phone as it arrives at the server.
While a dream at managing email - you are simply given the plain text and the option to open documents, so as to save on data traffic charges, numerous other devices have caught up with the Blackberry when it comes to push email - see Windows Mobile 6 for example.
But the BlackBerry has been evolving too, particularly its user-interface and the breadth of applications available on it has proliferated. It now features a multimedia player, in-built GPS, a microSD card slot, personal information management applications and Bluetooth 2.0.
Before, you may have carried the Blackberry in conjunction with a better-featured mobile or music player. Now the BlackBerry can competently handle most functions you'll need on the road, though there's no digital camera included. I wasn't able to use Google Talk on the 8830 despite there being an icon on the desktop for it, but I'm told it should work with this model. Yahoo Messenger also comes as a default application.
The classic side scroll wheel that's given many an executive the ache of BlackBerry thumb is gone, replaced by an illuminated scroll wheel in the BlackBerry's centre about the full QWERTY keyboard.
The World Edition is thinner but wider than the classic BlackBerry Pearl and has a sleek black face plate with silver trim. My travel companions laughed at how wide it is, but I sure appreciated the full-sized screen which allows for lighting-fast typing once you know the keyboard's layout and gives a nice widescreen feel to the full-colour screen.
Telecom is aiming the BlackBerry squarely at executives who travel regularly and previously would have had to borrow a GSM phone for travel to Europe.
It means that with one device, one phone number and voicemail box you can roam to pretty much anywhere in the world for voice and pick up email in over 60 countries. I used the BlackBerry 8830 in Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Munich, Amsterdam, Barcelona and London.
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