May 05, 2007

T-Mobile Blackberry 8800 Impressions

I bought a Blackberry 8800 from T-Mobile recently to replace my Treo 600. Over the years, I've gotten sick of the Treo's instability, random crashes, and inability to handle my 1300 contacts. Its gotten to the point where I have to delete contacts and calendar entries on my Treo because it couldn't handle the quantity. I heard that Blackberry can scale to thousands of contacts.

So far my impressions are mixed. It certainly is an upgrade over the Treo 600. The positive attributes are great slim form factor, clear colorful screen, good battery life, and stability. On the negative side, I'm not wild about the trackball vs. the scroll wheel on previous Blackberries and EDGE isn't exactly a speed demon 3G upgrade.

I'm satisfied though. The PIM isn't as intuitive as the Treo, but overall it works well. It hasn't crashed yet and the IM messaging programs are much better on Blackberry (Yahoo messenger and JiveTalk Beta). The push email also works better and with the battery life, it's an excellent messaging device. I'm not sure on where I stand on the keyboard yet as I'm getting used to it.