I've been using the new RIM BlackBerry 7100t for almost a week now, and here are some initial thoughts on the device itself and the experience of having RIM-like email on a phone device.
The 7100t is really a true hybrid between the BlackBerries we are all used to seeing and semi-smartphones we are used to see from the likes of Nokia or Sony Ericsson.
Lenthwise and widthwise, it's candybar format is a little wider than most bar phones, but a little thinner than a traditional BlackBerry 72XX series phone. Depthwise, that's true as well. it's a little thinner than something like a Nokia 6620, and just a little bit thicker than your typical BlackBerry.
Functionality wise, it sits right in the middle as well. The 7100t is finally more usable as a phone from both a size and embarassment standpoint, but will provide nothing near what you might need application-wise in a traditional Nokia Series 60 phone. Even though you can add third party applications to the RIM devices, there just aren't as many available as with a typical series 60 device. it's right in the middle.
the email experience
But BlackBerry users typically are in it for the email experience. There are a ton of people that still carry both a phone and email device, and i although the 7100t will change that for some people, there will still be penty of us out there who will be double fisting.
there's nothing like getting your email as it arrives and not having to wait while it downloads in the background. there are plenty of email programs for smartphones that download in the background, but it's still not the same. nokia's email support sucks. sony ericsson's is a little better. motorola...i don't like to badmouth anyone. let's just say if they were playing little league, i'd give them the "most improved player" award.
but what has traditionally been great about BlackBerries are the ability to respond to email. how does the 7100t do?
right in the middle of a traditional BlackBerry keyboard and T9 or quivalent on other phones with a standard 9 key keypad.
you can see on the picture above the spectrum of the BlackBerry 7230 keyboard, the 7100t, and a Nokia 6620 with a 9 key keypad we've all been used to ever since AT&T rolled out touch tone dialing.
i have the followng observations:
the biggest difference with the 7100t is you have to pay attention to what you are typing else you will end up with words you did not intend to type. at certain places in your sentence you have to "branch off" one way or another with words.
for example, in typing a reply to my collegues today i mistakenly sent "i am going to pinkish a new entry" instead of "i am going to publish a new entry" because the "i" and the "u" share a key i somewhere made a mistake and that's the word it picked. T9 probably would have done the same thing, an original BlackBerry probably would have just left a misspelled word.
all in all, it's pretty good, and i would expect to get more proficient over time.
ze phone
The phone itself is middle of the road. The reception is about average and on par with any other blackberry phone. Clear, but not crystal clear. now a whole lot to say here.
the screen is pretty good looking - much more the dimensions of a phone than a typical RIM. it comes with an odd "Comic Sans" font as its default font, which took awhile to figure out how to change. the other defaul is "anti-aliasing off" which just looks really "jaggy" at this resolution. very odd. turn on "anti-aliasing" for sure.
bluetooth
oh, where do we start. the 7100t supports exactly 2 bluetooth services, "AUDIO Gateway" and "Voice Gateway". which pretty much means you can use a headset or handsfree with the 7100t, and that's about it as far as bluetooth.
for comparison, most nokias support 8 bluetooth profiles, and most sony ericssons support 12. what's missing?
I find this a little odd since most of the products that T-Mobile distributes are pretty open so i'm not going to fly off the handle and declare it "crippled" just yet, but let's just say the usefulness is severly limited, and i'll be turning bluetooth off to save battery life - although i'd probably use it with my car if i didn't use another phone for voice.
the browser
one of the best things about 7100t is the browser. it does a pretty good job rending all types of markup (HTML, xHTML, and WML
) and even supports popups if you want it to. It seems to render pretty fast, and just is generally better than its predecessors.
the IM client
another great thing about this phone is the IM client. if you are an AOL instant messenger or Yahoo! messenger user, the bundled OZ IM client is great. it will pull in your buddy lists from those services respectively, and run in the background along with email. i've had a few cases where running both at the same time seemed to logjam getting email, but for the most part it has worked without incident. a great companion to plain SMS, which the 7100t also supports.
the rest
the rest of the phone's features are similar to the BlackBerry 7230 family i reviewed a year ago.
the thing that would stop me from using this as an everyday phone is the lack of a camera and to some extent missing bluetooth features. otherwise it's a great phone. I guess i'd rather see the price stay low on this phone than putting in a half-assed camera like the Treo 600, which is quite possibly the worst VGA camera on the market.
as RIM licenses their email capabilities to other vendor's platforms like Sony Ericsson and Nokia, i would certainly choose one of those smart-phones with RIM email capability, which would seem to cannibalize RIM's hardware market. but with so many more nokia and SE phones sold, and RIM addicts being somewhat brand loyal, it's probably a good bet for them.
RIM has included two USB cables this time around, one for the charger, and one for travel so you can charge the RIM with just your laptop and the USB cable. this is great.
BlackBerry email is still hands-down the best way to get AND respond to email on the go. The contact and calendar sync is good enough for me, but probably not good enough for dyed in the wool Palm OS addict.
ratings
phone: 5
texting: 9
mms: 0
email: 9
browser: 9
pda features: 7
camera: 0
battery: 6
usability: 7
durability: 8
stability: 7
gameplay potential: 3
third party apps: 3
fashion: 5
out-of-box accessories: 7
legend:
0 = nonexistent
3 = below average
5 = average
7= above average
10 = the best i've seen
