Excellent
Written: Feb 06 '05 (Updated Feb 09 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great IM client, very usable keyboard, compact, great price! Fantastic if-you-live-in-a-good TMobile reception area
Cons: deceptive signal strength meter, short battery life, no camera
The Bottom Line: Great phone for IM, email and web suring with full HTML browswer. For tekkies and Nontechies. Highly recommended only in a strong T-Mobile service areas.
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| consumerdude's Full Review: RIM BlackBerry 7100t Smartphone |
FIRST OFF....
1. Tmobile sets the default display theme to Tmobile's own color scheme. Very deceptively, this scheme's background shows five full green bars even when there is NO SIGNAL!. It's actually the # of black bars overlaying the green background bars that shows real signal strength. VERY DECEPTIVE! If you change to the manufacturer's display theme, things become much clearer and intuitive.
2. Be sure to read the Hints and Tips provided by Blackberry. They provide a wealth of shortcut keys that will transform using the device into a very easy experience. The interface is great!
INSTANT MESSAGING:
Best AOL IM client that I've seen on a phone.
MULTITASKING:
1. Like a computer or PDA, it will run multiple applications simultaneously. Hitting ALT-ESC will cycle through the applications. It's very easy to switch through applications. It's also comforting to know that the phone will ring on incoming calls, no matter what you do, web surfing, IM-ing, or reading email.
BATTERY LIFE:
The phone is supposed to last 8 days standby and 4 hours talk time, but that's in phone only mode with the data piece shutdown. In data/phone mode the battery will drain from a full charge to zero in about 8 hours.
EMAIL:
Not a problem with this phone in particular, but if you use a POP3 account that is subject to spam, it will pull all that spam in as well. Since the display width is limited, I couldn't see enough characters of the subject text as I would have liked. Choosing a smaller system font helped. Like all blackberry devices it strips out formatting of all emails. But as a fast email device, it's far superior to the Treo 650. The thumbwheel combined with the general ease of use result in a very good email device.
WEB SURFING:
1. It's a full HTML web browswer instead of the WAP browser common to most cell phones (with the exception of the Treo 600/650). On a handheld device, one's expectation should be limited. So not being able to see web pages normally isn't a big deal. But with the slow Tmobile network, expect web pages to take minutes to load fully with graphics. In fact on some fancier web pages like ESPN, none of the links work at all. In busy areas like NYC, the web pages won't load at all.
PHONE PERFROMANCE:
Generally very good overall. Speakerphone is great, although it should be noted that there seems to be a bug with activating the speakerphone. It seems like it takes 3 attempts to activate it before it turns on for a call. Once running, it is the best cellular speakerphone I've used so far. Wired handsfree is much better than Motorola. And reception seems as good as Motorola V300 or V600.
KEYBOARD:
It took about 5 minutes to get used to the new keyboard, and I think it's fantastic. A very creative solution to getting QWERTY into a smaller form factor. It allows very fast typing. It's much closer in speed to a QWERTY thumbpad than a 10 digit keypad with T9 or Motorola predictive text.
OTHER ODDITIES:
Occassionally there's a low volume static electronic type of noise emanating from the speaker. Not entirely irritating and not all that loud, but enough so that it might need to be returned to the factory for an exchange.
PRICE:
It's an excellent value for a data-centric phone. Depending upon where you buy it, the phone will cost $99 after rebates or -$30 (you make $30=$20 phone cost $50 rebate). TMobile's unlimited data plan at $20 is quite a good value.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 99
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Epinions.com ID:
consumerdude
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Location: Northeast US
Reviews written: 21
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
Uber geek
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