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The BlackBerry 7100t

by Sali Earls

The BlackBerry has long been the must have gadget of the executive on the move.

The ability to work from any location with a truly portable device is now available to the consumer market through the 7100 series.

The power of the BlackBerry is delivered through a stylish mobile phone design, and features include a high resolution colour screen, a speakerphone, Bluetooth support, Quad-band radio for international roaming, 32MB Flash memory, 4MB SRAM and polyphonic ringtone support.

The BlackBerry 7100 series also introduces a new keyboard technology called "SureType", which converges a mobile phone keypad and a QWERTY keyboard to allow users to input text for emails and SMS on a device the size of a traditional mobile phone.

The 7100t was launched in Europe in early 2005, and is available from T-Mobile.

Ease of use

Texting has become increasingly popular, and as this device is designed with email in mind, the easy of typing is very important. As with many phones there is no gap between the keys, so it is more likely you will press two keys at once, but the keys are large enough to avoid this with care.

A review of the 7100t would not be complete without mentioning the keyboard - it's not a true QWERTY, as most of the key have more than one letter on them, but they are laid out in that format.

People who are familiar with texting on conventional mobile phones may find this hard at first. The "SureType" facility seems very intelligent working like predictive text, but seemingly more intelligent than most phones I have used.

The screen is high resolution, and fairly large, so text is perfectly readable at arms length.

The BlackBerry is menu driven, operated with a scroll wheel on the right hand side of the device. With this, navigating the menus is a breeze. The scroll wheel on the review unit was recessed a little too far for my liking, but still was very easy to use.

Phone

Having the number keys surrounded by other keys makes dialing a new number slightly more difficult than it needs to be. But finding an existing number using the scroll wheel is extremely straightforward.

The quality of line was very good when compared to other mobiles, and reception was good. Compared to a BlackBerry from Vodafone, coverage was slightly impared.

Email

Email is the biggest strength of the BlackBerry, which relies on "push" email technology. This means that the BlackBerry server periodically checks your standard email for new messages, when any appear they are immediately "pushed" to your device. The benefit of this is that users don't need to check email at regular intervals, rather email appears as it arrives on the server.

The email package is quite comprehensive with only one omission - the ability to change the email that you send from. This means if you set up the BlackBerry to check 3 or 4 different email accounts and they all arrive in your device, but when you reply they can only appear to come from the same email account. This can be changed by logging on to the BlackBerry website, but this takes time and is awkward.

Having said that, the availability of email on-the-go outweighs the downside, and this is something BlackBerry does extremely well.

Web Browsing

The BlackBerry's large screen makes surfing better than most phones.

While the WAP browsing experience is very good indeed, the HTML browser is sadly lacking. Some websites have PDA friendly versions, such as the BBC, and here it works well.

Security

Security is a key issue for Research in Motion, the makers of BlackBerry, and from a business point of view the device is secure. It does not have a camera or an option to turn the phone into a memory device. The bluetooth capabilities are limited to a headset, the device cannot be accessed remotely. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, there is the option to encrypt all of the data.

BlackBerry recommend that the device is password protected. If it is lost or stolen the unit will not be compromised and can be disabled remotely by the company or by the mobile operator.

Ringtones

The BlackBerry suffers somewhat with sound. Although perfectly capable of playing sampled sounds it has it's own format to store ringtones. This makes finding places to download legal ringtones is almost impossible, and you upload your own tones via your PC.

Aesthetics

However, the BlackBerry is not a fashion accessory, it's a workhorse. It is very distinctive, and the 7100t is the most attractive of the series. The device may be larger than the average mobile, but it only weighs 122g.

The BlackBerry is a workhorse of a smartphone. It does not have all the bells and whistles of other phones - no camera, no freely downloadable ringtones, no MP3 player. But what it does, it does extremely well.

The push email functionality is a revelation. The scroll wheel makes operating the BlackBerry very easy, so much so that using a PDA or phone without it now seems a chore. The uncluttered interface and perfectly readable screen make the BlackBerry 7100t a joy to use.

The BlackBerry 7100t is available exclusively from T-Mobile. Visit www.t-mobile.co.uk for more information.

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