RIM Color BlackBerry 7230 Review

securitas submits this painfully well-linked piece: "eWEEK reviews the RIM BlackBerry 7230 color handheld, Research In Motion's latest combination wireless e-mail/phone/PDA, and the first BlackBerry to feature a full-color display. The tri-band GSM/GPRS J2ME device features a 240-by-160-pixel, 65,000-color display, 16 MB flash +2 MB SRAM, an Intel 386 32-bit chip, SMS, an HTML browser (missing from the preceding BlackBerry 5810), a claimed 4 hours talk/10 days standby removable/rechargeable lithium-ion battery, POP3/IMAP/Exchange/Notes wireless e-mail for up to 10 accounts with file attachment management, security via Triple DES encryption, USB sync/recharging and the usual organizer functions. RIM squeezes it all into a 4.8 oz/136g, 4.4x2.9x0.8 inch/11.3x7.4x2.0 cm package (tech specs at RIM). The BlackBerry 7230 is exclusive to T-Mobile USA until 2004 and costs about $400. With this release, RIM is moving the BlackBerry into the prosumer/consumer market to expand its customer base beyond enterprise users. The release comes amid speculation of BlackBerry doom following RIM's recent patent ruling loss and ahead of the highly anticipated Handspring Treo 600, its direct competition (which includes the MS Pocket PC Phone Edition Smartphone and the Palm Tungsten W). More at Wired News, E-Commerce Times, InfoWorld and Forbes/Reuters."

Comments

Lots of stats

[Anonymous Coward]

Except one. How many patents can this thing infringe upon simultaneously?

RIM software extremely super bad

[Anonymous Coward]

As part of my job I develop three applications for the Blackberry. All of them involve network access. The experience has been absolutely infuriating. Firstly you must use RIM's JDE which is terrible and slow. Secondly the operating system is a dog. In the 3.3 version the handheld unit would sometimes reboot, and this can take as long as 8 minutes in my experience. In the 3.6 version the network stack crashes itself by spawning too many threads, but then doesn't fix itself so the user is left to figure out for himself that he needs to reboot it with a paper clip (more often the user will be likely to just smash the damn thing and bring it to IT folks in pieces.) In the simulator, the networking stack can throw uncaught exceptions. The Blackberry Enterprise Server, which is needed to push data to the handheld, crashes regularly.

I do dearly miss the previous generation of Blackberry with Mobitex network access. Not only does Mobitex have vastly better coverage that even works in airplanes, but that version of the handheld had a proper C API and berry-to-berry networking capabilities.

Ok, for me BB is a no-go.

[Qbertino]

I actually considered buying this one (I'm a 100% T-Customer in terms of conectivity) but after reading the review I'll pass.
It's OK if HTML doesn't show as flashy as on IE 6 with every plugin you can get on the web. But crashes? Slowpoking on certain code? Not very reashuring.
Can I update the Browser or install my own? Not easy anyway.
And the weedyness of the account (with extra costs) and it's unconfigurability and unconectability don't add to my trust in this thing.
Don't get me wrong, 400$ for a device that's as featureladen as this is a good deal. Especially when it manages to integrate a PDA with a Mobile pretty well and has a batterytime that is usefull. But with all this proprietary stuff and them glitches in the service account I'll wait another while.
This seems a bit like bananaware to me.

Ad? I think not.

[The Revolutionary]

Of the submitter's previously accepted stories, this one and this one mention BlackBerry.

While both do mention BlackBerry, both also mention competing products in a good light.

Submitter's other stories which have been accepted, stories on completely unrelated topics, are equally abundantly linked.

Judging by the submitter's past comments' moderation, the submitter does not need more karma.

I suspect what we have here is not an ad, but rather a story submitted by a user who has some exceptional interest in following handheld phone/data technologies.

Don't be so paranoid

[securitas]

a company spokesman. No real average human being would have that many links of a product except a company man.

Survey says.... BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!

Sorry, but I have never had anything to do with RIM beyond meeting some of their staff at trade shows.

By your logic I work for Handspring and Sony too. If you look at my previous posts I always try to include a variety of sources.

I'm considering getting an all-in-one phone/PDA-type device and I was looking at the relative merits of a BlackBerry vs. some of the other more phone-like devices. Since I'd already done the work trying to find out about it, I thought it might make a useful Slashdot post.

Re:Exclusive? Not Quite.... Dual vs. Tri-band

[securitas]

The 7210 is DUAL-band. The 7230 is TRI-band. It makes a difference to some people.