- The Good: A Blackberry with a phone form factor, quad band, impressively accurate intuitive text software, excellent display, USB charger.
- The Bad: No Bluetooth file transfer, camera, voice recording, memory expansion, caller ID ringtones, voice dial, picture caller ID, music capability or IR.
- The Verdict: A compromise Blackberry that's looks and feels like more like a phone.
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REVIEW:
Over the years, I've had several Blackberry devices and have been pretty pleased with them. That first pager-style Blackberry really revolutionized mobile messaging and their subsequent forays into cellular products have built up a cult-like following.
That said, they've had a tough time penetrating the general user market. For many, the very PDA looking Blackberry phones just didn't appeal as a consumer mobile.
RIM decided to take this on with a whole new design in the Blackberry 7100R. Available for $400 (Cdn.) on a plan at Rogers, let's see how they did.
Look and Feel:
As size goes, the Blackberry is bigger that a standard candy-bar phone, but comes out thinner and lighter than the Treo 600. The 11.9-by-5.8-by-1.9 cm frame and light 121 gram weight keep it well within the comfortable range.
The phone's blue, gray and white coloured plastic shell is well put together and offered no give when squeezed.
Holding the phone in your hand, it definitely strikes you as a tad odd, though. Rather than the familiar 12-button setup of a standard phone, you are greeted with 20. The additional keys spread out the alphabet making each key stand for one or two letters rather than three. This ties into RIM's Sure-Type technology - more on that later. Also included are your traditional green and red call and end buttons and a dedicated Web key.
The 65,536-colour, 240-by-260 pixels, 5.3cm (2.1-inch) display is beautiful and very brightly lit. It looks awesome indoors but gets pretty washed out in direct sunlight.
A look around the unit reveals the USB port (also used for charging), standard headset jack, power button, back key and scroll wheel. The back sports the speakerphone and user replaceable lithium battery.
As a Mobile E-Mail Device:
I was a hardcore "crackberry" fan for years and can't say enough about the euphoric fix of always-on e-mail. Like all the Blackberries that came before it, the 7100R constantly checks for e-mail and delivers it to your phone. You can even view (but not edit) Word, Excel and PDF attachments. This anytime/anywhere e-mail application is the bread and butter of every RIM device and it worked beautifully as always.
The question now becomes one of how to write e-mails on this funky new keyboard.
As noted, this incarnation does not have the familiar and oh-so-geek-beloved full QWERTY layout. Without enough keys to cover the alphabet, some compromises are needed. This usually means having to tap keys several times to scroll through each possible character choice or letting intuitive software take a guess at what you are writing and fill it in for you. I've spent years typing messages on cellphones and I can't say I've ever found either system to be particularly efficient.
After a few weeks of using RIM's new dialpad layout and Sure-Type system, I have to say that it's definitely a step ahead. Although still nowhere near as fast or satisfying as a full QWERTY thumb board, the 7100R's software does a heck of a job at good guessing. As you write, the device runs probable letter combinations though it's built in 35,000-word dictionary, adding new words the first time they are used. After about a week of constant use, it had most of my vocabulary down pat. I spent hours typing away on it and found its guesses to be accurate over 90 per cent of the time when using general language. That's leaps and bounds over T9 and other intuitive text software. When it does err, there is a dedicated key for selecting alternate letter combination options.
This was OK for message writing, but I really missed the old QWERTY goodness when entering non-standard stuff like Web addresses or non dictionary words for this first time. In those cases, you need to switch to the old tap method. Even this is an improvement of standard dial pads however, since the 20 button layout means fewer you choices per key.
As a Phone:
The 7100R definitely does a better job of being a phone than any earlier Blackberry models. For the most part, it feels, dials and operates like a normal phone. Here are some of the highlights:
It's a quad band GSM 850/900/1800/1900 so you can take it all over the world. The only limit to its phonebook is the memory available and multi-key searches make pulling up any number in your directory a snap. You have a copious collection of address fields to choose from and space for notes.
Ringtones are polyphonic and can be set to good and loud when needed. The rear mounted hands free speaker is pretty decent but, like a lot of phones, can only be activated once you are already in a call. Switching sound profiles is as easy as holding down the # key.
All these things said, the designers seem to have skipped a few features that seem essential in a phone at this dollar value. Notably absent were caller ID ringtones, voice dial, picture caller ID and Bluetooth file transfer.
With regard to the latter, yes, it has Bluetooth and will hook up with headsets. For reasons unknown though, you can't use this feature to synchronize or transfer files to other Bluetooth devices. Seeing as that is how I get a lot of ringtones from people, I found this omission a little annoying.
The phone is rated for 240 hours of standby time and 4.5 hours of talk. I left it on standby in my drawer for almost an entire week before I got the low battery warning so that part is definitely up to spec. Talk time is tougher to nail down, since Web browsing and other non phone activities can really wear the battery down and I do a whole lot of that.
As a PDA:
In this category, I find the 7100R to be lacklustre by today's standards. Yes, it synchronizes with Outlook and you can create full featured calendar, contact, notes and task entries on the go. So in this sense, it's a PDA. Unfortunately, its a no Infra-Red, No Bluetooth File Transfer, No Music, No Video, No Touch Screen, No voice Recording, No Memory Expansion (32MB built in), and no camera PDA.
On the software side, the number of titles available for RIM devices has increased over the years, but it's still no where near the thousands available for other platforms. A quick check of the Handango.com software site (RIM links directly to them) shows 90 titles for this device. That's just a tiny fraction of what's available for Palm devices and to a lesser degree, PocketPCs.
Let's look at some of the few programs included on the device.
BrickBreaker: This is the only pre-loaded game and it's a pretty good Break Out type clone. The phone's scroll wheel lends itself well to this type of game and I had a tough time prying the wife off of it.
Web Surfing: The 7100R supports both Java and flash and comes equipped with both HTML and WAP browsers. Running it on the Rogers network, using the HTML browser with images on, I loaded Globetechnology.com in two minutes and 56 seconds. With the images off, it took one minute and 47 seconds. That's a considerably long time. Although the screen resolution makes Web pages very easy on the eyes, the formatting left quite a bit to be desired. For this review, I had the browser setup in either Blackberry or Internet Explorer emulation modes (there are four more). In both of these, I had regularly found that entire sections of some pages were displayed as a single vertical row of one or two characters. This, combined with the wait time, pretty much ruled out this function for me.
Calculator: This is an application I tend to use in most of my phones, as it gives me a one-handed calculator when shopping. Unfortunately, the implementation in the 7100R largely precludes this. You can punch in the numbers easily enough however you then need to roll to each math operator with the scroll wheel. This would not be bad if you could roll to the plus sign and leave it there. That way you could just press "5" then click the wheel for "plus" and then press "5" again to get "10". Instead, it forces you to roll back through the numbers to the math operator after every selection. This is far too time consuming and I just avoided it. Also of note, the application appears to be an afterthought as it only takes up half of the screen real estate leaving the rest as a blank white background.
Pictures: The 7100R comes with a stunning set of landscapes to use as wallpapers and you can install more via the provided software. There are no zoom or orientation options.
Alarm: This is a pretty handy app and I made regular use of it. I set my daily wake up time, asked that it ignore the weekends and I was good to go. You even get a snooze command. You can pick from a list of tones and volume levels to suit your preferences.
Call Log: This is your basic list of incoming and outgoing calls with timers.
Search: This allows you to search for a word in any message, calendar entry, address contact, memo pad or task. It works pretty quickly and is intelligently laid out in expandable groups.
General Navigation:
The 7100R's operating system is visually attractive and easy to find your way around. I had no difficulty locating any option I sought. Although zippy on the front menus, I found navigating to be a bit slow when moving from some menus. Sometimes I would click on an option and have to wait one to two seconds to see the corresponding response.
Another, albeit minor, issue is the way menu scrolling is set up. If I come to a long list of options and scroll my way down to the bottom choice, I can't just keep scrolling to pop back to the top of the list. Instead, I have to scroll all the way back. This is not a deal breaker but does tend to slow navigation a bit. Of course, you can offset this somewhat by re-ordering applications to where you need them.
Conclusion:
In the hierarchy of cellphone data entry, the full QWERTY thumb-driven keyboard still reigns for ease of use and speed. Although I found the Sure-Type software and keyboard layout to be a vast improvement over standard dial pads, it's still an act in compromise.
If you are looking for a good Smartphone and are willing to sacrifice Blackberry's signature push e-mail, the Treo 600 has a lot more to offer to tech driven consumers. It's also about $100 (Cdn.) cheaper. If you love your Blackberry but really wish it looked and felt like a phone, this unit is it.