The following review is divided into 4 sections as listed below:

PART I: Introduction & Background of Reviewer(s)
PART II: Technical Specifications
PART III: Features (From www.blackberry.com)
PART IV: Positive (PRO) & Negative (CON) *Quick 1 liners w/explanations below*
PART V: Online Phone Retailer Websites
PART VI: Popular BlackBerry Websites
PART VII: Conclusion
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PART I: INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND OF REVIEWER:

Thanks for taking the time to read my review; please leave comments, especially if there are any corrections or inputs that need to be made. I consider myself pretty savvy with equipment and typically work in an industrial/engineering environment. I have a BSBA and working on my MSSE, as a result email and phone connectivity are crucial and unfortunately due to my work and residence location, signals tend to be weak in most places. The BlackBerry 8830 World Edition Smartphone has solved both those problems for me. Because I do a significant amount of international and domestic travel the wireless modem, phone and data capability is a huge help and the ability to have near laptop level applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe PDF) frees me from dragging a laptop to places where I simply wouldn't be able to carry a computer with me, either due to the environment where it would be too risky, or simply because there's no room to allow it. For 75% of my daily work the BlackBerry 8830 and a few 3rd party software solutions have allowed me to minimize the amount of time and weight I spend carrying around a laptop or rushing to computer labs, WiFi hotspots, or other locations to check up on important emails. If you have any carrier other than Verizon you get some added travel benefits with the BlackBerry map software as well. Overall, think of a BlackBerry as email machine first, phone second, and PDA third in terms of priority and function and you'll never be disappointed. The phone is a little wider than normal, but just as thin or thinner than the majority of phones, but slightly longer and wider, far from uncomfortable, but if you have small hands, you may tire of it eventually and want to pick up a Bluetooth headset if you don't have one already (I recommend the Motorola H700). I have owned it for a while now and used many other PDA devices. You'll find the construction quality, ease of use, email and phone quality far exceeds other brands of phones, no one phone can do them all well, but the BlackBerry, in my opinion comes closest. This was my first Research In Motion (RIM) product and I have been very impressed. I hope you find the review below detailed enough to make an informed decision and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

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PART II: TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

*Networks: CDMA 850/1900 MHz, GSM 900/1800 MHz
*SAR Ratings: 1.16 W/Kg
*Warranty: 1 Year Physical Characteristics
*Dimensions (H x W x D): 11.4 x 6.6 x 1.4 cm
*Weight: 4.7 ounces
*Talk Time: 180 minutes (NOTE: I get ~ 4.2 Hrs on Average)
*Standby Time: 158 hours
Display Type: LCD (TFT)
*Screen Resolution: 240 x 320 pixels
*Color: 65,000 Colors
*Languages: English, French, Spanish
*Backlit Illumination: Yes
*Keyboard Type: QWERTY
*Illuminated Keypad: Yes (NOTE: Verizon is Blue)
*Phone Book Capacity: Shared Memory (NOTE: This will start working against the 64MB of shared memory)
*Voice Activated Dialing: Yes
*Ring tones: Polyphonic, MP3, MIDI, AAC, AAC+
*Headset: 2.5mm mini stereo jack
*Video Playback Formats: MPEG-4, WMV, H.264 Music Player
*Audio Playback Formats: MIDI, MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+
*Messaging Services: SMS, EMS, MMS, IM (Windows Live Messenger) (NOTE: You can download Google Messenger as well)
*Predictive Text Entry: T9
*High Speed Data Connectivity: Yes (1xRTT, EVDO)
*Modem Functionality: Yes (Tether via Bluetooth or USB)
*Brew Applications: No
*Walkie Talkie: No
*Processor: 312 Mhz Intel XScale
*Installed RAM: 64MB (shared flash memory)
*SIM Card Lock Yes
*PC Synchronization Yes
*Expansion Slot: microSD up to 4GB
*Infrared: No
*Bluetooth: 2.0 w/Stereo Bluetooth headset support
*USB: Yes

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PART III: BlackBerry 8830 FEATURES

Features Available

* Wireless email {Up to 10 (supported) email accounts}
* Organizer
* Browser
* Phone
* BlackBerry Maps
* Media player
* Corporate data access
* Dedicated Send, End and Mute keys, a trackball, user definable convenience key
* Integrated attachment viewing
* Compatibility with popular Personal Information Management (PIM) software
* High resolution, light sensing screen
* Easy email set-up directly from BlackBerry 8830
* Rating for hearing aids (PDF): M4, T4

If your Company has the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution you'll gain additional functionality, including:

* Advanced security features
* Push delivery of data from corporate applications
* Remote address look-up
* Wireless synchronization with corporate PIM tools
* Single mailbox integration

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PART IV: POSITIVE (PRO) & NEGATIVE (CON) COMMENTS

PRO: Incredible Phone Reception
This phone is better than the Motorola RAZR, LG VX-5300, LG VX-8700, SCH-u740 and the Motorola Q, which could not obtain or hold a signal continuously at our house, which is located in a cellular black hole so it's a great testing ground. While the BlackBerry grabbed and held onto a signal better than any other phone in our home, the sound quality is not on par with the LG VX-8700, which is a little bit clearer and sounds less 'cell phonish than the BlackBerry or any other phone we tested, so while it's not the best, it's way up there on sound quality as well in my opinion. Overall the phone delivers awesome signal reception, with average to above average sound quality.

PRO: CDMA & GSM Capable (CDMA 850/1900; GSM 900/1800)
Great that you can travel and jump on any system worldwide, downside is that domestically you don't roam on GSM networks such as T-Mobile and AT&T (Cingular). I was a little bit displeased to find out that my phone, which is capable, wouldn't hop onto any one of the available networks. Since the phones are software reprogrammable, hopefully Verizon or a 3rd party will solve this with a patch or a crack on the phone and allow total roaming freedom. When you do go overseas, you do need to contact your provider to set yourself up for travel. I've heard of people having to reset their phones overseas and lose all their data, so backup or bring a laptop with your information as a safety.

PRO: Signal Status Available
Tell you no joke, in dB how good/bad your signal is. I used this feature to map my house to find the cell phone sweet spot for my wife to use her LG VX-8700 at. Not sure why you can't have it display the dB status vs. bars all the time, but on the Verizon 8830 you have to go to status to see what the signal strength is. In my opinion this should be a user option for display as either bars or dB on the main screen.

PRO: Great Screen Quality
Crystal Clear Screen & Great video quality. The screen can easily be seen in almost any lighting situation, bright, dim, dark, etc and colors don't get washed out, very well done RIM! To keep it nice consider buying a screen guard from Shield Zone, have a friend who bought this and it makes the screen near bullet proof. Lastly, there must be a built in sensor, because the screen will increase or decrease in brightness depending on the conditions around the phone automatically.

PRO: Operating System Dependability
I've experienced zero freezes or system errors despite loading multiple themes and applications

PRO: Voice Recognition Works Great
I had heard bad rumors about the voice software being useless and I can understand why. If you don't edit your address book wisely and don't have a Bluetooth headset you probably (DEFINITELY) will see problems. For example, if you add A.B. Smith, but you add it to your contacts as AB, the phone will expect "Aabb" not A-B, so be cognizant. If you have hard to pronounce names, create nicknames or easy abbreviations. Once I chopped a few names up into easier names and started using the headset I never had a problem again and I now use it almost all the time and it makes driving MUCH, MUCH safer. If you really don't like it or can't get the hang of it, adjust the sensitivity, voice repeat and command speed, etc, settings within the phone. If all else fails, reassign the Convenience Key for something other than voice recognition and never use it again.

PRO: Dialing Extensions Is Easy!
If someone has an extension you only have to dial the main number, when the extension is on the screen all you have to do is press the trackball and the extension is entered. This makes hands free truly hands free, because most phones/PDAs don't let you exercise or use this feature on a demand basis.

PRO: Speaker Quality Is Great
Not only is it loud, but it's very clear, however I would like it to be a bit louder.

PRO: Speakerphone "Convenience" Button
This may seem odd to be here, but there are a lot of people who say that the 8830 doesn't have a speaker phone button, so at some level this rumor control and correction of bad information to the prospective buyer. If you look at the keyboard, there's a "$" key, you'll see a small speaker icon on it, that's to turn the speaker on and off. Sure it's not dedicated, but do you need an extra 4-6 buttons when you have a full QWERTY keyboard anyway?

PRO: Lots of Plug In Options
The phone comes with the European, USA and another unknown style plug; you can change them out by simply sliding them in and out of the AC/Adapter as needed. This negates having to bring multiple AC/DC adapters and it's nice that they included this detail, which makes a huge difference when you're overseas.

PRO: Holster Feature
Not sure how it works, but the phone knows when it's been put away and immediately dims the screen and other functions. Great power saving feature and it will automatically change the profile for you. When you take it out it will automatically turn the screen back on and change the profile back. You can set it so that the ring features change when in the case vs. when its taken out.

PRO: Long Battery Life
I use the phone constantly and email, text, chat, etc. throughout the day. I've never killed the battery, I'm sure there are power users who can and will kill any phone, but I think for the normal user the phone will more than adequately meet the needs of most people.

PRO: Easily Connects to PC & Bluetooth Devices (VERIZON USERS BEWARE)
BlueTooth 2.0 connectivity for everyone, BUT Verizon users, you'll have to make do with the old fashioned USB cable. VZW saw fit to disable the native feature and force you to carry or get a cable to synch and download/upload files from your computer. After calling VZW they said that in 2-3 months they should have the feature that RIM built in and everyone else has enabled. Too bad for us Verizon customers in the mean time you have to pay an extra $15.00 to tether the BlackBerry to your computer as a high speed modem (where supported) until they enable this feature. A nice feature is that the computer via the USB cable can charge your BlackBerry. I have 3 Bluetooth headsets, it immediately paired with all 3. You can set the BlackBerry up to require human interaction to authorize connection, or just auto accept. There is also an anti-echo function that eliminated echo in one of my cheaper headsets.

PRO: GPS NAV & Maps
A great Cingular/AT&T/Sprint/etc feature is the GPS navigation included with the BlackBerry maps application, it will display how many satellites its tracking, your speed, and your direction. If you download Google Maps you can view your location from a map or satellite view as well as get directions or search for locations. The position moves with you unlike many other GPS capable phones. VERIZON customers BEWARE, VZW has disabled this feature, but after calling tech support, supposedly it will be enabled in 2-3 months, no promises however. Too bad to see such a nice feature broken by Verizon.

PRO: Lots of Customization Options
You can add, remove, hide, show and modify almost everything. The amount of tuning you can do to get things to your personal preference level is very high, down to adjusting the db level of the voice recognition software sensitivity. You can download themes as well. I have an iPhone theme and it looks identical, minus the touch screen capability.

PRO: Push Email Is Fast
Super fast email in and out of your blackberry and it is FAST. I've sent emails from my DSL at home, which is 1.5MB against my BlackBerry and the 8830 wins almost every time with the exact same email (text only). Haven't tried for large attachments, but I don't typically do that anyway.

PRO: Common or Separate Message In/Out Boxes
You can check voice, email, SMS (Text), chat, missed phone calls, etc, in the Messages program or you can go to specific email or chat program utilities separately. I like the time saving feature of having a 1 stop shop for all my messages; it really simplifies keeping track of things and communicating.

PRO: Email Attachments Are Not Automatically Downloaded
When I first got the BlackBerry I thought I would go way past my 10MB data plan, however, if you don't open an email and request the attachment download to the device, it won't. This is a great feature for those on smaller or without an unlimited data plan or, in my case, in a area where high speed wireless data service is not available, from any carrier. The last thing I want to do is spend an hour or two downloading an attachment that may or may not be important. Most of the time you can read the email, determine if you really need it and then retrieve it from the BlackBerry or any other email server you have set up.

PRO: BlackBerry Email Filters Are Perfect But Inflexible
Not sure how it works, but I've gotten every email from every person who should have sent one and received zero spam on my BlackBerry email address. The downside is that you have almost no control in how aggressive or passive the filter is and there are not many parameters you can adjust or change via the BlackBerry website, which may or may not be a good thing. The BlackBerry website for your account is pretty limited in features and I would hope that RIM would add some functionality in the future, such as auto-forward to more than just the phone, but another email account as well, etc.

PRO: BlackBerry Desktop program has some very nice features including a phone "Backup", which is useful if you break your phone, which I did.

PRO or CON: "Almost" A Great Media Experience
Load the Transflash MicroSD card and have up to the current limit being sold (4GB) of mp3 and wav files available. Play movies, listen to music or organize and display photos. The included software with the phone is Roxio Media Manager for BlackBerry and it's fantastic (but the BlackBerry doesn't live up to its end of the bargain). It will make images more compact for your device or reduce video size, etc. I'm very impressed. Everything is ported to the BlackBerry so file transfer is incredibly easy and it saves your settings. The downside is that none of the great data that's on the files was recognized by the BlackBerry. I was frustrated to see that the compilation, artist, dates, etc. didn't show up in the media player and I simply have a huge mass of music without any organization. I'm not about to go into 2-3GB of music and start again, so I've restricted the songs to absolute favorites so I don't really care what comes up, Ipod it's NOT. Is this a deal breaker, of course not, but I 'm hoping this is user error and not a limitation of of the program, therefore I'll be contacting RIM and updating the post as appropriate.

PRO or CON: Ringer Is Quiet BUT Only With BlackBerry Provided Ring Tones
You'll hear this phone bashed throughout the internet, and for partially good reason. The ringers it comes with ARE too quiet, however, there are lots of free wav files on the internet and you can adjust the loudness of the ring tone that you download by going to the profile (Loud, Vibrate, Quiet, Normal, Phone Only, Off, etc) and then select "Advanced Settings" from the menu and then select "Show Tunes", you can adjust the volume level on the media player to max or whatever you're comfortable with. After I did this there was absolutely no problem hearing my phone. It is now the loudest cell phone in the house. Too bad for RIM that they shipped their product without an adequate ring tone in the entire list for most of humanity to hear. Quick note as well, you can't adjust (or at least I couldn't) the default ring tones, so not only are they quiet, but you can't even make them louder other than maxing the level in the profile settings, which still isn't enough.

PRO or CON: No Camera (Does it matter?)
I work for the federal government and if this phone had a camera, I couldn't use it, therefore I applaud the serious nature of the phone, however if you want to take photos, it has everything you need except that, so in the end it's up to you regarding how important it is. I've never used any camera phones, because the quality is so low and most lack flash anyways, plus I have a digital camera already.

PRO or CON: Trackball Is A Personal Preference
I love the trackball on the phone or "pearl" in the middle of the blackberry, much more than either a touch screen, wheel or any other option after using it extensively. The vertical and horizontal sensitivity can be adjusted to your taste and it makes getting around and getting work done on the phone amazingly fast. To me it's just personal taste, try one at a store and see how you like it.

CON: High Construction Quality, BUT LOW DURABILITY IN DROPS
High quality plastics and metals. The screen is flush, so if you do decide to add a plastic screen overlay you can smooth it over the entire surface. Importantly, the back is smooth and slippery so I added a silicon BlackBerry case for about 12 dollars and it solved the protection and the potential drop issues, so I thought! I dropped the phone inside my home about 3 feet onto a tile floor with the silicon case on, it immediately broke completely and I had to get a new phone from verizon.

CON: Numeric Buttons Are Not Distinct Enough
I would like to have 0-9 clearly marked, a different color, etc, so I wouldn't have to search on the left side of the keyboard. I know this is picky, but it's also a $550 device if you don't purchase it with a phone plan as a new customer. I think having a separate keyboard color for the numeric digits would make them stand out and make dialing easier rather than justing having the numbers printed along with the letters on the keyboard and reduce searching.

CON: No WiFi
Cingular will be getting a WiFi enabled 8830 in the future, but VZW and Sprint have had no news on getting that version, at the moment it looks like an AT&T exclusive. Too bad, because with broadband capable speeds, adding WiFi would be an awesome addition. VOIP would also be a potential item for customer use; it will be interesting to see how much functionality Cingular allows, for the rest of us, unfortunately, no WiFi.

CON: Keyboard Is Cramped
There is little (very little) space between keys and you have to learn how to type quickly and carefully on a small amount of real estate, the benefit is that there is a full qwerty keyboard so you don't have to cycle through letters to get the text you want. The layout is not a perfect keyboard, so you'll find yourself occasionally hitting the wrong buttons. On the Verizon version, there is a blue background lighting on the buttons for viewing at night, and the phone knows when to turn it on, which is great, however, I find the blue distracting and hard to read and would rather have red or another easy to see color in dim conditions. The keys are also a little "slippery" so you have a bit of trouble preventing yourself from losing your place or hitting multiple keys from this as well.

CON: Convenience Key is Too Sensitive
Talk about hair trigger, go to grab your BlackBerry 8830 out of your case and off you go to voice dialing or another programmed feature. Good and bad about putting the button exactly where you pointing finger is that it's always convenient or inconvenient depending on the moment. Too bad you can't adjust how sensitive that button is or put it some place a little less likely to get hit all the time.

CON: Holster Doesn't Hold BlackBerry Securely
When I first put the phone in the holster it slipped in and out really easy. With a price of almost $550 if you break it, I didn't want to lose the phone. The top of the very nicely built and padded leather case is a magnetic flap. There is no quick release so you have to pull the BlackBerry out every time you want it. I added a BlackBerry silicon case to the 8830 and now it doesn't slide out easily, which is fine, because I have a Bluetooth headset. I'd rather take 2 seconds to get the phone out than accidentally drop it. Plus, it's protected outside of the nice case when in use. Because the phone is slippery I like the feel of the rubber case anyway, plus it's pocket ready.

CON: No Voice Recording Program
With being able to place up to a 4GB MicroSD card I would have expected a dedicated program to record voice notes, however this is not the case.

CON: Cannot Save or Edit Office Documents Natively
If you want to view documents and don't have a MicroSD card, you are forced to email them to yourself to get them on the BlackBery (Confirmed with RIM Tech Support). I'm not sure why you can use ROXIO to download media to the BlackBerry, but you can't place office or PDF documents on it, unsat in my view and should be fixed ASAP. If you have a MicroSD card you can save it to the card and then view the documents, but you cannot edit anything with the provided O/S, its read only. There are third party solutions, DataViz is working on a program familiar to many, Documents To Go, which will allow you to view and edit, PowerPoint, Word and Excel files on your BlackBerry. There are some more companies, but this looks like one of the better ones and I'm waiting for the release, which will be soon hopefully.

CON: Vibrate is weak
Not sure why a larger phone doesn't have a stronger vibrate feature, to compensate I turned up the amount of times the phone vibrates and increased the amount of rings before the phone goes to voice mail to compensate for the weak vibrate and quiet ringer.

CON: MicroSD Card Should Be Easy to Remove/Insert
On the Samsung SCH-u740 you can put or take out the card very easy. The BlackBerry requires you to remove the battery cover, slide and pull a small metal frame around the card and then take it out. After doing it once, I'll probably never do it again, except to put in a larger MicroSD card when one becomes available. My recommendation, buy the biggest card you can find, probably 4GB from a reputable company and leave it in there.

CON: Insufficient Memory without MicroSD
As it stands the BlackBerry 8830 only arrives with only 64MBs of built in memory. The important thing to note is that this is shared, so you'll really only see about 45.6MB as the end user or less. Not sure why this couldn't be more significant, without more you'll be scrambling for a memory card soon. With just a few photos on the BlackBerry (and they're small) and a couple of themes, etc, I've already run out of available storage. I wish that the user could delete the provide sample video and other media, like the horrible ring tones in order to free up some space, unfortunately their delete protected. Lastly the Media is capped (because of memory contsraints) at 12 or 15MB, which after a couple of ring tones and photos is not very much.

CON: Vibrate or Ring Are Discrete Events
You can set the phone on "Loud & Vibrate", however you'll find that it will vibrate 1-3 times, ring, vibrate 1-3 times, ring, etc. Usually you just make it through one cycle. Not sure why every other phone I've had did both simultaneously except the BlackBerry. Typically if I leave it on 2 or 3 vibrations, there isn't enough ring duration for me to grab the phone before it goes to voice mail, so I've set the phone on 1 vibration and end up with vibrate-ring-vibrate-ring, which is usually good enough, however I also had Verizon extend the amount of time it takes before my phone goes to voice mail to longer than normal as well via customer support.

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PART VI: SOME POPULAR BLACKBERRY WEBSITES

These are great resources to find solutions to common problems, highly rated or liked 3rd party software solutions or simply to see how much people like or dislike certain models.

http://crackberry.com/
http://na.blackberry.com/
http://allblackberry.com/
http://www.rimarkable.com/
http://www.howardforums.com/
http://www.blackberryforums.com/
http://www.blackberryblog.com/
http://www.bbhub.com/
http://www.blackberryblast.com/
http://www.blackberrycool.com/

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PART VII: CONCLUSION

Despite the minor flaws, overall this is a great compromise between three tools. I like the fact that you can edit the custom dictionary you create and use the Bluetooth file transfer between your BlackBerry and other devices to move files without using email. In addition there is a Desktop View, which allows you to view web pages in their native format (warning there will be lots of scrolling involved because of the small screen) if there isn't a mobile browser format available, which can be a huge help and allow you to view web sites you may have not been able to view with a mobile browser only. There have been several times where, if it wasn't for this feature I couldn't have viewed the website. One negative that wasn't mentioned above, is if you do have a lot of files, the Search utility does not go through your media files, unfortunately that's one of the big drawbacks to its usefulness, not sure why they didn't add this capability. Just be careful when using Roxio and keep things organized when you drop them into your BlackBerry and you should be okay. Lastly, I don't enjoy not being able to view html based email. There are third party applications that solve this problem, but they will of course, not be supported by RIM. RIM needs to add this feature to the BB and allow us as the users to decide whether or not we want to view html email. Overall I think with a new plan this is one of the best options out there and I hope RIM keeps up with products similar to this one in the future. RIM, however, please just add WiFi for everyone.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 149.99
Recommended for: Business Executives - Powerful and Professional