Quote:
As someone who tries to cover the gadgets that most affect consumers — people who spend their own money on phones, computers and the rest — I tend to ignore cool corporate props like RIM's BlackBerry. But RIM's new 7100 was developed as a consumer product first, and, oh yeah, it can do all of that corporate stuff, too.
You probably know the BlackBerry I'm referring to, the one that's been plastered all over the Web for the past week. The reason? It's about two-thirds the width of older BlackBerry models, the most recent of which could be called a phone by dictionary definition only. Sure you could hold it to your head, but who wanted to. The 7100 is really a phone. About the same size as Nokia's 3600 series videophones, it's not what you'd call trim, but definitely pocketable.
Its size is not the only innovation: it's the first BlackBerry with Bluetooth connectivity for a wireless headset, the first with dedicated "Send" and "End" buttons, and one of the first with a built-in speakerphone. In an age when phone makers like to differentiate themselves with neat-looking but potentially annoying keypad layouts, the 7100 has a truly well-conceived one: a traditional QWERTY layout superimposed over a standard number pad. If you want to dial a number, go right ahead. If you're composing an e-mail or message, just start typing. Never mind the fact that both the Q and the W are on the same key, or that the E and R are under the number 1. Taking the cell phone industry's word-guessing software to a new level, the BlackBerry uses logic and a dictionary (plus the names in your address book) to intuit whatever crazy stuff is coming out of your head as you're typing. It even learns things about you that you might not know about yourself: for instance, I like to start messages with "Yo." It now defaults to that instead of "to," which shares the same key combination. This can be annoying, though, since it doesn't care about the context. Yo BlackBerry: I don't want to drive "yo" the theater, I want to drive "to" the theater.
The firsts keep coming: this is the first BlackBerry to provide instant messaging, and it even has a wizard, designed by T-Mobile, to set up not just AOL Instant Messenger, but Yahoo Messenger and ICQ as well. The streamlined e-mail setup can handle any POP3 accounts plus AOL Mail. (Despite what you may have read, there's currently no support for Hotmail or MSN Messenger in the T-Mobile version of the 7100.)
You may wonder what's missing from such a smooth product. Just keep in mind that this BlackBerry has no camera, no MP3 player, not even a memory card slot for loading photos, etc. The question is, will you miss any of that?
By WILSON ROTHMAN
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Found this on time.com today.
http://www.time.com/time/gadget/20040915/