BlackBerry 8830 World Edition

Why I purchased it: I purchased my BlackBerry 8830 World Edition Cell Phone from Verizon Wireless in October of 2007 and have used it exclusively since. I chose the BlackBerry because I was switching service providers and was very pleased with the BlackBerry Pearl 8100 Series I owned while using the T-Mobile service.

First impressions: After picking up my new 8830 for the first time I immediately felt that it was too wide. This idea quickly went away however and today I am glad that it is as wide as it is.

Build Quality: The 8830 feels very very solid and is just the right weight. No space was wasted and almost everything is well placed. My only complaint is the only button on the left side of the phone. This button is easily pressed by accident and I soon disabled it because of that. The screen is bright and colorful. The trackball is amazing! At first glance the keys on the full QWERTY Keyboard appear to be too small and too close together but as I began typing I immediately noticed that the upper inner corners of the keys are raised making them easier to press and greatly minimizing errors.

Features: The BlackBerry OS is very easy to navigate and I prefer it over any other phone I have ever owned (Nokia and Motorola). I use the email feature to receive email from three different email accounts; a personal IMAP server, a company owned IMAP server, and Google's Gmail. The calculator is very useful but a bit busy with too many features thus cluttering the screen. I found the calculator on my Pearl easier to use. The notes program is very useful. I would never take notes with it in a classroom environment but I do use it quite often to record small amounts of data for later reference. The address book is very extensive allowing you to save multiple numbers for one person and is very easy to use. My favorite feature about this phone (and any BlackBerry that I have used) is that you simply begin to type the name of a person in your contact list and the list is quickly filtered to show only those that match the text typed so far. You then press SEND and the call is placed. The web browser is very easy to use and remembers any recent URLs you have visited. The screen resolution is sufficient to browse just about any site without problems. One complaint about the phone is that there seems to be no indicator on the home screen as to which profile the phone is set to such as Loud, Vibrate, Quite, and Normal. There is also no shortcut key that I have found to change the phone to Vibrate. You must go through the menu to change it. One very neat feature about the BlackBerry is the BlackBerry Messanger. This instant messaging program is very easy to use and a very fast way to communicate with other BlackBerry owners. You can even invite multiple people to your conversation. The Calendar is nice to have but I almost never use it. I tried using the Tasks program but it was more work than it was help. I really don't look to my BlackBerry as a digital organizer and mainly use it for email and web access. The best thing about the BlackBerry is that Google has made a great effort to provide many services for it. I am always signed into Google Talk and Google Maps has proven to be quite helpful. Google also provides access to your Google Docs (although very limited), Gmail (although I just use the built-in email feature provided by BlackBerry), and a synchronizer for your Google Calendar. My major complaint about the BlackBerry (although it is the fault of Verizon) is that the built-in GPS Receiver is disabled! I did not know this when I purchased the device and did not find out until I started searching online when I found it wasn't working. I have read that Verizon has recently released a new firmware for the phone that will take care of this but I have not yet had the opportunity to try it out. The phone also has a media manager that can play music and videos and display pictures. I have only used this to store a few pictures of my wife and daughter to show other people but have been quite pleased with it. The pictures are transfered to my phone via USB cable and are stored on a 64MB TransFlash card made by SanDisk mounted inside the phone cover. They could also be stored on the internal memory of the phone.

Accessories: The phone came with a USB cable used for data transfer between the phone and a computer. I have since lost this cable but continue to use another one that goes to my SanDisk Card Reader. It also came with a holster that has a magnet inside allowing the screen to turn off and on when I put the phone in and take it out. This also allows me to set my profiles to behave differently depending on whether or not the phone is in the holster (a very cool feature).

Final Words: I love my BlackBerry 8830 and don't foresee leaving the BlackBerry family for any other phone for a long time.