[bentrider]

I recently lost my year-and-a-half-old Treo 650 in a Las Vegas cab. Nice people were trying to call me and return it but they obviously couldn't figure out the phone feature enough to coordinate a pick-up. Anyway... I replaced it with a 7130c and thought I'd offer my observations here.

Push e-mail vs Receive on demand - Toss up here. It's nice to have my my e-mail just magically appear on my phone but I get a lot of spam and have to delete it all twice. I clear it off my computer and server but apparently BlackBerry's server gets it first. As soon as I turn the phone on it's back in all of its enlarged penis/low mortgage rate glory.

QWERTY vs. SureType - Quite shocked that I actually like SureType so much. I thought this would be the major adjustment hurdle but it's not. I just learned to stop staring at the screen as I type and trust the BlackBerry to figure it out. And of course it's learning my favorite words at a very fast rate. I'm sure that I type faster and more accurately via SureType than I did with my 650's QWERTY. I can also type with one hand on the BlackBerry and could never do that very well with the 650.

Phone function - The 7130c is definitely a much better "phone" than the 650. The 650 is a great PDA that you can make phone calls on if you have to. I hardly ever used it without the Bluetooth headset because I couldn't hear anyone with the built-in speaker. No problem with the 7130c. I leave the house without my Bluetooth all the time now. The BlackBerry is louder, clearer and more comfortable than the 650.

Reception/Battery Life - The 7130c definitely wins in both of these categories. The reception is only marginally better but the battery life is much improved. I always left the Bluetooth off on my 650 unless I had my headset in. No need to turn it off on the BlackBerry. Battery life is better with it on than it was with the 650's off.

Web Browser - Toss up here also. The BlackBerry browser can't display some of my favorite sites but it does display others much better than Blazer did on the 650. The message board on my web site, for instance, is great on the BlackBerry and was barely readable on the 650. This is the first phone I've had with Edge and that also helps in this area.

Form Factor - BlackBerry wins here. MUCH smaller than my 650. Lighter too.

Looks - Some of the BlackBerry's look great but the 7130c looks sort of cheap to me. Probably Cingular's fault more than BlackBerry's. I'm sure that Cingular chose the not-quite-black-not-quite-blue color scheme.

Touch Screen vs Thumb Wheel - I definitely do miss my touch screen sometimes. Mostly in the web browser. I'm getting used to the click wheel but sometimes you just NEED a touch screen. On the other hand sometimes you just NEED two hands to operate the Treo. Never had that problem yet with the 7130c.

Apps - The 650 wins hands-down here. Better word processor, better tasks, better address book... Better everything as far as apps go. Sometimes the BlackBerry operating system looks like my old Apple IIe I had when I was 12.

Overall I guess I like the BlackBerry a bit better. Might be different if I had a new 700p to compare it to. SureType is great and I love the small form factor and "real" battery life.