Blackberry 8830 Mobile Phone

As far as looks go, the BlackBerry 8830 World Edition doesn't have anything new to offer. However, it is one of the slimmest yet large BlackBerry till date.

The front panel includes a 2.5 inch screen and a full QWERTY keypad. Below the keypad is the trackball flanked by the call, menu, back and call end keys on left and right respectively. The keys are small, slippery and tightly packed with a slight wedge. The empty space below could have been used to give more space to the keyboard.

The BlackBerry 8830's front and back panels are black while the side panels are metallic. The left panel has the USB, the 2.5 mm headset slot and the charging plot along with a short key (called the 'Convenience key') that can be defined by the user to access any function. The right panel has the volume rocker. The device does not have any camera. On the upside, it comes with a light sensing technology that adjusts the brightness of the screen, trackball and the keyboard according to the surrounding light. The GSM SIM card is placed below the battery cover right next to the microSD slot. Overall the design of the handset is impressive.

Globetrotter

The best feature of the BlackBerry 8830 is that it supports both GSM and CDMA connections. Users can get any GSM connection. This aspect justifies its 'World Edition' tag line. There is no hot swapping option so users have to access the network. Only one connection remains active at a time.

The push mail service remains as smooth and efficient as it has always been. Setting up the account and accessing messages is an effortless task. The BlackBerry 8830 can support up to 10 accounts and the e-mail wizard on the phone makes setting them up easy.

The handset comes with an attachment viewer that can open word, PDF, Excel, Powerpoint and JPEG files. Surprisingly, the phone doesn't have an Official Suite. However, it does the Yahoo! Messenger and the BlackBerry instant messenger.

Multimedia

Users can also watch videos in MPEG4, WMV and H.263 formats. On the downside the phone only has 64 MB internal memory. Therefore, an additional memory is required. The music player has basic features. Users can create playlists. Music can be sorted on the basis of artists, albums and genres. The sound quality of the loudspeaker and the video playback were better than expected.

Since the screen is wide, viewing videos is a pleasurable experience. There is also an option of watching videos in full screen mode. The BlackBerry 8830 also has an image viewer so users can watch the photos stored in the phone. However, the phone doesn't have a camera, which is a bit disappointing.

However, this is a regular feature in enterprise phones due to applications like card viewer. The lack of camera means that pictures have to be transferred into the phone through a USB connection, Bluetooth or the Internet.

Guiding Light

The BlackBerry 8830 comes with an inbuilt GPS receiver but doesn't have any free maps. Thus this application can be used only after downloading the maps. The GPS receiver includes features like location search, getting direction, locking current position (which it does even without maps). Getting a satellite lock in even a mildly cloudy sky is difficult.

The phone also has a Bluetooth connection but does not support A2DP, so users cannot hear music through the headset. On the other hand, the phone is quick and crisp. It did not hang and applications open quickly.

The voice clarity  and the reception of sound while voice dialing are also commendable. The phone takes considerable time to charge but easily gives around 2.5 hours of talk time with Internet usage.

Price

The dual SIM phone is priced at Rs 30,990. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that there is no other enerprise dual SIM phone with one CDMA and one GSM connection.