Rating: 
Summary: Best instrument I have ever used.
Review: I have been usury the 7230 for one year - don't what I would do without it. For its functions - phone, directory, e-mail and appointments there is no item more elegant.
Rating:
Summary: Blackberry 7230 Phone/PDA - best option
Review: I have had my Blackberry 7230 since about May 1, 2004. I have successfully used it for phone and email in a wide variety of locations --- many of the 48 states, as well as Paris (France), Prague (Czech Republic), Shanghai (People's Republic of China) among others. Only place it hasn't worked is Tokyo (Japan) - no coverage. Well, a few locations in the US - my basement among them - also produce failure. But if you're in a city or near a major highway in the US it appears that you're virtually certain to get coverage.
It took about 3 days to get the unit set up for email initially due to the network being down when I received my unit, and the people on telephone help not being able to find that out. As a result, we tried lots of options, and suddenly three days later it worked fine, and we later found out about the network problem.
Great --- email by push (it arrives, you don't have to check for it --- standard Blackberry stuff). Calendar is fine, as is rolodex, etc.. Phone is a good thing, though the minutes aren't cheap. I regard it as an emergency/rare use phone.
The unit is very sturdy, and small enough to fit easily into my shirt pocket (I use a holster most of the time).
Synchronization with Outlook was effortless - the default settings worked just fine.
All in all - I'm very happy with this unit. Very happy. Good choice.
Rating: 
Summary: Good product but with a few kinks
Review: I just got my color blackberry and I like it quite well overall - but there are a few kinks - such as it freezing up 2-3 times a week.
Rating: 
Summary: Email and Phone in one almost-a-PDA format
Review: I like email for messages, because voicemail is dull and unclear (my UNFAVORITE thing--someone goes on blah-di-blah-blah for minutes then when they get to the PHONE NUMBER which is all you really want, they go BZZZZT fivefoureightfivez... and you have trouble getting it. Then you have to go back, wade through the blah-blah again and again to catch the number. Voicemail is LINEAR. Hint to those who use voicemail: repeat your phone number and your name S-L-O-W-L-Y.) But if you want to send more complex messages, email and SMS are great options.I got tired of emailing on my cell phone--that keypad, and thought, HEY, maybe the Blackberry could work. So I got the T-Mobile version of the Blackberry, which does use a SIM chip, and in about ten minutes of learning curve, I had this thing up and running except for a glitch in the reception of email. This was fixed by a quick call to T-Mobile's friendly technical service. The email was easy to set up with my POP servers. Sadly, the BES (Blackberry Enterprise System) is not supported at my workplace, so I can't get secure mail from work this way. It's dependent on support from your IT department. The phone is a bit clumsy (the numeral pad is the left side of the QWERTY keyboard) but with a headset and mic, it works pretty well. And it's clearer than my regular cellphone. One problem: the series of letters found on a phone keypad are NOT on the numeric part, so if you have to dial by name or someone gives you a 800-CALL-MYNAME type number, you have to have those keys memorized. There is a memo pad, a calculator, T-zones (some limited online ability and weather/news.) The color screen is nice. The battery really lasts long--three or four days. (Hint: let it run down ALL the way before charging.) The ergonomics for typing are good, just ok on the phone, but liveable. The thumbscroll is quite effective along with the escape button below. These two side-mounted buttons are used to navigate, highlight, select, delete and escape--fairly easy to master. I have to say, it's a pretty slick device. For me, this is a great solution to get both email and phone service in one.
Rating: 
Summary: The unit is OK but INCOMPETENT T-Mobile customer support
Review: I purchased this unit about two months ago; I started having problems later where the screen would freeze on me...I called the customer service yesterday. Some girl at the wiresless support tried to install software to fix the problem but instead she terminated the unit for good!!! Now all I have an error message of 507. She had no idea about what she was doing....she started even laughing in the end...She first said she would be sending me a replacement unit. She said she would use normal delivery which was free of charge. I said I needed asap because this was the only phone I had at the moment as my wireline phone was not yet connected due to a recent move....She said that 2-day delivery was $15 extra....When I said there was no way I was paying as this was due to her incompetence, she omplete said she would talk to her supervisor...then she came back with even a more brilliant idea...She said that I now needed to talk to someone from RIM....I had already spent over 30 minutes for a problem that she made worse now her so-called supervisor was trying to save
the company at my expense...They put me on hold to get RIM on the line but after ten minutes I hang up. I will break my contract and switch to Verizon where both nationwide coverage and customer service are much better than T-Mobile.
Rating:
Summary: Tried T-Mobile, but going back to AT&T Wireless
Review: I upgraded from the BlackBerry 6710 from AT&T Wireless to this color BlackBerry from T-Mobile. T-Mobile does offer better prices on the monthly service, but i'm not as happy with the T-Mobile service as I was with AT&T. T-Mobiles network didn't seem as ubiquitous in the US, I had lots of problems roaming abroad, and T-Mobiles customer service was useless when there were questions/problems. I'm bought a BlackBerry 7210 from AT&T Wireless for an early christmas present. (Though sadly I had to buy from another site because Amazon doesnt' carry it). http://www.1800mobiles.com
Rating:
Summary: Excellent product if you need e-mail as primary activity!
Review: I use it primarily for sending emails and secondary as a phone. It is a great product. Scrolling button needs improvement but overall this is it. No phone can send email with such efficiency. With cell phones, you need to press each button 3 times and God forbid if you miss the turn. :) The sounds of this phone is CLEAR as if you are using regular line, there is no static! Enough of sales pitch. I love my Blackberry!
Rating:
Summary: Depends on what you want...
Review: I'm most definitely not a "pointy-haired boss" (see my About page), but overall I'm quite pleased with it. If you're looking for a portable game machine I hear Nintendo sells them pretty cheaply--and with a far better selection of games than the typical cellphone. (Or there's always my personal favorite, the NeoGeo Pocket Color.) The Blackberry is primarily a device for doing email/text messaging, calendar and to-do organization, and a little web browsing. It's really intended to be a personal organizer. The unit itself feels quite sturdy, but keep in mind it has a quite large LCD screen. It feels pretty solid overall, but I bet it'll scratch pretty easily, and it isn't something that can be safely carried in a pocket without some sort of protective cover. Battery lifetimes are good, and I seem to get about 7-10 days from mine (although I have it set up to shut itself off at night). It charges pretty quickly, probably in 2-3 hours. The Blackberry happens to have a voice cellphone built in, but it's not the best choice for this purpose. It is NOT a cellphone in the usual sense and it's not really trying to be one, if for no other reason than its size and shape would make it really annoying to use without a headset. It works, but a dedicated cellphone will work better for that one purpose. (But I definitely haven't had the problems with feedback from the headset mentioned by one of the other reviewers. My headset works just peachy-keen.) There are a couple of nice features in the address book I really like. There are extra user-definable fields for additional phone numbers/email addresses besides the usual home/office/cell etc. There's also a Notes field, handy for keeping track of who wants to be called when and such. It also has a Java engine and I've found it reasonably easy to get my own applets running on it. (It doesn't appear to handle standard .jad/.jar applets, at least as delivered from T-Mobile. I had to rebuild mine to get them to run.) Again, it's not a games machine. The UI is easy and intuitive to use, and I've grown fond of the wheel for doing menu selections. Occasionally it seems like I have to click the wheel one too many times to do something; it'd be nice if there were more (and user-definable) keyboard shortcuts. The calendar book is OK. It works best if you're doing a standard 9-5 M-F workweek, as it only displays about 8 hours on the weekly summary screen and you need to scroll around to see the rest of a given day. It's been reliable so far with no lost appointments. The one annoyance is that reminders only appear to sound once, and if you miss one you won't be reminded again until you happen to look at the screen. The web browser is so-so. It works best with WAP/WML pages of course. Some HTML/XHTML pages will display but there are going to be compromises because of the small display size, and not every page works (I've seen a number of strange error messages when trying to browse random HTML pages). However, I find it reasonably useful for reading news.google.com, maps.yahoo.com, etc., and it works for displaying pictures. In other words I've found the browser is handy when I *need* to use it, but I wouldn't use it to just "surf the web". I find the mail reader easy to deal with, but I've only used it with T-Mobile's mail server. Any issues with email forwarding are between you and your current ISP; it's really not T-Mobile's fault if your ISP is incompetent. I also don't run Exchange or any of that nonsense. I also don't try to sync with any desktop programs, as I rely entirely on the Blackberry for all that stuff. Supposedly the next major release of the Blackberry OS (an upgrade will be available, presumably for free) will make synching a lot easier and more reliable--so you may want to wait if this is an important feature for you. Other nice features include AutoType (completes various abbreviated words on the fly while entering text, and you can add your own abbreviations), a simplistic but usable Todo manager, and an auto power-off feature for saving batteries (which is also a great way to stop people from calling at 3am). In summary: it does everything I want, and does most of it very well. It doesn't run Windows apps... but for some reason I'd consider that to be a serious feature in its favor; I leave the software alone, it does its job, everbody's happy. If you really need all the bells-and-whistles from a Pocket PC thingy (along with all the headaches, crashes, viruses and other typical Microsoft-delivered woes), then that's really what you should get. If you want to play games Nintendos are cheap and a lot more fun than a Java-based phone. There are much, much cheaper cellphones available. But for what it is I find the Blackberry to be quite handy. It was a huge improvement over my Motorola T721. It's a compromise--most multifunctional devices are--but I can live with its limitations.
Rating:
Summary: Depends on what you want...
Review: I'm most definitely not a "pointy-haired boss" (see my About page), but overall I'm quite pleased with it. If you're looking for a portable game machine I hear Nintendo sells them pretty cheaply--and with a far better selection of games than the typical cellphone. (Or there's always my personal favorite, the NeoGeo Pocket Color.) The Blackberry is primarily a device for doing email/text messaging, calendar and to-do organization, and a little web browsing. It's really intended to be a personal organizer. The unit itself feels quite sturdy, but keep in mind it has a quite large LCD screen. It feels pretty solid overall, but I bet it'll scratch pretty easily, and it isn't something that can be safely carried in a pocket without some sort of protective cover. Battery lifetimes are good, and I seem to get about 7-10 days from mine (although I have it set up to shut itself off at night). It charges pretty quickly, probably in 2-3 hours. The Blackberry happens to have a voice cellphone built in, but it's not the best choice for this purpose. It is NOT a cellphone in the usual sense and it's not really trying to be one, if for no other reason than its size and shape would make it really annoying to use without a headset. It works, but a dedicated cellphone will work better for that one purpose. (But I definitely haven't had the problems with feedback from the headset mentioned by one of the other reviewers. My headset works just peachy-keen.) There are a couple of nice features in the address book I really like. There are extra user-definable fields for additional phone numbers/email addresses besides the usual home/office/cell etc. There's also a Notes field, handy for keeping track of who wants to be called when and such. It also has a Java engine and I've found it reasonably easy to get my own applets running on it. (It doesn't appear to handle standard .jad/.jar applets, at least as delivered from T-Mobile. I had to rebuild mine to get them to run.) Again, it's not a games machine. The UI is easy and intuitive to use, and I've grown fond of the wheel for doing menu selections. Occasionally it seems like I have to click the wheel one too many times to do something; it'd be nice if there were more (and user-definable) keyboard shortcuts. The calendar book is OK. It works best if you're doing a standard 9-5 M-F workweek, as it only displays about 8 hours on the weekly summary screen and you need to scroll around to see the rest of a given day. It's been reliable so far with no lost appointments. The one annoyance is that reminders only appear to sound once, and if you miss one you won't be reminded again until you happen to look at the screen. The web browser is so-so. It works best with WAP/WML pages of course. Some HTML/XHTML pages will display but there are going to be compromises because of the small display size, and not every page works (I've seen a number of strange error messages when trying to browse random HTML pages). However, I find it reasonably useful for reading news.google.com, maps.yahoo.com, etc., and it works for displaying pictures. In other words I've found the browser is handy when I *need* to use it, but I wouldn't use it to just "surf the web". I find the mail reader easy to deal with, but I've only used it with T-Mobile's mail server. Any issues with email forwarding are between you and your current ISP; it's really not T-Mobile's fault if your ISP is incompetent. I also don't run Exchange or any of that nonsense. I also don't try to sync with any desktop programs, as I rely entirely on the Blackberry for all that stuff. Supposedly the next major release of the Blackberry OS (an upgrade will be available, presumably for free) will make synching a lot easier and more reliable--so you may want to wait if this is an important feature for you. Other nice features include AutoType (completes various abbreviated words on the fly while entering text, and you can add your own abbreviations), a simplistic but usable Todo manager, and an auto power-off feature for saving batteries (which is also a great way to stop people from calling at 3am). In summary: it does everything I want, and does most of it very well. It doesn't run Windows apps... but for some reason I'd consider that to be a serious feature in its favor; I leave the software alone, it does its job, everbody's happy. If you really need all the bells-and-whistles from a Pocket PC thingy (along with all the headaches, crashes, viruses and other typical Microsoft-delivered woes), then that's really what you should get. If you want to play games Nintendos are cheap and a lot more fun than a Java-based phone. There are much, much cheaper cellphones available. But for what it is I find the Blackberry to be quite handy. It was a huge improvement over my Motorola T721. It's a compromise--most multifunctional devices are--but I can live with its limitations.
Rating:
Summary: Don't buy
Review: If you really want a smartphone get the only phone that can really claim the name... TREO TREO TREO 600.....
| 
